Enhancing hospitality experience with service robots: the mediating role of rapport building

TLDR

The study examined how service robot attributes influence customers’ hospitality experience through relationship building. The authors developed a conceptual framework via literature review and interviews, then tested it with a scenario‑based experiment and questionnaire survey. Results show that perceived humanlikeness or intelligence of robots enhances customer‑robot rapport and hospitality experience, and that customer‑employee rapport mediates the link between robot attributes and hospitality experience, while customer‑robot rapport does not; the study discusses theoretical and practical implications.

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of service robot attributes on customers' hospitality experience from the perspective of relationship building. Through literature review and a preliminary study with in-depth interviews, a conceptual framework was developed. A scenario-based experiment and questionnaire survey were designed to test the model. The results indicate that robots' being perceived as humanlike or intelligent positively affects customer-robot rapport building and the hospitality experience. Additionally, customer-employee rapport building was found to mediate the relationship between robot attributes and the hospitality experience, but customer-robot rapport building was not. Based on these findings, theoretical contributions and practical implications were discussed.