INTEREST CATEGORY: SERVICE
POSTING TYPE: Calls: Journals

Author: Nima Heirati

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Unanticipated and Unintended Consequences of Service Robots in the Frontline

Link: https://www.ias.surrey.ac.uk/event/service-robots-in-the-frontline/

KEY DATES:

Call for workshop submission: 1 July 2022 to 20 August 2022
Registration window: 22 August 2022 – 5 September 2022
Workshop dates: 15 September 2022 – 9:00-16:00 UTC

The proliferation of touchpoints in today’s digitally enriched customer journeys makes managing the customer experience an increasingly complex task. Companies now employ various artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as Service Robots to improve customer experience. While academics have a growing interest in how AI and Service Robots are shaking up the business world, the impact of such technology on the overall customer service experience remains largely unexplored and unintended consequences of such interactions are still unclear.

This workshop will explore topics related to the unanticipated and unintended consequences of service robots in the frontline from a multitude of domains and will bring together researchers from various disciplines including AI, marketing management, consumer psychology, and the digital economy. It will encourage collaborative work between scholars and managers/companies and data from diverse sources such as secondary data, lab and field experiments, performance-related data, ethnographic work, etc. The shortlisted papers in this workshop will be invited to submit their work to a special issue in the Journal of Business Research¹: https://journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-business-research/call-for-papers/unanticipated-and-unintended-consequences-of-service-robots-in-the-frontline

Topics of interest include five main themes:

– Service Robots and customer emotions;

– Service Robots and customer misbehaviour;

– Service Robots and the changing role of customers and service employees;

– Ethical and privacy concerns in Service robots;

– Service Robots and post-purchasing behaviour.

Organisers

Dr Valentina Pitardi, Surrey Business school, University of Surrey, UK

Dr Nima Heirati, Surrey Business school, University of Surrey, UK

Professor Chanaka Jayawardhena, Surrey Business school, University of Surrey, UK

Professor Werner Kunz, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

Professor Stefanie Paluch, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Professor Jochen Wirtz, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Note:

1. While the shortlisted papers in this workshop will be invited to submit their work, this special issue in the Journal of Business Research is open for all scholars regardless of their attendance in the workshop.