After the Hype: Managerial Impacts of Planned (Dis)continuance of Service Robot Usage

Abstract

AI-powered devices, for example, service robots, are expected to revolutionize hospitality. As a result, research on service robots has surged in the context of hospitality. While prior studies have explored customer and employee attitudes toward using or abandoning robots in different contexts, for example, health care, there is a dearth of research into strategic decision-makers’ views on deciding to continue using or abandoning service robots in hospitality settings after their introduction. To that end, we adopt the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework through a phenomenon-driven bottom-up approach to explore why strategic decision-makers plan to (dis)continue using service robots in hospitality after their introduction. In practice, semistructured interviews were conducted with robot suppliers (n = 8) and strategic decision-makers (n = 10) to explore the planned (dis)continuance of service robot usage. Six key factors related to planned (dis)continuance of service robots in hospitality settings were found, revolving around drivers and barriers of robot adoption (e.g., availability of off-the-shelf robot solutions; operational complexity), the strategic focus of the company (e.g., vision and mission), the user experience (e.g., robots’ persona), technical aspects (e.g., sensors and interoperability), and economic aspects (e.g., managing cashflow). Extending the Technology-Organization-Environment framework, we derive implications for hospitality management theory and practice by developing a novel model for planned (dis)continuance of service robot usage, thus adding to the broader body of work on robot usage continuance in operational settings.