IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v171y2024ics0148296323007191.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The blame shift: Robot service failures hold service firms more accountable

Author

Listed:
  • Ryoo, Yuhosua
  • Jeon, Yongwoog Andy
  • Kim, WooJin

Abstract

This article reports findings from four studies examining blame attribution following service failures perpetrated by frontline robots or human service providers. Findings show that when human service providers make mistakes, customers blame the human employees, but when robot service providers make the same mistakes, they blame the associated firm instead. Perceptions that robots lack controllability over their actions mediate the negative spillover effect on firms. Robot humanness and type of intelligence appear to moderate the effect. That is, when robots are highly humanized or have analytical intelligence, participants perceive that the robots have high controllability and therefore blame them as if they were humans. In contrast, robots that are non-humanized or show mechanical intelligence are perceived as lacking controllability and culpability. As a result, firms deploying these robots are blamed for their poor service and experience negative spillover effects in the form of decisions to withdraw patronage.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryoo, Yuhosua & Jeon, Yongwoog Andy & Kim, WooJin, 2024. "The blame shift: Robot service failures hold service firms more accountable," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:171:y:2024:i:c:s0148296323007191
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114360
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296323007191
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114360?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Acemoglu, Daron & Koster, Hans R.A. & Ozgen, Ceren, 2023. "Robots and Workers: Evidence from the Netherlands," IZA Discussion Papers 15997, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Kotler, Philip, 1994. "Reconceptualizing marketing: An interview with Philip Kotler," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 353-361, December.
    3. David H. Autor & David Dorn, 2013. "The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1553-1597, August.
    4. Kalamas, Maria & Laroche, Michel & Makdessian, Lucy, 2008. "Reaching the boiling point: Consumers' negative affective reactions to firm-attributed service failures," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(8), pages 813-824, August.
    5. Bougie, J.R.G. & Pieters, R. & Zeelenberg, M., 2003. "Angry customers don't come back, they get back : The experience and behavioral implications of anger and dissatisfaction in services," Other publications TiSEM 1708fb71-fd68-41d9-b870-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    6. Ryoo, Yuhosua & Kim, WooJin, 2023. "Price-ethicality association: When price discounts inhibit ethical purchasing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    7. Weiner, Bernard, 2000. "Attributional Thoughts about Consumer Behavior," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 27(3), pages 382-387, December.
    8. Harrison-Walker, L. Jean, 2019. "The critical role of customer forgiveness in successful service recovery," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 376-391.
    9. Folkes, Valerie S & Koletsky, Susan & Graham, John L, 1987. "A Field Study of Causal Inferences and Consumer Reaction: The View from the Airport," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 13(4), pages 534-539, March.
    10. Youyung Hyun & Sunyoung Hlee & Jaehyun Park & Younghoon Chang, 2022. "Discovering meaningful engagement through interaction between customers and service robots," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(13-14), pages 973-1000, October.
    11. Jeon, Yongwoog Andrew, 2022. "Let me transfer you to our AI-based manager: Impact of manager-level job titles assigned to AI-based agents on marketing outcomes," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 892-904.
    12. Deborah Johnson, 2015. "Technology with No Human Responsibility?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 127(4), pages 707-715, April.
    13. Christoph Adami, 2015. "Robots with instincts," Nature, Nature, vol. 521(7553), pages 426-427, May.
    14. Sheehan, Ben & Jin, Hyun Seung & Gottlieb, Udo, 2020. "Customer service chatbots: Anthropomorphism and adoption," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 14-24.
    15. Merkle, Moritz, 2019. "Customer Responses to Service Robots–Comparing Human-Robot Interaction with Human-Human Interaction," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 123632, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    16. Antoine Cully & Jeff Clune & Danesh Tarapore & Jean-Baptiste Mouret, 2015. "Robots that can adapt like animals," Nature, Nature, vol. 521(7553), pages 503-507, May.
    17. Marie Haikel-Elsabeh, 2023. "Virtual influencers versus real influencers advertising in the metaverse, understanding the perceptions, and interactions with users," Post-Print hal-04171089, HAL.
    18. Ryoo, Yuhosua, 2022. "Moral credentials versus moral credits: Two paths to consumers’ licensing of brand transgressions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 13-31.
    19. McColl-Kennedy, Janet R. & Sparks, Beverley A. & Nguyen, Doan T., 2011. "Customer's angry voice: Targeting employees or the organization?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(7), pages 707-713, July.
    20. Ryoo, Yuhosua & Sung, Yongjun & Chechelnytska, Inna, 2020. "What makes materialistic consumers more ethical? Self-benefit vs. other-benefit appeals," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 173-183.
    21. Pankaj Aggarwal & Ann L. McGill, 2007. "Is That Car Smiling at Me? Schema Congruity as a Basis for Evaluating Anthropomorphized Products," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(4), pages 468-479, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhu, Hui & Vigren, Olli & Söderberg, Inga-Lill, 2024. "Implementing artificial intelligence empowered financial advisory services: A literature review and critical research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kalamas, Maria & Laroche, Michel & Makdessian, Lucy, 2008. "Reaching the boiling point: Consumers' negative affective reactions to firm-attributed service failures," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(8), pages 813-824, August.
    2. Arora, Swapan Deep & Chakraborty, Anirban, 2021. "Intellectual structure of consumer complaining behavior (CCB) research: A bibliometric analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 60-74.
    3. Romani, Simona & Grappi, Silvia & Dalli, Daniele, 2012. "Emotions that drive consumers away from brands: Measuring negative emotions toward brands and their behavioral effects," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 55-67.
    4. Ana B. Casado & Francisco J. Mas & Ricardo Sellers, 2004. "Third-Party Complaints And Firm Performance: An Application In Spanish Banking," Working Papers. Serie EC 2004-01, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    5. Justina Sidlauskiene & Yannick Joye & Vilte Auruskeviciene, 2023. "AI-based chatbots in conversational commerce and their effects on product and price perceptions," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 33(1), pages 1-21, December.
    6. Shannon W. Anderson & L. Scott Baggett & Sally K. Widener, 2009. "The Impact of Service Operations Failures on Customer Satisfaction: Evidence on How Failures and Their Source Affect What Matters to Customers," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(1), pages 52-69, November.
    7. Ana B. Casado & Francisco J. Mas & Hans Kasper, 2006. "Explaining Satisfaction In Double Deviation Scenarios: The Effects Of Anger And Distributive Justice," Working Papers. Serie EC 2006-09, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    8. Tom Joonhwan Kim & Youjae Yi & Jongan Choi, 2020. "The boomerang effect of brand personality congruency in a product-harm crisis," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 45(4), pages 645-661, November.
    9. Thowayeb H. Hassan & Amany E. Salem & Mahmoud I. Saleh, 2022. "Digital-Free Tourism Holiday as a New Approach for Tourism Well-Being: Tourists’ Attributional Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(10), pages 1-14, May.
    10. Tuzovic, Sven & Simpson, Merlin C. & Kuppelwieser, Volker G. & Finsterwalder, Jörg, 2014. "From ‘free’ to fee: Acceptability of airline ancillary fees and the effects on customer behavior," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 98-107.
    11. Jessica Mikeska & Elise Johansen Harvey, 2015. "The Political CEO: An Event Study Comparing Consumer Attributions of CEO Behavior," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 96(1), pages 76-92, March.
    12. Davoud Nikbin & Ishak Ismail & Malliga Marimuthu, 2013. "The relationship between informational justice, recovery satisfaction, and loyalty: the moderating role of failure attributions," Service Business, Springer;Pan-Pacific Business Association, vol. 7(3), pages 419-435, September.
    13. Demoulin, Nathalie & Willems, Kim, 2019. "Servicescape irritants and customer satisfaction: The moderating role of shopping motives and involvement," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 295-306.
    14. Fernandes, Teresa & Oliveira, Elisabete, 2021. "Understanding consumers’ acceptance of automated technologies in service encounters: Drivers of digital voice assistants adoption," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 180-191.
    15. Nur’Hidayah Che Ahmat & Salleh Mohd Radzi & Mohd Salehuddin Mohd Zahari & Rosmaliza Muhammad & Azdel Abdul Aziz & Nor Azmi Ahmad, 2011. "The Effect Of Factors Influencing The Perception Of Price Fairness Towards Customer Response Behaviors," Journal of Global Management, Global Research Agency, vol. 2(1), pages 22-38, July.
    16. Verena Hüttl-Maack & Doreén Pick & Heribert Gierl, 2019. "Handle with care! How majority cues can reduce the negative effects of warnings of foreseeable product failures," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 689-723, August.
    17. Wiegerinck, V.J.J., 2006. "Consumer trust and food safety. : An attributional approach to food safety incidents and channel response," Other publications TiSEM 6853c430-a9ce-434f-8d45-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    18. Ana B. Casado & Juan Luis Nicolau & Francisco Mas Ruiz, 2008. "The negative effects of failed service recoveries," Working Papers. Serie EC 2008-07, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    19. Scheidler, Sabrina & Edinger-Schons, Laura Marie, 2020. "Partners in crime? The impact of consumers' culpability for corporate social irresponsibility on their boycott attitude," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 607-620.
    20. Nika Meyer (née Mozafari) & Melanie Schwede & Maik Hammerschmidt & Welf Hermann Weiger, 2022. "Users taking the blame? How service failure, recovery, and robot design affect user attributions and retention," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 32(4), pages 2491-2505, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:171:y:2024:i:c:s0148296323007191. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.