Customers often rely on peers’ opinions and experiences when forming expectations and evaluating a service provider. New media channels such as consumer review platforms and social networking sites help customers obtain firsthand information from other customers to evaluate a service. Prior...

The concept of “trust” has gained considerable importance in the field of marketing during the last decades and is seen as a key mediator of customer relationship marketing. But upon a closer look at the literature, the construct “trust” is conceptualized and measured very differently....

The rise of humanoid robots in hospitality services accelerates the need to understand related consumer reactions. Four scenario-based experiments, building on social presence and social cognition theories, examine how humanoid robots (vs. self-service machines) shape consumer service...