When interacting with a service robot is (not) satisfying: The role of customers’ need for social sharing of emotion

Service robots (SRs) are fast becoming the source of automated service delivery processes and personalized frontline customer experiences in service firms. This study investigates the impact of customers' emotional state on how they evaluate service experiences after interacting with an SR, which remains underexplored. Drawing on the theory of constructed emotion and social sharing of emotions, it conducts three online scenario-based experiments. Study 1 shows that customers in a neutral emotional state are more satisfied with the service provided by SRs than are those in a negative emotional state. The mechanisms underlying this dissatisfaction are perceived relatedness and perceived appropriateness, as shown by Study 2. Study 3 demonstrates how SRs' sympathetic capabilities moderate this mediating relationship. The findings were consistent across different emotion manipulation methods, negative emotional states, and sources of emotional states. Given the increasing prominence of SRs on organizational frontlines, this study has numerous theoretical implications for SRs’ interaction with emotional customers and practical implications for employing SRs.