Francesca Lombardo and co-authors win EMAC Best Dissertation-based Paper Award

PhD candidate Francesca Lombardo and her team have won the EMAC Best Dissertation-based Paper Award at the European Marketing Academy (EMAC) spring conference in June. They received the award for their paper titled “Automated Social Exchanges: Aligning Robot Actors and Exchange Relationship Type”.

Francesca Lombardo is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Economics and Business’ (FEB) Department of Marketing. Her co-authors Jenny van Doorn and Jana Holthöwer are her PhD supervisors. In their paper, they propose that acceptance of and engagement with service robots depend on the alignment between a robot’s actor type (social vs. functional) and the type of exchange relationship through which users engage with the robot (social vs. economic).

Using a field experiment in an educational setting and two experimental studies in healthcare contexts, Lombardo, Van Doorn and Holthöwer show that actor–exchange alignment significantly increases both engagement and user acceptance. Moreover, different stakeholder groups may simultaneously engage with the same robot through different exchange relationship types, creating potential misalignment that can hinder acceptance. Importantly, their findings reveal that positive user experience within one stakeholder group can compensate for such misalignment, offering a practical pathway to improve robot acceptance in complex service environments.

Lombardo has led this research project over the past years, as of her dissertation. In her dissertation, she studies topics including human-robot teams, human-robot interaction and robots in healthcare. Lombardo is honored to receive this Best Dissertation-based Paper Award. “This recognition is incredibly meaningful and it reflects not only my own efforts but also the guidance and supports of my supervisors Jenny van Doorn and Jana Holthöwer. I look forward to continuing this journey of discovery and contributing to research that creates meaningful impact for both academia and practice.”

About EMAC

The European Marketing Academy (EMAC) is a non-political, professional society for individuals involved or interested in marketing theory and research, established in 1975. As the core of an international communication network, EMAC facilitates the dissemination of knowledge and the promotion of global academic exchange in the field of marketing. Apart from publishing the International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM), EMAC organizes two conferences each year, one in spring and the other in fall. At these conferences, they present various awards, including the EMAC Best Paper Award Based on a Doctoral Dissertation.

Questions? Please contact Francesca Lombardo.