Jenny van Doorn and co-authors win Robert Johnston Best Paper Award

Professor Jenny van Doorn and co-authors Ilana Shanks, Martin Mende, Nicole J. Hess, Maura L. Scott, and Dhruv Grewal have won the Robert Johnston Best Paper Award. They received the award for their paper titled ‘Viva robonomics!? Cost–benefit analysis of robots and future directions in service and robonomics research’, published in the Journal of Service Management (JOSM).

Jenny van Doorn is Professor of Services Marketing at FEB. Martin Mende and Maura L. Scott are both affiliated with Arizona State University, Nicole J. Hess is affiliated with the ESCP Business School, Dhruv Grewal is affiliated with Babson College and Ilana Shanks was affiliated with Stony Brook University, she tragically passed away in the Spring of 2021. In their paper, the authors seek to stimulate a scholarly conversation on the efficiency of service robots and their impact on costs, revenues and profitability. They do so by surveying the emerging literature on empirical insights on cost–benefit analyses and then highlighting key components of cost-benefit analyses for service robots. In their paper, Van Doorn and co-authors use “service profit logic” to empirically examine consumer willingness-to-pay (WTP) vis-à-vis human-robot (cobotic) teams as a crucial marketing variable in the context of cost–benefit analyses for service robots.

The paper offers an illustrative process for cost–benefit analyses of service robots, outlining key cost drivers and benefits and reviewing empirical evidence. The findings highlight the situational profitability of robots, with economic feasibility influenced by context and usage frequency. The authors find that consumer WTP is shaped, among others, by perceived usefulness, emotional engagement and anthropomorphic features of service robots. They also reveal that cobotic teams in healthcare can increase WTP for human-only teams, especially when robots are in leadership roles. The authors conclude their paper with proposed directions for future research.

Journal of Service Management

The Journal of Service Management (JOSM) is a leading interdisciplinary and managerial journal dedicated to advancing knowledge on the effective management of service across diverse organizational and societal contexts. JOSM emphasizes rigorous, theory-informed research that enhances understanding to how services are strategically designed, delivered, governed, and improved. Annually, JOSM presents the Robert Johnston Awards, for best and highly commended papers published in the journal, and for best reviewers whos constructive feedback has significantly contributed to the quality of the journal.

Questions? Please contact Jenny van Doorn.