The effect of rejection strategy on trust and shopping choices in robot-assisted shopping *

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate how a customer-facing service robot can support decision making in shopping interactions. In this role, a robot needs sometimes to reject a customer’s choice. Thus, we investigate different rejection strategies with the goal of changing customer behavior. The implemented strategies have been developed based on an ethnographic study on assisted shopping and tested in a lab experiment with 31 participants. The experiment showed significant differences in trust ratings and decision-making depending on the employed strategy.