Abstract
Social service robots are gradually entering into shopping malls to provide guidance and information services to the consumer customers. Earlier literature has reported that usually consumers response positively to these robots. Less is known about how do retailers and other business actors in the shopping mall perceive the robots. We present results of an interview study carried out with eight retailers and other service providers in a shopping mall, and three shopping mall managers. The results provide insight into their views about potential application roles of social service robot in the mall: what kind of services the robot could provide to customers besides guiding and information providing, and what kind of opportunities, requirements and constraints a shopping mall sets as a business environment for robot developers and service providers. The capability of the robot to emotionally engage with the customers was seen highly potential in shopping business but balancing entertainment with utility functions is crucial. A Pepper robot was used as a demonstrative platform in the study.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Doering, N., Poeschl, S., Gross, H.-M., Bley, A., Martin, C., Boehme, H.-J.: User-centered design and evaluation of a mobile shopping robot. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 7(2), 203–225 (2015)
Sabelli, A.M., Kanda, T.: Robovie as a mascot: a qualitative study for long-term presence of robots in a shopping mall. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 8(2), 211–221 (2016)
Foster, M.E., Alami, R., Gestranius, O., Lemon, O., Niemelä, M., Odobez, J.-M., Pandey, A.K.: The MuMMER project: engaging human-robot interaction in real-world public spaces. In: Agah, A., Cabibihan, J.-J., Howard, A.M., Salichs, M.A., He, H. (eds.) ICSR 2016. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 9979, pp. 753–763. Springer, Cham (2016). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47437-3_74
Aaltonen, I., Arvola, A., Heikkilä, P., Lammi, H.: Hello pepper, may i tickle you? children’s and adults’ responses to an entertainment robot at a shopping mall. In: Proceedings of the Companion of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2017), pp. 53–54 (2017)
Niemelä, M., Arvola, A., Aaltonen, I.: Monitoring the acceptance of a social service robot in a shopping mall: first results. In: Proceedings of the Companion of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2017), pp. 225–226 (2017)
Shi, C., Satake, S., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H.: How would store managers employ social robots? In: Proceedings on ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 519–520 (2016)
Glas, D.F., Satake, S., Ferreri, F., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Hagita, N.: The network robot system: enabling social human-robot interaction in public spaces. J. Hum.Robot Interact. 1(2), 5–32 (2013)
Kanda, T., Shiomi, M., Miyashita, Z., Ishiguro, H., Hagita, N.: A communication robot in a shopping mall. IEEE Trans. Robot. 26(5), 897–913 (2010)
Gross, H.M., Boehme, H., Schroeter, C., Mueller, S., et al.: TOOMAS: interactive shopping guide robots in everyday use - final implementation and experiences from long-term field trials. In: Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 2005–2012 (2009)
Niemelä, M., Heikkilä, P., Lammi, H.: Social service robot in a shopping mall – expectations of the management, retailers and consumers. In: Proceedings of the Companion of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2017), pp. 227–228 (2017)
Lee, M.K., Kiesler, S., Forlizzi, J., Srinivasa, S., Rybski, P.: Gracefully mitigating breakdowns in robotic services. In: Proceedings on 5th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2010), pp. 203–210 (2010)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Niemelä, M., Heikkilä, P., Lammi, H., Oksman, V. (2017). Shopping Mall Robots – Opportunities and Constraints from the Retailer and Manager Perspective. In: Kheddar, A., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10652. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70022-9_48
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70022-9_48
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70021-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70022-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)