Machine talk: When flattery sounds better from a bot
David Chai, Jian Li, Jinsong Huang · Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services · 2025
As service robots increasingly engage in consumer interactions, they now deliver positive evaluations such as flattery and praise in retail contexts. Thus, this research examines how consumers respond to these positive evaluations from service robots versus human providers. Across five studies, we find that consumers are more receptive to flattery from robots but prefer praise from humans. This pattern is explained by motivation inference: consumers perceive human flattery as egoistic and human praise as altruistic, whereas robot communication is seen as lacking motivation. Moreover, anthropomorphic appearance does not alter these inferences, but anthropomorphic awareness—highlighting the robot's thought processes—enhances perceived motivation, amplifying preferences for praise over flattery. These findings provide a deeper understanding of service robot communication in the retail industry and highlight how different anthropomorphic cues shape consumer acceptance.