The Customer Experience with Fashion Sale Robots: A Psycho-interpretative Framework

This chapter aims to conceptually examine how perceptions of a customer experience with service robots are formed in a fashion retail context. The theoretical backbone is the integration of managerial and marketing view of human-machine interaction through Variety Information Model (VIM) and a psychological approach to the user adoption of new technologies according to Cognitive-Affective-Conative (CAC) model. The existing body of knowledge on humans’ reactions to service robots in a fashion retail context is enriched by proposing a new and multidisciplinary framework in which information units are the antecedents of customers’ experiences; synthesis schemes affect the cognitive experience; general schemes impact the conative experience; and categorical values are linked to the affective experience. The factors, from the customer’s side, conditioning the customer experience with fashion sale robots are thereby highlighted.