Robots vs. human employees’ influence on restaurant brand relationship building: An integration of role theory and stereotype theory

<jats:p> Despite the popularity of service robot integration in restaurants, it is still unclear whether robots and human employees would influence customer experience, particularly customers’ restaurant brand relationship-building experience, differently. Taking a role theory perspective and building on the stereotypes literature, this study aims to address this research gap. Further, this study tests the moderating roles of stereotypes of warmth and competence toward robots in the proposed relationships. Using two studies, we examined the main effects of restaurant roles on brand relationship building with a scenario of customers at casual dining restaurants in study 1 and we tested the moderating effects with a scenario of customers at robot-themed restaurants at a theme park in study 2. This study contributes novel theoretical insights on robot roles in branding and provides managers with implications for adopting robots. </jats:p>