By Michael Giebelhausen, Assistant Professor at Cornell University School of Hotel Administration

Executive Summary: Hotels, restaurants, and other hospitality industry operations are experimenting with self-service kiosks, tablet devices, and other technologies intended to augment or replace interactions between guests and front-line employees. While the combination of technology and people is designed to improve service, research suggests that service technologies can impede development of employee-guest rapport and lead to lower service evaluations. The studies presented in this report apply social equity theory to determine when (and why) technology can improve guests' satisfaction with the service process and when it diminishes the guest experience. Equity theory suggests that when the use of technology prevents guests from responding to an employee's friendly advances, guests experience psychological tension and decrease their evaluations of the service experience. The reverse situation also applies, so that when employees are less than friendly the barrier created by technology increases service evaluations by reducing guest anger. However, it is not always the case that friendly frontline staff and technology don't mix. In a follow up field experiment, guests who used a Monscierge touchscreen system located not far from a bell stand preferred interacting with the technology when a hotel employee was nearby though not directly engaging guests. Thus, frontline employees should still develop a rapport with guests, but when technology acts as an "equity barrier," the employees should provide guests with "social space," without abandoning them entirely.

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Michael Giebelhausen is an assistant professor of marketing at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. He earned his Ph.D. in Marketing from Florida State University, graduate degrees from Loyola University Chicago, undergraduate degrees from the University of Illinois, as well as a "Ductorate" from Walt Disney University. He teaches Marketing Management for Services and Marketing Research, and he has been honored with the FSU College of Business Ph.D. Teaching Award and the Cornell School of Hotel Administration Ted Teng '79 Dean's Teaching Excellence Award. His research focuses on consumer behavior and signaling in service settings with a particular emphasis on the effects of green marketing.

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Cyborg Service: The Unexpected Effect of Technology in the Employee-Guest Exchange | By Michael Giebelhausen