Jenny van Doorn and co-authors receive 2024 Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award

Jenny van Doorn and co-authors Martin Mende, Maura L. Scott (both Florida State University), Dhruv Grewal (Babson College) and Ilana Shanks (Stony Brook University) have won the 2024 Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award. They received the award for their paper “Service Robots Rising: How Humanoid Robots Influence Service Experiences and Elicit Compensatory Consumer Responses” that was published in the Journal of Marketing Research.

With the increasing adoption of technology in general, and robotics in particular in customer interactions, it is critical for marketing scholars to develop an understanding of how consumers are likely to respond to firm initiatives to deploy robots in customer-facing roles. Against this background, the paper by Van Doorn and co-authors provides an in-depth perspective into how humans are likely to respond to the increased use of robots in service settings. The authors propose and test hypotheses using a combination of lab and field experiments that bring to fore the compensatory responses that consumers are likely to have when interacting with service robots. The paper makes a salient theoretical contribution to the emerging field of interdisciplinary research that synthesizes insights from marketing, robotics, and ethics to develop a more holistic understanding of human–technology interactions.

Highly cited and impactful

Since its publication, the manuscript has become the most highly cited paper published in the Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) since 2018 with more than 21,000 downloads. The paper has also been ranked in the top 25% of all the research output scored by Altmetric. The impact of the manuscript is notable, as the insights it offers have direct implications across industries in which service robots are increasingly deployed, such as health care, retail, hospitality, and education.”

About the award

The Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award honors JMR articles that were published five years earlier and have made the most significant, long-term contribution to marketing theory, methodology, and/or practice. The award committee this year consisted of Brett Gordon (Northwestern University), Mary Frances Luce (Duke University), and Kapil Tuli (Singapore Management University). The winners will be recognized during the awards luncheon at the AMA Summer Academic Conference in Boston (August 16–18, 2024).

About the authors

Dr. Jenny van Doorn is Professor of Services Marketing at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen. Much of her research focuses on service technology and the consumer acceptance of service robots. Dr. Martin Mende is the Jim Moran Professor of Business Administration in the Dr. Persis E. Rockwood School of Marketing at Florida State University’s College of Business. Dr. Maura Scott is the Dr. Persis E. and Dr. Charles E. Rockwood Eminent Scholar in Marketing in the Dr. Persis E. Rockwood School of Marketing at Florida State University’s College of Business. Dhruv Grewal is the Toyota Chair in Commerce and Electronic Business and a Professor of Marketing at Babson College. Dr. Ilana Shanks was an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Stony Brook University, she tragically passed away in the Spring of 2021.

More information

Martin Mende, Maura L. Scott, Jenny Van Doorn, Dhruv Grewal, and Ilana Shanks (2019), “Service Robots Rising: How Humanoid Robots Influence Service Experiences and Elicit Compensatory Consumer Responses,” Journal of Marketing Research, 56 (4), 535–56.

Questions? Please contact Jenny van Doorn.