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Designing Robots for Marketplace Success: A Case Study with Technology for Behavior and Habit Change

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Abstract

This research seeks to identify the factors that affect people’s decision to purchase, or to not purchase, social robots for their homes. To this aim, we focus on a specific technological use case: behavior and habit change. As consumer behavior research suggests that preferred designs and price sensitivity will vary between those who are technology early adopters and those who are mainstream adopters, we look at how self-classification influences the aforementioned areas. To this end, we interview 18 individuals to identify behavioral change goals and note reactions to three videos of technology for habit change. In addition to assessing willingness-to-pay (WTP) by using established methods in market research, holistic product design cards are also created to aid this process and to support user design. Additionally, we compare how people’s purchase-based designs differ from their ideal designs. We find that although early adopters prefer domestic robots to be human-like in form and behavior, they exhibit significant downgrading, especially to a more device-like form, due to price. Alternatively, we find that those in the mainstream prefer technology that is not human-like in form or behavior, and that privacy concerns and a desire for control have significant impacts on their designs.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. We did not identify “Laggards” separately, as there were no systematic differences between those indicating a 1 or 2 on the Early Adopter question. The “Early Adopters” category does not make a distinction between Early Adopters and Innovators, and is therefore synonymous with Moore’s “Early Market” [40].

  2. https://youtu.be/o-bKxAaFAuQ, until 2:58.

  3. https://youtu.be/LYvpvz_bzmI, until 1:05.

  4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SraNMzbi_G4, until 1:41.

  5. N refers to number of participants and n refers to number of instances.

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Funding

This study was funded by a grant through Indiana University’s Social Science Research Commons.

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  1. Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Natasha Randall & Selma Šabanović

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  1. Natasha Randall
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Correspondence to Natasha Randall.

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Randall, N., Šabanović, S. Designing Robots for Marketplace Success: A Case Study with Technology for Behavior and Habit Change. Int J of Soc Robotics 16, 461–487 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-023-01093-y

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