A multilevel study on preferences for self-service technology versus human staff: Insights from hotels in China

Abstract

• A hierarchical framework explaining multilevel SST adoption was developed. • Customers’ and hotels’ preferences are influenced by environment, organizational context, service encounters, and customer experience. • Organizations usually pay more attention to environmental and organizational contexts. • Individuals tend to highlight differences between customers more strongly. Rapid technological developments bring with them an inevitable, still unresolved debate over high-tech versus high-touch service. Technology adoption usually involves multilevel phenomena (e.g., individual, organization, and industry-wide). Moving beyond previous work, which has focused primarily on individual-level adoption, this research aims to develop a hierarchical framework integrating multiple domains. Based on 59 in-depth interviews with hoteliers and customers, the framework unveils the mechanisms of organizational and individual preference construction for self-service technologies compared with human-delivered services. Findings reveal that the interplay between the external environment, organizational context, internal service encounters, and core customer experience influences customers’ and hoteliers’ preference construction. Results further show that organizations pay more attention to the environment and organizational context, whereas individuals tend to highlight differences between customers more strongly. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.