Faculty Research

Examining Customers’ Anxiety with Auto-Checkout Scanners

From 2001: A SpAce OdySSey to The Matrix, it’s a plot line that has made many a Hollywood movie: too-bigfor-their-britches computers intimidating humans and taking over the world. But while these battles for control have so far remained on the big screen, the anxieties they depict are not far from reality—just ask a grandmother who’s been pressured into creating a Facebook page.

According to new research by michael Capella, assistant professor of marketing at the Villanova School of Business, evidence of this anxiety also can be witnessed in the automated check-out aisles of the neighborhood grocery store.

Capella’s report, “The Impact of Social Presence on Technology-Based Self-Service Use: The role of Familiarity,” which was co-authored by professors Brian Kinard of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and Jerry Kinard of Western Carolina University, was published in the summer issue of Services Marketing Quarterly. The study, the first of its kind, examined consumer attitudes about using technologybased self-services in grocery stores.

The growth of self-service scanners at stores, airports, hotels, and even libraries is increasing exponentially. According to statistics produced by the IHL Group, transactions at North American self-service kiosks surpassed $607 billion in 2008 and, by 2012, is expected to top $1.7 trillion. Until now, little has been known about consumer anxiety surrounding these new technologies.

Capella and his team, partnering with Kroger grocery stores in mississippi, manipulated the shopping environment of 119 participants by controlling the number of shoppers simultaneously using the technology. Some of the participants were observed while using the self-service scanner alone. others used the technology while one, two, or three staged shoppers used nearby scanners at the same time.

After completing use of the automated self-scanners, the study subjects were asked if they were likely to use a self-checkout lane again and whether they would recommend it to others. They also were asked if they felt confident or pressured about using the technology and if they felt a sense of accomplishment.

“our hypothesis was that with more people using adjacent terminals, the less comfortable the [study subjects] would be,” Capella says. “But we found they were least comfortable in the presence of just one additional person, while with three others it went back to being as though nobody else was there.”

Capella and his team discovered that when participant shoppers had one shopper nearby, their emotional reaction to the scanner tended toward “stage fright”—a fear of being inept at operating the machine in the presence of another person, who might notice them making a mistake. Because the possibility of being observed making a mistake was lower when two or more shoppers used the scanners simultaneously, participant shoppers’ anxiety about the new technology decreased.

These findings, says Capella, suggest that merchants should install self check-out machines in high-traffic areas—more shoppers equals less anxiety. In addition, manufacturers also need to improve usability by making the shopper-machine interface more user-friendly. Capella believes that creative advertising might ease the anxieties his study revealed. For example, an ad might portray a tech-savvy consumer helping a selfconscious fellow shopper master the use of the self-service check-out station.

“Even though they likely feel some trepidation, especially with another customer present, the shopper can use this technology to make the check-out experience more pleasant,” Capella says. “Technology can and should be a tool we use to take control of our world—not the other way around.”

Greater Intrinsic Rewards Help Retention

WHICH KINd oF rEWArd is more important to employee satisfaction and retention—extrinsic or intrinsic recognition?

In his article “Exploring Talent management in India: The Neglected role of Intrinsic rewards,” recently published in the Journal of World Business, VSB professor Walter Tymon reports that at least in India, this question is an answerable one.

As their presence has grown, multinational corporations based in India have adopted Western human-resources practices, which have led to a challenge familiar to Western companies: How do you retain valuable employees while avoiding promotion bottlenecks and higher compensation costs?

Tymon and VSB colleagues Jonathan doh, the Herbert G. rammrath Endowed Chair in International Business, and Stephen A. Stumpf, the Fred J. Springer Chair in Business Leadership, worked with a subsidiary of manpower Inc. to explore employee career success, satisfaction, and retention. They studied the importance of external rewards for employees (such as compensation and benefits) compared with intrinsic rewards (such as meaningful work, gaining a sense of progress, or having choices at work).

After surveying some 28 firms that employ more than 4,800 professional-level workers, Tymon and his team discovered that intrinsic rewards greatly improved organizational satisfaction when employees felt that their salaries and benefits were low. When compensation was high, employees tended to be satisfied with their jobs—but the level of organizational satisfaction improved even further when intrinsic rewards increased.

In addition, the study showed that when

When Your Brand Really Matters

CHILdrEN AS yoUNG AS 5 Form stereotypes about people based on brand consumption.

“my neighbor … he’s such a ‘crunchie.’ … you know, vegetarian, environment lover, … super smart, but so laid back … wears Birkenstocks, drives a Prius, eats only organic food … I bet he washes his clothes with Seventh Generation detergent … a ‘treehugger,’ if you know what I mean [laughs].”

This quote, from a 12-year-old girl, illustrates how children make assumptions about others based on the products and brands they own. While advertising targeted at children has grown over the last few years, there has been little evidence to indicate whether marketers have had any influence on the way children use products and brands to define and act out social roles.

In “The development of Consumer-Based Consumption Constellations in Children,” published in the February 2010 issue of the Journal of consumer Research, Villanova School of Business marketing professor Lan Nguyen Chaplin and Tina m. Lowrey of the University of Texas at San Antonio shed light not only on why material things may be so important to children in defining social roles, but also on how their knowledge of product and brand symbolism can lead to stereotypes and feelings of judgment.

“Children are capable of forming consumption constellations, which are groupings of complementary products, brands, and consumption activities used to construct a social role,” says Chaplin. Her results indicate that across ages 5-16, early adolescents between 12 and 13 years old appear to have the most rigid and narrow-minded view of social roles and are most likely to use products and brands to form stereotypes of others.

Chaplin observes little developmental change in children’s consumption constellations until the third grade, when they begin to describe social roles using products and brands that “go together” better. The most dramatic change occurs between fifth and seventh grades, when adolescents an organization cannot provide the level of benefits or compensation desired and/ or cannot change its work location, certain organizational and managerial actions (for example, being socially responsible, having supportive managers, or using positive management practices) can make a positive difference in employee satisfaction, which in turn affects retention. This finding sheds important light on the battlefield in the war for talent, which traditionally has been centered on the use of extrinsic rewards.

An important lesson for employers, says Tymon, is that happier employees are not solely the result of the numbers on their paychecks. “Social responsibility is an important source of pride for employees. Cultivating a reputation as a socially responsible company can be a vital piece of the puzzle when it comes to talent management and retention.”

use more products and brands to describe social roles and become rigid in their definitions of those roles. For example, a fifth grader might say that cool kids wear expensive clothes but might shop at thrift stores, too. A seventh grader is more likely to say that all cool kids always wear expensive clothes and cite brand names like Adidas or Abercrombie and Fitch. By tenth grade, these rigid definitions have eased. Tenth graders were apt to note that some cool kids are into sports while others are into theater.

“our research reveals how diverse marketing cues are received by children, and helps parents, educators, and other concerned constituents understand how marketers’ increasingly popular crosspromotional tactics affect children’s knowledge of social roles,” explains Chaplin. “It’s important because these perceptions of social roles can lead to stereotyping and feelings of prejudice that may carry into adulthood.”