It’s not MY job! Consumer entitlement and responses to self-service technologies

Abstract

Purpose Self-service technologies (SSTs) are increasingly prevalent in retail and service environments, but not all customers respond favorably. While some prior work shows that consumer entitlement has a profound impact on human service provider interactions, little is known about the role of entitlement in a service landscape transformed by SSTs. This research aims to investigate consumer entitlement as a novel antecedent to consumers’ perceptions and evaluations of SSTs, proposing that entitled consumers respond more negatively to SSTs because of their greater rejection of customer effort. Design/methodology/approach Five scenario-based experiments were conducted across various retail and service contexts (n = 1,592). The authors tested the mediating effect of rejection of customer effort on responses to SSTs (attitudes, satisfaction and intentions) (Studies 1a–2), and tested effort reduction as a mitigation strategy (Study 3). Findings Consumers higher (vs lower) in entitlement responded more negatively to SSTs due to their greater rejection of customer effort. Emphasizing personalization, control and financial incentives did not attenuate the effect, underscoring the robust influence of entitlement. Instead, reducing customer effort in using an SST attenuated the effect. Originality/value This research extends the entitlement and SST literatures by introducing a novel antecedent of consumers’ responses to SSTs, and proposing rejection of customer effort to explain how entitlement shapes consumers’ experiences in the modern service landscape. It offers managerial insights for designing service technologies that align with consumer expectations while realizing the potential benefits of SST implementation.