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Just‐in‐time serves mainly to increase productivity. For quality assurance it represents both a challenge and an opportunity which can be met if suitable measures for ensuring quality are taken in all phases of the planning and implementation of JIT supply and production. And, as Karl Hilken discusses, just as the ‘closed logistics chain’ is a necessary factor for the proper timing and operation of JIT, the ‘analogue quality chain’ is an equally essential factor in order to ensure the required product quality.

This study aims to construct an integrated retail customer experience framework with a single view across platforms and to suggest a new conceptualisation of the customer experience term.

A qualitative approach was adopted. Thirty participants were asked to simulate their customer journey in an established UK department store retailer. Their experience was captured through focus groups and analysed by thematic analysis.

The findings indicate that the existence of personalisation and emotional attachment will enhance the customer experience. A new integrated retail customer experience framework is offered incorporating the traditional “7Ps” of marketing and a proposed eighth “P”, which is conceptualised as personal connection.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to use the notion of personal connection as a dialectic relationship between emotional attachment and personalisation as the central discussion in developing customer experience within a retail setting. This study captures this experience through a unique method of replication of the retail customer journey across multiple channels.

Recent service studies suggest focusing on the service triad consisting of technology-customer-frontline employee (FLE). This study empirically investigates the role of service robots in this service triad, with the aim to understand the augmentation or substitution role of service robots in driving utilitarian and hedonic value and ultimately customer repatronage.

In study 1, field data are collected from customers (n = 108) who interacted with a service robot and FLE in a fast casual dining restaurant. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test hypotheses about the impact of service robots' anthropomorphism, social presence, value perceptions and augmentation opportunities in the service triad. In study 2, empirical data from a scenario-based experimental design (n = 361) complement the field study by further scrutinizing the interplay between the service robot and FLEs within the service triad.

The study provides three important contributions. First, the authors provide empirical evidence for the interplay between different actors in the “customer-FLE-technology” service triad resulting in customer repatronage. Second, the empirical findings advance the service management literature by unraveling the relationship between anthropomorphism and social presence and their effect on perceived value in the service triad. And third, the study identifies utilitarian value of service robots as a driver of customer repatronage in fast casual dining restaurants.

The results help service managers, service robot engineers and designers, and policy makers to better understand the implications of anthropomorphism, and how the utilitarian value of service robots can offer the potential for augmentation or substitution roles in the service triad.

Building on existing conceptual and laboratory studies on service robots, this is one of the first field studies on the service triad consisting of service robots – customers – frontline employees. The empirical study on service triads provides evidence for the potential of FLEs to augment service robots that exhibit lower levels of functional performance to achieve customer repatronage. FLEs can do this by demonstrating a high willingness to help and having excellent interactions with customers. This finding advocates the joint service delivery by FLE – service robot teams in situations where service robot technology is not fully optimized.