MIB Seminar - Professor Ruben Huertas

Abstract: The emergence of Covid-19 has precipitated the use of social robots to replace customer-facing service employees, thus avoiding the pernicious human-to-human contact. However, once the worst effects of the pandemic have subsided, robots not only remain in their jobs, but have increased their presence. Thus, they have become more commonplace in services such as restaurants, etc. This increased presence has reopened a pre-pandemic debate on whether robots should be characterized with gendered attributes or simply be genderless. This speech presents the basic concepts of social robotics as an object of study, as well as the challenges involved in its use in customer services, and will present the results of an exploratory study on its technological acceptance when the robots is endowed with gender attributes. 

Bio: Ruben Huerta-Garcia (PhD) is Serra-Húnter Associate Professor of Marketing in the Department of Business at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He teaches subjects such as Marketing Fundamentals and Strategic Marketing to undergraduate students and Market Research to master students of the Master in Business Research and in international multidisciplinary programmes such as the Erasmus Mundus MSc in Chemical Innovation and Regulation (ChIR). His lines of research cover topics related to market research, with emphasis on experimental design and conjoint analysis. However, in the last three years he has focused on the study of social robotics. He Is the author of numerous publications, including those published in journal such as International Journal of Social Robotics, Service Business, Industrial Management & Data System, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Product & Brand Management, Current Issues in Tourism, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, International Journal of Tourism Research, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, among others.