Consumer Response to Dehumanization of Service Employees: The Role of Political Ideology

Managerial wisdom suggests that the more the employees behave like robots the more successful the service will be. From the perspective of service production, it is clear that dehumanization of service employees (i.e., firms asking employees to behave with limited capacity to think, plan, and have goals, and limited capacity to have emotions and feelings) can improve consistency, efficiency, calculability, productivity, and eventually profitability. However, from the consumer perspective, the extant literature is indeterminant on whether the downstream consequences on consumer intention and behaviour are favourable or unfavourable. This research directly addresses this problem. The authors hypothesize that the response is contingent upon the consumers’ political ideology, such that dehumanization induces stronger negative responses among liberal consumers, but it also evokes certain positive responses among conservative consumers. Five studies – a large-scale text-mining study, a quasi-experiment, and three randomized experiments – confirm the central argument. Study 1 examining millions of online comments indicates that liberals are more likely to express a negative online stance against dehumanization than conservatives, while conservatives are more likely to express a supportive online stance on dehumanization than liberals. Studies 2, 3, and 4 provide further experimental evidence supporting that dehumanization of service employees reduces willingness to use the service among liberals while the effect is weaker or insignificant among conservatives. Study 3 also reveals that surface acting mediates the interactive effect on willingness to use the service such that liberals react more negatively towards surface acting induced by dehumanization. In contrast, Study 5 demonstrates the positive aspect of dehumanization such that dehumanization acts as a prominent signal of a prototypical capitalist firm (i.e., capitalism associations). By activating capitalism associations, dehumanization can increase willingness to pay among conservatives, but not among liberals. We also show that, when the expectation of service interaction is high (vs. low) during a service encounter, both negative and positive aspects of dehumanization are heightened (vs. weakened). Particularly, Study 4 demonstrates that dehumanization reduces willingness to use the service of independent, family-run firms, especially among liberals, but this is not the case for willingness to use global chains. In contrast, Study 5 reveals that dehumanization increases willingness to pay for a personalized service, especially among conservatives, but this is not the case for willingness to pay for a standardized service. This research offers important managerial and theoretical implications for service management.