Influencing Customer Behavior at the Cash Register Using a Social Robot

This study examines whether the humanoid robot, HuGo, can effectively influence human behavior in routine scenarios, using receipt collection at a university cafeteria as a case study. The robot encourages customers to remember to take their receipts at the self-checkout register, as negligence to do so creates additional workload for cafeteria employees. The research tests whether using verbal and pointing gestures enhances compliance compared to verbal-only or text-based prompts. The testing is conducted as an in-the-wild experiment, and the data is analyzed with both Chi-squared test and Two-Proportion Z-test. Results indicate that introducing speech makes a significant improvement in user compliance, while the influence of hand gestures is inconclusive.