Mapping customer journeys in automated restaurants: a process perspective on experience formation

Purpose Service automation is increasingly redefining service encounters by shifting operational and interactional responsibilities from employees to customers in hospitality operations. This study theorizes how customers experience and make sense of automated services characterized by reduced human support. Drawing on customer-dominant logic, this study aims to examine how value formation unfolds across successive stages. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a multistage qualitative research design, combining in-depth interviews with customers who have experienced automated services and the analysis of user-generated online reviews. Findings Automated services reconfigure service encounters into customer-managed processes in which functional value (e.g., efficiency and reliability) is realized, while emotional value remains fragile. Customers repeatedly adjust expectations, regulate uncertainty, and compensate for the limited human reassurance. These dynamics give rise to detachment as a distinctive, journey-level emotional outcome, rather than a momentary response to isolated service incidents. Originality/value This study conceptualizes automated services as customer-managed, journey-level processes in which value formation unfolds over time and introduces detachment as their distinctive emotional outcome. Extending customer-dominant logic, the findings show how customer-contextual value formation operates under substantial self-management and limited human support, as functional and emotional value diverge throughout the service process.