Increasing diffusion of self-service technologies (SSTs) on the points of sale impacts on traditional retailing from several perspectives. For instance, SSTs have direct effect on front-line employees. Indeed, they may cause a potential reduction in personal contacts with clients, reduction of workers, modifying the job conditions and so on. To date, the effect of SSTs on the points of sale has been mainly investigated from a consumers׳ perspective, by mainly focusing on consumers׳ acceptance and usage of these systems. The aim of this paper is to make employees׳ point of view clearly emerge, through a qualitative approach focusing on the investigation of employees׳ perception of the consequences of these technologies on job performance. The content analysis based on exploratory in-depth interviews involves 250 frontline employees. Authors examine the success of technology from employee׳s standpoint by evaluating their attitude and considering the impact on their job performance perception. In this way, the analysis allows defining new variables which are not previously investigated, such as the perception of speed for task completion, which emerged as the most important factor for employees׳ self-evaluation. Hence, this study offers support for evaluating job performance considering the specific case of SSTs in the frontline employees as initial insights rather than definitive understandings.
In recent years, an increasing number of advanced technologies have been introduced on the points of sale, such as applications for mobile phones, 3D virtual reality tools, touch screen kiosks, mobile RFID readers and writers, automatic cask desks, etc. (Wu and Hisa, 2008, Yoon and Zhou, 2011, Pantano and Di Pietro, 2012, Walter et al., 2012, Pantano and Viassone, 2014 and Pantano and Servidio, 2012). On one hand these innovative systems support consumers׳ shopping experience; on the other hand they impact the role of retailer/employee in the stores. Since in some cases they do not require the direct employees׳ assistance, they may even substitute the employees, especially when adopting the self-service technologies (SSTs) (Pantano and Di Pietro, 2012 and Zhu et al., 2013). In fact, these technologies are based on automated and interactive interfaces soliciting consumers to achieve a service without the direct support of the seller, with benefits for cost and time saving, which seems to be one of the most influencing factors for influencing consumers׳ usage intention (Kokkinou and Cranage, 2013). Meaningful examples emerge in the sector of tourism and banking, where consumers make an extensive use of self-service check-in kiosks (for check-in into airports) and Automated Teller Machines—ATM (for accessing direct financial services) respectively (Cunnincham et al., 2008, Gelderman et al., 2011 and Lee et al., 2012a). Due to the high benefits for companies emerging from this adoption, many companies are trying to persuade clients to use these automatic kiosks services more, by developing incentive strategies (Lu et al., 2009 and Gelderman et al., 2011). More recently, retail industry has also started supporting the widespread diffusion of the innovative system based on self-service technologies for enhancing the retail process (Elliott et al., 2012).
The preliminary studies on SSTs were focused on the main factors influencing consumers׳ adoption of these systems; while during the maturity phase of these technologies, research is mainly based on the consumers׳ control and managing of principal functions of the technology and on their impact on their satisfaction and continuance intention, by considering also the technology failure analysis and subsequent behaviors (Lee et al., 2012b). Some current studies recognize the new evolution of SSTs as the self-service 3.0 technologies, by identifying the consumers role of “value co-creators”, which may represent a further step for corporate advantages (Eastlick et al., 2012 and Lee et al., 2012b).
Form a corporate point of view, the SSTs allow reducing labor costs, enhancing service efficiency, improving productivity and increasing firm׳s performance (Lee et al., 2012a, Lee et al., 2012b and Lin and Hsieh, 2011). For instance, with self-service check-out kiosks, just one cashier can serve more consumers at the same time from a command center that take cares of all the activities (Lee et al., 2012b), whereas in other cases (e.g. applications for consumer׳s own mobile phone), the technology can totally substitute the human job. As a consequence, retailers are forced to redeploy or fire their employees to other areas that need a direct client–vendor interaction (Lee et al., 2012b). Hence, the introduction of these technologies promotes the elimination of the service (physical) provider and the consumers active involvement in the service creation (Eastlick et al., 2012), by keeping cost efficiency, time saving, higher service quality, and more appealing environments for consumers (Elliott et al., 2012).
Furthermore, employees׳ intention to use these technologies may support consumers׳ usage and retailers׳ adoption. Despite the huge number of studies on consumers׳ evaluation SSTs and on their effect on employees׳ and retailers׳ roles, there is still a lack of research on retailers׳ and employees׳ points of view. The aim of this research is to deeply understand the employees evaluation of these technologies in terms of attitude, by considering the impact on the job performance. To achieve this goal, a qualitative analysis on 273 frontline employees has been conducted.
In particular, the first part of the paper is based on the analysis of the past studies concerning employees׳ performance evaluation, whereas the second one is devoted to a qualitative research focusing on the content analysis of employees׳ personal evaluations of the current self-service technologies.
