How robot gender shapes customer experience in phygital retail

As service robots populate unmanned retail settings, design choices shape customer experience. This study contributes to the Phygital Service Economy (PSE) literature by examining whether robot gender cues affect customer satisfaction, and whether this depends on the customer’s own gender. A moderated serial mediation model (PROCESS 83; N = 572) tested social presence and engagement as mediators and respondent gender as a moderator, as respondents evaluated male- or female-presenting robots in physical and digital forms. Robot gender had no direct effect on satisfaction; its influence operated indirectly through social presence and engagement, and only among male respondents, who perceived male-presenting robots as more socially present than female-presenting robots, interpreted through a social identity and similarity-attraction lens. These findings extend gendered HRI research into retail contexts, identify social presence as a key mechanism linking robot gender to satisfaction, and show that gendered robot design effects are conditional on customer gender.