Assignment
Welcome to your new company. RobotWorks is a robot manufacturing company that produces many different robotic products for industrial purposes such as cleaning, assembling, and transportation.
This is our new product, "Alfred," an AI-based robot cleaner. We trained Alfred like a professional cleaner. He answers voice commands and can be remotely controlled by calling his name.
We sold 15 units of Alfred to Singapore Airport during the COVID pandemic. Those units were used in VIP and economy areas to keep those areas clean. Whenever passengers want a specific section to be sanitized, they voice command Alfred such as "Hey Alfred, clean around table #3 in the lounge area." However, we observed significant differences in usage rates for Alfred between VIP and Economy passengers. Passengers in the economy section were significantly less willing to command Alfred to clean their sitting area or call Alfred whenever they accidentally dropped their food on the ground. We collected data from both sections. You can find the corresponding data attached to this email. You will need to do some analyses to explain this situation.
Another issue is that although we are a highly established company and we have been operating in this industry for years, our high-quality standards are not appreciated as much as a startup robotics company founded by engineering students of the University of Manitoba, even if quality-wise both companies are in the highest-tier according to perceived quality surveys (We are similar in terms of quality, but startup company receives greater positive returns.).
Our new advertisement slogan also caused more harm than benefit. We aimed to be authentic and sincere with this slogan. Our slogan was, "Alfred, the robot cleaner responds to commands with 75% accuracy!".
On top of all these, the PR agency we hired for our Social Media management successfully created a discussion about Alfred. Many people joined the discussion. However, despite all the positivity in the discussion, we did not see any returns on the first order response. It seems like positive sentiment on social media about us did not turn into positive consumer behavior.
However, no worries; there is also some positive news. For example, during the ongoing discussion on social media, one user commented, "I know RobotWorks from my childhood years. They used to make the most durable toy figures. Today, they are making robots. Probably. Their performance in robot production is also great."
Many people also find Alfred very safe to engage with. They say it has a certain human likeness, yet it is not creepy. They think it also shows better performance than similar products in the market
A. Explain potential reasons why economy passengers could be less willing to command Alfred. (Use Anthropomorphism related arguments. Hint: First, you must decide the main demographic difference between two passenger segments.
B. Explain why a student startup's high product quality is returning to the company with greater reputational benefits than our company, even if both companies' hit the same scores on the perceived quality chart. In your explanation use "confirmation/disconfirmation" and "expectation" arguments correctly.
C. Analyze the "argument" in Alfred's advertisement slogan in terms of its sidedness. Why do you think that? Discuss why it could cause more harm than benefits
D. Discuss the way the discussion about RobotWorks was created on social media and explain how such discussions (word-of-mouth) are classified/named. Explain why such a discussion may have failed to increase first-order response even if the discussion was positive. (Hint: This question is not about the inaccuracy of attitudes to explain consumer behavior.)
E. Analyze the user's comment and explain what "effect" the user is affected by (Name it). Explain how the "effect" works.
F. What decision-making strategy does Alfred require consumers to employ if they buy Alfred for their house cleaning? (Habitual, Limited, Extensive) (Hint: Alfred is 2X more expensive than the nearest competitor's product). Why? For a person who already has a standard robot cleaner (less advanced than Alfred) at home, what type of recognition does Alfred activate? Why?
G. Explain people's good comments about Alfred's human likeness (Why?) Use the corresponding theory in your explanation and discuss using "reference of comparison" arguments.