Shaojun Kong

Papers

Total Citations

271

H-Index

About

Shaojun Kong is a leading researcher at the intersection of service robotics, consumer behavior, and experiential marketing. Their work fundamentally explores how customers perceive, interact with, and form relationships with autonomous service agents, from hotel assistants to robot chefs. Kong’s most influential contribution, the 2021 study “Customer-robot interactions: Understanding customer experience with service robots,” has garnered over 235 citations, establishing a foundational framework for measuring user satisfaction and emotional engagement in human-robot service encounters. This work is widely credited with shifting the conversation from technical feasibility to experiential quality. More recently, Kong has pioneered the study of robot chefs in gastronomy, using behavioral reasoning theory to uncover why tourists accept or resist automated culinary experiences—a 2023 paper that is already shaping smart tourism and hospitality design. Their research is notable for its methodological rigor, blending large-scale surveys with experimental designs, and for its practical impact on industry standards for service robot deployment. Kong’s insights are essential reading for anyone studying the future of work, consumer psychology, or the social implications of artificial intelligence in everyday life.