| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1111092 | Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | 2015 | 8 Pages |
On public beaches and at seaside resorts, the construction of bars and restaurants to deliver food and beverages to visitors is prohibited or highly restricted in many parts of the world. This has motivated the design of a new energetically independent autonomous mobile robot concept that is able to provide this service. To integrate the needs and preferences of the potential customers, a marketing research study was carried out. Respondents were selected using a snowball sampling procedure, and a social network was used to invite additional respondents to fill in an online questionnaire. The preferences of more than seven hundred respondents were used to determine the initial product assortment to be offered by the mobile robot vending machine. In addition, the respondents’ preferences towards a range of design characteristics of the robot were factor analysed, revealing that respondents use seven main importance dimensions when evaluating this new concept. Cluster analysis based on the derived seven dimensions allowed five groups of respondents to be found that valued the various characteristics of the robot differently. This paper then puts forward ideas for how this methodology could be used to guide the further development of this new robot concept.
