How People Perceive Human- and Product-like Robots: Cross-cultural Analysis Between Japan and Korea

In this article, we present two robot design types: human-like and product-like robot. A human-like robot is designed to be similar to humans in the appearance or behavior. A product-like robot is designed to maximize the functionality of a product. As well as the comparison between the human-like robot and product-like robot, cultural differences between Korea and Japan on perceived intellectual capability, robot-likeness, usefulness, overall impression and purchase intention were investigated. People evaluated the intellectual capability, usefulness and overall impression of the robots differently depending on their nationalities. The human-like robot was considered to be more robot-like than the product-like robot whereas there was no difference between the robots in both cultures on purchase intention. Implications for the robot design between Korea and Japan are discussed.