近年來投入單人消費的人數不斷上升。但先前的研究顯示消費者有時會選擇避免投入單人消費中，因為人們往往會高估社會情境以及來自他人評價的影響。而隨著自助服務科技的興起，此研究想探討單人顧客對於不同服務接觸類型之反應。
根據實驗設計的結果，研究發現單人顧客較偏好傳統人員服務之型態。單人顧客對自助服務科技的偏好會隨著年齡而下降。但相較於沒有擬人化特色的科技，年紀較長的消費者會對於有擬人化特色的科技型態較不抗拒。

The number of customers that engage in consumption alone has been increasing. Prior research has shown that sometimes people will avoid engaging in some consumption activity alone because they overestimate how much their actual enjoyment will depend on the social context, and they are worried about the negative evaluation from others. Thus how to remove solo customers’ worries of consuming service alone is worth research. With the popular use of technology, customers can choose human or technology encounter during their service experiences.
As there remains little knowledge about solo customers’ preference for the type of service encounter, this research aims to understand solo customers’ reactions toward technology versus human service encounters. Through an experiment design, this study finds that solo customers prefer traditional service encounters. The preference for SSTs declines with the growing of age. However, older people do not have resistance to anthropomorphic robots compare with technologies that do not have anthropomorphic features.

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