Robotic Lawnmowers and Professional Golf Customers; Navigating Expectations for a Hole-in-One Experience : An exploratory case study that aims to establish the expectations in the customer purchase journey of robotizing a golf course to guide providers' s

Sammanfattning: Background: Robotic lawnmowers are autonomous outdoor mobile robots designed to mow the lawn autonomously. The robotic lawnmower market is rapidly growing and constantly developing. However, adopting robotic lawnmowers on golf courses has been relatively slow due to concerns about game interference, job displacement, and hesitations towards new technology. Factors that caused new challenges for providers in the industry regarding understanding and managing the expectations of professional customers in implementing this technology.    Purpose: Establish how professional golf customers' expectations evolve throughout the customer purchase journey of robotic lawnmowers.    Method: The study is based on the interpretivism paradigm and follows inductive reasoning. By using semi-structured interviews following a purposive sampling approach, qualitative data was created, and an exploratory case study was conducted.    Conclusion: The research developed the current literature on customer purchase journeys and established how customer expectations evolve throughout the journey. Several vital touchpoints were detected, and the study suggests that the customer purchase journey of robotic lawnmowers for professional golf customers has four critical phases: Pre-Purchase, Purchase, Handover, and Post-Purchase. In addition, the findings shed light on how customers' expectations in the purchase journey influenced expectations regarding providers' strategic decision-making.