SavedAdd your journal

Journals / Erciyes İletişim Dergisi / 2026 / Cilt: 13 Sayı: 2

From Robotics to Marketing Communications: The Intellectual Structure of the Uncanny Valley Studies

Robotikten Pazarlama İletişimine: Ürkütücü Vadi Araştırmalarının Entelektüel Yapısı

Resul Öztürk(SELCUK UNIVERSITY)0000-0003-1493-7315
Zeynep Kızılkan(Selçuk Üniversitesi)0000-0002-9413-6253
Pages
565–592
Publication Date
2026-07-30
🏛️Bibliographic metadata and full text access for this article are provided via DergiPark.
DergiPark Record ↗
✨

AI Summary & Key Takeaways

AI Insight
⚡ TL;DR(Too Long; Didn't Read)

Overall, the results demonstrate that the Uncanny Valley has evolved from a technical design concern into a strategic framework for managing perception, trust, and user interaction in marketing contexts.

📌 3 Key Takeaways

🎯
Objective & Hypothesis:This study investigates the academic development and intellectual structure of the Uncanny Valley concept, which has gained importance in marketing communication as digital technologies advance.
📊
Key Findings & Data:The findings show that the literature completed its early developmental phase by 2018 and entered a rapid growth period after 2023, driven mainly by studies focused on artificial intelligence and digitalization.
💡
Conclusion & Impact:Overall, the results demonstrate that the Uncanny Valley has evolved from a technical design concern into a strategic framework for managing perception, trust, and user interaction in marketing contexts.
🔬Design:Araştırma Makalesi
📍Scope:2018 Verileri
⚙️Variables:Ürkütücü Vadi · İnsan-Robot Etkileşimi · İnsanbiçimcilik

Abstract

This study investigates the academic development and intellectual structure of the Uncanny Valley concept, which has gained importance in marketing communication as digital technologies advance. Publications indexed in the Web of Science were cleaned and analyzed using Bibliometrix and VOSviewer through bibliometric and scientific mapping techniques. The findings show that the literature completed its early developmental phase by 2018 and entered a rapid growth period after 2023, driven mainly by studies focused on artificial intelligence and digitalization. Conceptual network analysis reveals a shift from technical and robotic perspectives toward psychological mechanisms centered on perception, realism, and anthropomorphism. Strategic mapping identifies realism and perception as dominant motor themes, while mind attribution serves as a central integrating concept. Author and collaboration analyses indicate a dynamic and multidisciplinary research structure with expanding global participation. Overall, the results demonstrate that the Uncanny Valley has evolved from a technical design concern into a strategic framework for managing perception, trust, and user interaction in marketing contexts.

Özet

Bu çalışma, dijital teknolojilerdeki gelişmelerle pazarlama iletişiminde önem kazanan Ürkütücü Vadi kavramının akademik gelişimini ve entelektüel yapısını incelemektedir. Web of Science'da indekslenen yayınlar, Bibliometrix ve VOSviewer kullanılarak bibliyometrik ve bilimsel haritalama teknikleri ile temizlenmiş ve analiz edilmiştir. Bulgular, literatürün 2018 yılına kadar erken gelişim aşamasını tamamladığını ve 2023'ten sonra, özellikle yapay zeka ve dijitalleşmeye odaklanan çalışmaların etkisiyle hızlı bir büyüme dönemine girdiğini göstermektedir. Kavramsal ağ analizi, teknik ve robotik perspektiflerden algı, gerçekçilik ve antropomorfizme odaklanan psikolojik mekanizmalara doğru bir kayma olduğunu ortaya koymaktadır. Stratejik haritalama, gerçekçilik ve algıyı baskın motor temalar olarak belirlerken, zihin atfedilmesi merkezi bir bütünleştirici kavram olarak işlev görmektedir. Yazar ve işbirliği analizleri, küresel katılımın genişlediği dinamik ve çok disiplinli bir araştırma yapısını göstermektedir. Sonuçlar, Ürkütücü Vadi'nin teknik tasarım endişelerinden pazarlama bağlamlarında algı, güven ve kullanıcı etkileşimini yönetmek için stratejik bir çerçeveye dönüştüğünü göstermektedir.

🔖

Cite This Article

Öztürk, R., Kızılkan, Z. (2026). From Robotics to Marketing Communications: The Intellectual Structure of the Uncanny Valley Studies. Erciyes İletişim Dergisi, Cilt: 13 Sayı: 2, 565–592. https://doi.org/10.17680/erciyesiletisim.1880439

📄 Full Text PDF Viewer

📄

PDF görüntüleyici hazırlanıyor...

References (48)

  1. Alves-Oliveira, P., Sequeira, P., & Paiva, A. (2016). The role that an educational robot plays. In 2016 25th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) (pp. 817–822). IEEE Press.
  2. Bae, S., Jung, T., Cho, J., & Kwon, O. (2025). Effects of meta-human characteristics on user acceptance: From the perspective of uncanny valley theory. Behaviour & Information Technology, 44(4), 731-748.
  3. Belanche, D., Casaló, L. V., Schepers, J., & Flavián, C. (2021). Examining the effects of robots' physical appearance, warmth, and competence in frontline services: The Humanness‐Value‐Loyalty model. Psychology & Marketing, 38(12), 2357-2376.
  4. Caballar, R. D. (2019). What is the uncanny valley? Creepy robots and the strange phenomenon of the uncanny valley: definition, history, examples, and how to avoid it. IEEE Spectrum. https://spectrum. ieee. org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/what-is-the-uncanny-valley.
  5. Chandra, S., Verma, S., Lim, W. M., Kumar, S., & Donthu, N. (2022). Personalization in personalized marketing: Trends and ways forward. Psychology & Marketing, 39(8), 1529-1562.
  6. Dautenhahn, K. (2007). Socially intelligent robots: dimensions of human–robot interaction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362(1480), 679-704.
  7. Dekker, F., Salomons, A., & Waal, J. v. d. (2017). Fear of robots at work: the role of economic self-interest. Socio-Economic Review, 15(3), 539-562.
  8. Delbaere, M., McQuarrie, E. F., & Phillips, B. J. (2011). Personification in advertising. Journal of Advertising, 40(1), 121-130.
  9. Donthu, N., Kumar, S., Mukherjee, D., Pandey, N., & Lim, W. M. (2021). How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 133, 285-296.
  10. Ellegaard, O., & Wallin, J. A. (2015). The bibliometric analysis of scholarly production: How great is the impact? Scientometrics, 105(3), 1809-1831.
  11. Enzig, J., Guerreiro, J., & Loureiro, S. (2024). How Uncanny Are Virtual vs. Human Influencers: A Text Mining Approach. In Marketing in a multicultural and vibrant world (pp. 45–58). Springer.
  12. Feine, J., Morana, S., & Gnewuch, U. (2019). Measuring service encounter satisfaction with customer service chatbots using sentiment analysis. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI2019) (pp. 1115–1129).
  13. Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and melancholia. The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, 14(1914-1916), 237-258.
  14. Goodrich, M. A., McLain, T. W., Anderson, J. D., Sun, J., & Crandall, J. W. (2007). Managing autonomy in robot teams: observations from four experiments. In Proceedings of the second ACM SIGCHI/SIGART Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’07). ACM.
  15. Goudey, A., & Bonnin, G. (2016). Must smart objects look human? Study of the impact of anthropomorphism on the acceptance of companion robots. Recherche et Applications en Marketing (English Edition), 31(2), 2-20.
  16. Gutuleac, R., Baima, G., Rizzo, C., & Bresciani, S. (2024). Will virtual influencers overcome the uncanny valley? The moderating role of social cues. Psychology & Marketing, 41(7), 1419-1431.
  17. Jentsch, E. (1997). On the psychology of the uncanny (1906). Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 2(1), 7-16.
  18. Kang, H., Santos, T. F. d., Moussa, M. B., & Magnenat-Thalmann, N. (2025). Mitigating the uncanny valley effect in hyper-realistic robots: A student-centered study on LLM-driven conversations. arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.16449.
  19. Kim, S. Y., Schmitt, B. H., & Thalmann, N. M. (2019). Eliza in the uncanny valley: Anthropomorphizing consumer robots increases their perceived warmth but decreases liking. Marketing Letters, 30(1), 1-12.
  20. Kim, W., Ryoo, Y., & Choi, Y. K. (2024). That uncanny valley of mind: when anthropomorphic AI agents disrupt personalized advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 1-30.
  21. Kishnani, D. (2025). The Uncanny Valley: An Empirical Study on Human Perceptions of AI-Generated Text and Images, [Bachelor’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. MIT DSpace.
  22. Kuhail, M. A., Alturki, N., Alramlawi, S., & Alhejori, K. (2023). Interacting with educational chatbots: A systematic review. Education and Information Technologies, 28(1), 973-1018.
  23. Langner, T., Bruns, D., Fischer, A., & Rossiter, J. R. (2016). Falling in love with brands: a dynamic analysis of the trajectories of brand love. Marketing Letters, 27(1), 15-26.
  24. Letheren, K., Jetten, J., Roberts, J., & Donovan, J. (2021). Robots should be seen and not heard… sometimes: Anthropomorphism and AI service robot interactions. Psychology & Marketing, 38(12), 2393-2406.
  25. Lim, R. E., Sung, Y. H., & Hong, J. M. (2023). Online targeted ads: Effects of persuasion knowledge, coping self-efficacy, and product involvement on privacy concerns and ad intrusiveness. Telematics and Informatics, 76, 101920.
  26. Luo, X., Tong, S., Fang, Z., & Qu, Z. (2019). Frontiers: Machines vs. humans: The impact of artificial intelligence chatbot disclosure on customer purchases. Marketing Science, 38(6), 937-947.
  27. MacInnis, D. J., & Folkes, V. S. (2017). Humanizing brands: When brands seem to be like me, part of me, and in a relationship with me. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 27(3), 355-374.
  28. Männistö-Funk, T., & Sihvonen, T. (2018). Voices from the uncanny valley: How robots and artificial intelligences talk back to us. Digital Culture & Society, 4(1), 45-64.
  29. Mara, M., Appel, M., & Gnambs, T. (2022). Human-like robots and the uncanny valley. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 230(1), 33-46.
  30. Mende, M., Scott, M. L., Van Doorn, J., Grewal, D., & Shanks, I. (2019). Service robots rising: How humanoid robots influence service experiences and elicit compensatory consumer responses. Journal of Marketing Research, 56(4), 535-556.
  31. Miao, F., Kozlenkova, I. V., Wang, H., Xie, T., & Palmatier, R. W. (2022). An emerging theory of avatar marketing. Journal of Marketing, 86(1), 67-90.
  32. Mogaji, E., Balakrishnan, J., Nwoba, A. C., & Nguyen, N. P. (2021). Emerging-market consumers’ interactions with banking chatbots. Telematics and Informatics, 65, 101711.
  33. Mori, M. (1970). The uncanny valley. Energy, 7(4), 33-35.
  34. Mori, M., MacDorman, K. F., & Kageki, N. (2012). The uncanny valley [from the field]. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 19(2), 98-100.
  35. Murphy, J., Gretzel, U., & Pesonen, J. (2021). Marketing robot services in hospitality and tourism: the role of anthropomorphism. In Future of Tourism Marketing (pp. 16-27). Routledge.
  36. Passas, I. (2024). Bibliometric analysis: the main steps. Encyclopedia, 4(2), 1014-1025.
  37. Pavlidou, K. (2021). The Uncanny Valley: The human-likeness of chatbots and its paradoxical impact on consumers’ purchase intention in e-commerce. [Master’s dissertation, Tilburg University]. School of Humanities and Digital Sciences.
  38. Qu, Y., Lo, C. K., & Baek, E. (2025). From Humanoid to Virtual Humans: A Systematic Literature Review of Avatar Marketing. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 1-20.
  39. Regin, R., & Rajest, S. S. (2022). An automated conversation system using natural language processing (NLP) chatbot in Python. Central Asian Journal of Medical and Natural Science, 3(4), 314-336.
  40. Sands, S., Ferraro, C., Demsar, V., Cohen, J., & Gvirtz, A. (2024). Immersive Advertising—A Review and Research Agenda: Potential Effects of and Considerations for AR, VR, and MR Advertisements. Journal of Advertising Research, 64(3), 284-300.
  41. Silva, E. S., & Bonetti, F. (2021). Digital humans in fashion: Will consumers interact? Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 60, 102430.
  42. Song, Y., Su, Y., Lu, L., & Zuo, P. (2025). Android vs humanoid: Rethinking uncanny valley in online hotel booking. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 1-20.
  43. Stepp Jr, D. C. (2022). Investigating Variables to Reduce the Uncanny Valley Effect in Human-Robot Interaction: A Systematic Literature Review. University of Arizona Global Campus.
  44. Trancoso, B. I. F. F. D. (2024).Exploring the uncanny valley effect: How visual perception related autistic traits shape human-robot interaction. (Master’s dissertation, Universidade de Lisboa). Faculdade de Ciências, Faculdade de Letras, Faculdade de Medicina, Faculdade de Psikologia.
  45. Vlachos, E., Jochum, E., & Demers, L.-P. (2016). The effects of exposure to different social robots on attitudes toward preferences. Interaction Studies, 17(3), 390-404.
  46. Wang, S., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Rochat, P. (2015). The uncanny valley: Existence and explanations. Review of General Psychology, 19(4), 393-407.
  47. Yam, K. C., Bigman, Y. E., Tang, P. M., Ilies, R., De Cremer, D., Soh, H., & Gray, K. (2021). Robots at work: People prefer and forgive service robots with perceived feelings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 106(10), 1557.
  48. Yogeeswaran, K., Złotowski, J., Livingstone, M., Bartneck, C., Sumioka, H., & Ishiguro, H. (2016). The interactive effects of robot anthropomorphism and robot ability on perceived threat and support for robotics research. Journal of Human-Robot Interaction, 5(2), 29-47.