University of Sargodha Lecturer Receives SWJTU 2025 Award

Recognized as the sole awardee in Business and Management at SWJTU

P.c. China Pakistan Economic Corridor

University of Sargodha Lecturer Receives SWJTU 2025 Award


Muhammad Zubair Tariq, a marketing lecturer at Malak Malik Firoz Khan Noon Business School, University of Sargodha (UoS), has been awarded the 2025 Outstanding Academic Research Paper Award by the School of International Education, Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU), Chengdu, China. Tariq is the sole recipient in the Business and Management category, recognized for producing the highest-impact paper among international scholars.

The Pakistan Institute of China Studies (PICS) at UoS congratulated Tariq on this significant achievement, which was reported by Gwadar Pro. His award-winning study, published in the Service Industries Journal (SSCI, Q1; impact factor 9.4; CiteScore 16.1), is titled: “Transforming retail with humanoid service robots: exploring the impact of customer mindsets on value co-creation via perceived robot anthropomorphism and the moderating roles of robotic service proactivity and customer emotional intelligence.”

P.c. China Pakistan Economic Corridor

The research investigates how customer psychology influences interactions with humanoid service robots in retail. Using implicit mindset theory and service-dominant logic, Tariq positions customer mindsets as critical resources shaping engagement and value co-creation within AI-driven service ecosystems. Survey data from 420 Chinese retail customers revealed that a growth mindset enhances both perceived robot anthropomorphism and value co-creation, whereas a fixed mindset restricts these outcomes.

The study also highlights that perceived anthropomorphism partially mediates customer engagement, demonstrating how individuals cognitively interpret robotic behavior. Interestingly, robotic proactivity and customer emotional intelligence did not significantly moderate the mindset-value co-creation link, indicating that personal psychological traits may outweigh contextual factors in AI-based retail interactions.

PICS officials emphasized that this recognition reflects Pakistan’s growing visibility in global research networks and highlights strengthened academic collaboration between UoS and Chinese institutions. Tariq’s paper is now showcased at SWJTU among high-impact publications by international scholars.