Search results

Servicescape is well recognized by marketing scholars as a key influence in transformative service outcomes. However, the concept of enabling transformative health outcomes through physical servicescape design is often overlooked. The purpose of this study is to integrate marketing's servicescape research with birth territory theory and the enabling places framework, conceptualizing a Co-Curated Transformative Place (CCTP) framework.

This cross-disciplinary conceptual paper uses three places of birth (POB) servicescapes for low-risk birthing women to ground the CCTP framework.

Positioned within transformative service research, this study shows how POB servicescapes are CCTPs. The organizing framework of CCTP comprises four key steps founded on agile and adaptive co-curation of physical place resources.

This study extends the servicescape conceptualization to incorporate the continuum of terrain, introducing adaptive and agile co-curation of places.

The materiality of place and physical resources in CCTP are usefully understood in terms of co-curated substantive staging according to service actor needs. The CCTP servicescape maximizes desired value outcomes and quality experience by adaptive response to service demands and service actors’ needs.

Theoretical discourse of health servicescapes is expanded to focus on the material components of place and their foundational role in generating resources and capabilities that facilitate the realization of service value. In the CCTP, service actors flexibly select, present and adapt physical artifacts and material resources of the service terrain according to dynamic actor needs and service responsibilities, enabling transformative outcomes. Co-curation facilitates reciprocal synergy between other dimensions of place and servicescape.

Negative customer-to-customer interactions (NCCI) occurring in physical service encounters can have a detrimental effect on a focal customer’s experience. This paper aims to explore how the interplay between the physical servicescape and the presence and behavior of other customers can lead to NCCI. Moreover, through an examination of customers’ responsibility attribution, the paper underlines the need for service organizations to manage this interplay.

The authors rely on a mixed approach with two studies grounded in the Stimulus–Organism–Response paradigm. In a preliminary quantitative study, the authors test a model of the effects of NCCI on customers’ attribution and behavioral outcomes using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Next, in a qualitative study, they collect and explore NCCI incidents in eight service industries relying on the critical incident technique (CIT).

When experiencing NCCI, customers attribute at least partial responsibility for their negative experience to the service provider. The findings of the CIT study reveal three interplay mechanisms leading to NCCI: when other customers’ behavior is triggered by the physical servicescape; when other customers’ behavior is incongruent with the behavioral norms set by the physical servicescape; and when the physical servicescape is altered by other customers’ misbehavior.

This paper provides a comprehensive, empirically grounded, understanding of the interplay between the physical and social servicescape, focusing on the presence and behavior of the other customers and its effect on the customer experience.

As physical evidence, servicescapes play a crucial role in tangibilizing service value. Since value creation and consumption are inseparable in many services, servicescapes also contribute significantly to consumer experiences. By reviewing the role of design factors on the physical and psychological safety of customers, particularly in different service contexts based on social factors, this paper aims to provide insights into how servicescape frameworks may be re-examined from a safety perspective.

Based on a critical review of studies in multidisciplinary domains, including environmental psychology, community medicine, architecture and engineering, this paper proposes a conceptual model anchored in stimulus–organization–response (S-O-R) theory and presents related propositions for safer servicescape designs.

The study reveals the need for re-evaluating current servicescape design frameworks by incorporating the concept of servicescape safety, discusses the significance of various interior factors and presents the moderating effects of social factors and service types on perceived safety.

With no robust models currently available to evaluate the impact of servicescape designs on users' physical and psychological safety, this paper provides guidelines based on a multidisciplinary review of studies. A healthy and safe servicescape requires interdisciplinary investigations, the results of which will reshape future design approaches.

This study aims to investigate the effect of hotel servicescape on customer citizenship behaviors “CCBs” by addressing customer engagement as a mediator and gender as a moderator.

A total of 619 questionnaires were collected from hotel customers. Structural equation modeling was applied for data analysis.

Customer engagement mediates the effects of physical and social servicescapes on CCBs of providing feedback to an organization, making recommendations and helping other customers. Moreover, the indirect effects of physical servicescape on the three types of CCBs through customer engagement are stronger for male than for female customers, whereas no significant gender difference is observed in those effects of social servicescape on these types of CCBs through customer engagement.

This study can help hotels promote the three types of CCBs and customer engagement by creating wonderful physical and social servicescape elements. The major limitation is that this study collected survey data outside the hotel environment.

This study enriches current knowledge on the servicescape-driven responses by exploring how hotel servicescape elements affect the three types of CCBs through customer engagement. Additionally, the different moderating roles of gender in the indirect influences of servicescape elements on these types of CCBs are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to review what one knows – and does not know about servicescape and experiencescape. The paper provides a comprehensive conceptualization, discussion of the servicescape and experiencescape and calls for the need for a collective focus of servicescape and experiencescape for the service industry.

This conceptual paper analyzes multiple literature studies related to servicescape, experiencescape and other related concepts such as service quality and customer experience for building a comprehensive framework that draws knowledge from both servicescape and experiencescape in an effort to create a collective focus.

Prior research on the components of servicescape and experiencescape raises more questions than answers. The findings of this study highlight the importance of technology as one of the key components of experiencescape to motivate customers to engage in the consumption environment. Furthermore, the proposed conceptual framework provides a detailed discussion and highlights the importance of using servicescape and experiencescape concepts together as a collective framework to bring about greater benefits to the service industry. The proposed framework suggests that these concepts are not only collective but also interrelated.

Technology is not a tool but an important partner for the firm to create the experience. It can bring together marketing, management and operations within the organization to collectively focus on the customer. Collectively designed servicescape and experiencescape will create lasting memories and emotional connections with customers.

Service organizations can develop smart experiencescapes that positively influence customer value cocreation and heighten customer experience by utilizing technology. Managers are advised to understand consumers' emphasis on technological personalization, aesthetics, functionality, interactivity and social presence while participating in cocreation. Technologies may improve the experience by incorporating real-time and less-restrained interactions between consumers and the service organization.

This paper synthesizes insights from the extant literature related to servicescape, service quality, customer experience and experiencescape. Further, it helps to extend the current understanding of experiencescape and calls for the need to incorporate technology as one of the key experience components in the experiencescape concept. Furthermore, this study highlights the importance and the need to bring these two concepts together with a collective focus to enhance value for the customer. Thus, it is argued here that the collective focus of servicescape and experiencescape in the service industry will create new opportunities for further research and practical applications.

This paper aims to posit servicescape from a multi-dimensional formative approach beyond mere conceptualizations limited to its physical dimensions. An analysis is carried out to predict loyalty behaviours in a cultural service.

Partial least square was conducted for testing a third-order aggregate formative construct of servicescape on a sample of 867 opera goers. In addition, the authors carried out a predictive performance assessment of our model.

The proposed research model was largely supported by the evidence. Results show that the physical (exterior and interior) and social dimensions (employees’ and attendees’ characteristics and interactions) must be considered together in the artscape, servicescape named in the performing arts services, conceptualization and measurement. An appropriate servicescape can be of vital importance in the perception and subsequent consumer evaluation of the service in terms of loyalty.

Further research is required to extend the analysis of the holistic servicescape.

Cultural managers are provided in terms of highlighting the importance of managing the artscape in all its dimensions “not only physical but also social – showing its relevance as an antecedent of opera goers” loyalty.

Besides the cultural product itself, designing appropriate artscapes can enhance the experience and post-use behaviour of performing arts attendees.

The authors make a relevant contribution in the configuration of high-order formative constructs, showing that marketing literature should appraise servicescape from a comprehensive perspective to predict post-consumption behaviour.

The servicescape is increasingly being recognized as a function of two distinct components: physical and social. While these two dimensions have often been studied independently, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of both dimensions simultaneously in a fast casual restaurant context.

A sample of 1,110 fast casual restaurant patrons in the USA was collected. The data were analyzed using nested structural equation modeling.

The results suggest that both the social and the physical servicescape can affect consumption behavior in the fast casual restaurant industry and crowding can act a moderator of these relationships.

Theoretically, these results are significant because they suggest the importance of capturing a holistic account of the servicescape when conducting research on the consumption environment.

This study is among the first to examine the effect of the social servicescape (and specifically the effect of crowding) in fast casual restaurants. The results suggest that restaurateurs need to be mindful that crowding affects the relationship between social servicescape and satisfaction.

This research is the first to look at both aspects of the servicescape as drivers of consumer behavior in the fast casual dining segment. Additionally, this research makes a second contribution by assessing the effect of crowding on the servicescape-driven relationships inherent in the proposed model.

The purpose of this paper is to put forth an expanded servicescape framework that shows that a perceived servicescape comprises physical, social, socially symbolic, and natural environmental dimensions.

This conceptual paper offers an in‐depth literature review on servicescape topics from a variety of disciplines, both inside and outside marketing, to advance a logical framework built on Bitner's seminal article (1992).

A servicescape comprises not only objective, measureable, and managerially controllable stimuli but also subjective, immeasurable, and often managerially uncontrollable social, symbolic, and natural stimuli, which all influence customer approach/avoidance decisions and social interaction behaviors. Furthermore, customer responses to social, symbolic, and natural stimuli are often the drivers of profound person‐place attachments.

The framework supports a servicescape paradigm that links marketing, environmental/natural psychology, humanistic geography, and sociology.

Although managers can easily control a service firm's physical stimuli, they need to understand how other critical environmental stimuli influence consumer behavior and which stimuli might overweigh a customer's response to a firm's physical dimensions.

The paper shows how a servicescape's naturally restorative dimension can promote relief from mental fatigue and improve customer health and well‐being. Thus, government institutions (e.g. schools, hospitals) can improve people's lives by creating natural servicescapes that have restorative potential.

The framework organizes more than 25 years of servicescape research in a cogent framework that has cross‐disciplinary implications.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of physical servicescape, social servicescape and age on gay consumers’ evaluations of a LGBT advertisement of a gay bar of a gay bar.

A 2 × 2 × 2 experimental design was used to test the effects with a sample of gay males in the USA. Data were analyzed using ANCOVA and bootstrapping mediation.

Results of this study indicate a statistically significant three-way interaction effect of the two independent variables and age on the gay bar’s perceived LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender)-friendliness. Perceived friendliness mediated the effects of the independent variables on behavioral intentions. Furthermore, the mediation effect was moderated by the age cohort.

The findings indicate a changing perception of gay servicescape between the older and younger gay men. Implications for hospitality managers are provided.

This research contributes to the servicescape literature by expanding the realm of research to gay servicescape and gay consumers, an emergent and more visible hospitality segment.

The existing literature has examined the determinants of post-purchase behavioral intentions. However, less attention has been devoted to the factors that contribute to perceived usefulness of fast-food restaurants attributes. The current study considers the servicescapes and social servicescapes of restaurants as well as their relationship with customers' perceived usefulness, with the moderating role of customer experience. It also explores how perceived usefulness influences choice process satisfaction and subsequent behavioral responses, including revisit intention and negative word-of-mouth.

Data from 485 fast-food restaurant consumers in Pakistan were collected using purposive sampling. The data were analyzed using both structural equation modeling (SEM) through AMOS 24.0 and the PROCESS macro in IBM SPSS 27.0.

The research revealed that perceived usefulness in fast-food restaurant industry is positively influenced by servicescapes and social servicescapes. Similarly, choice process satisfaction is primarily caused by perceived usefulness and affects behavioral responses. It also found that choice process satisfaction is positively associated with revisit intentions and negative word-of-mouth. Customer experience significantly moderates the relationship between ambient condition, facility aesthetic, layout, perceived similarity and perceived usefulness. However, customer experience insignificant moderates the relationships of physical appearance and suitable behavior with perceived usefulness.

The findings provide insightful information for both academic and managerial fields, contributing to the literature on consumer psychology, consumer behavior, servicescapes and the stimulus-organism-response theory. The study also assists restauranteurs in the fast-food restaurant industry in overcoming the challenges posed by a highly competitive environment and developing strategies based on consumer perceptions.

This study, conducted in Pakistan, took a pioneer step in testing and confirming a novel perceived usefulness model that incorporates not only servicescapes but also social servicescapes in consumer behavior. It enhances the knowledge of consumer visit intentions by quantifying the significance of perceived usefulness developed by different servicescapes.