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While the rise of chain restaurants has attracted increasing research interest, few studies have taken servicescape into consideration to examine its effects on transformative service outcomes. This study aims to assess how social service elements can provide customers with restorative qualities, though social components are considered vital in constituting a dining locale's servicescape (AKA Social Servicescape).

The study fills the void above by undertaking a survey-based quantitative research method. Using online surveys with a sample of 306 diners, the study employed structural equation modeling to explore a proposed moderated mediation model. A post-hoc interview followed to provide qualitative data to complement the findings developed from surveys.

Results first point to a positive relationship between social servicescape and attention restoration. Moreover, the authors unveil that substantive servicescape has a moderating effect on the relationship of interest, suggesting the interplay of social and built servicescape in promoting restorative experiences.

Social and built stimuli can be intertwined to offer restorative qualities for customers. Through such an intertwined network of relationships, one may derive better mental health resources from hospitality settings.

This research presents new nuances to the existing field of inquiry by linking social servicescape and restoration through an intertwined network of attentional recovery.

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.

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.

This study aims to investigate the effects of servicescape on customer satisfaction and loyalty – centered on social interaction and service experience in the café setting.

Data for this study were collected from approximately 1,800 customers at 185 coffee stores located in the three largest cities in Vietnam through the self-administered questionnaires.

The research findings pointed out the significant impacts of café servicescape on social interaction quality, including customer-to-employee interaction (CEI) and customer-to-customer interaction (CCI). Social interactions and servicescape were shown to remarkably influence customer experience quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty. Moreover, the study confirmed the interrelation between service experience, satisfaction and loyalty in the café setting.

This study provides marketers and service managers a deeper understanding of improving customer satisfaction and loyalty through the control of servicescape attributes and social interactions in café contexts.

This research explores the significant impacts of café servicescape on social interaction quality (CEI and CCI). Additionally, it provides insights within the role of social interactions to customer’s affective and behavioral responses in service settings, especially the CCI quality.

The emergence of new social media is shifting the market place for business towards virtual market space. In the light of the emerging digital space for new forms of marketing, the traditional servicescape concept is critically examined. This paper aims to show why servicescape concepts and attitudes need to be adapted for digital media.

First, the authors explain how the traditional servicescape concept adds meaning to a service provider’s value-proposition by modifying customer expectations and customer experience. Second, recognising that the environment for service is no longer bound to a physical place, the authors discuss the implications of the epistemic shift involved.

The authors’ examination shows that digital service space challenges traditional concepts about what constitutes a customer experience and derived value. The authors conceptually “zoom out” into a virtual service eco-system and show with exemplar examples why the servicescape in digital space is more socially embedded and necessarily more fluid in its time-space design. In the more advanced sites, interactions between various artificial bodies (avatars) are co-created by controlling off-line participant-actors; yet, these participant-actors remain strangers to each other at an off-line level. This is entirely a new and radical development of old times.

The research findings are based on scholarly research of the relevant literature, from practitioner reports, and evidence emerging from the examination of many digital web-sites. It has not been the authors’ intention to objectively represent current servicescape functionalities but more to indicate the major directions of change with exemplar examples. The future cannot be predicted, but their interpretive conclusions suggest major challenges in service marketing and management logic ahead. New forms of digital servicescape are still being created as technology and service imagination enables, so further research interest in virtual atmospherics can be expected.

Social media platforms are enabling organisations to learn more about their customers and also to engage them more. In these changing times, bricks and mortar stores would be well advised to review their servicescape presence to allow and encourage engagement with the more involved consumers. And, by integrating their digital space into their physical place, bricks and mortar stores might take on more relationship oriented process-like characteristics, both in the digital space and in their physical places, with developments on one platform leading to possible service innovations on the other.

The digital era is changing consumer behaviour. Service managers need to take into account that many customers are already equally as engaged with digital-space social networks as they once were with bricks and mortar stores. The more time consumers as participant-actors spend in social networks, the decision on what and where to buy is decided by interactions with friends and other influencers.

New forms of digital servicescape are being created as technology and service imagination enables. Further scholarly research interest in virtual atmospherics can be expected, impacting on the authors’ sense of place, and self-identity.

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 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.

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 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 study provides insights into the most salient elements of the Costa Rican bar servicescape/barscape (atmosphere). This is done qualitatively via six focus groups, six expert interviews, and six on-site observations. Results indicate that servicescape elements traditionally covered by the literature are of secondary importance. Participants instead emphasized social elements (other patrons, staff), supplemented by ambience elements (music, lighting, colors, noise, air, odors, scents). Moreover, the underlying socialization interest steered ambience preferences. Results support the increasingly important social servicescape notion. Generalizing traditionally studied servicescape elements across cultures and hospitality settings, as conventionally done, may result suboptimal. Commonalities might exist. However, research should be specifically contextualized to gain more nuanced servicescape understandings. Relating servicescape preferences to macro, meso, and micro considerations further enhances how servicescapes are understood. This study is the first to explore Latin-American barscapes. Notably, it expressly links servicescape preferences to patronage motives. It thereby uncovers why certain servicescape elements become important.