Perceived Control and the Effects of Crowding and Consumer Choice on the Service Experience

Abstract

Perceived control is proposed to be a crucial variable in mediating the consumer's emotional and behavioral responses to the physical environment and the contact personnel that constitute the service encounter. Results of an experimental test of this proposition confirm the importance of perceived control in mediating the effects of two situational features of the encounter-consumer density (the number of consumers that are present in a service setting) and consumer choice (whether it is a person's own decision to enter into, and stay in, a service situation)-on the pleasantness of the service experience and the consumer's approach-avoidance responses to the service encounter.

An Assessment of Consumers’ Willingness to Patronize Foreign-Based Business Format Franchises: An Investigation in the Fast-Food Sector

“…Research on elements of the store environment are multifarious; researchers have investigated the impact of music (Areni and Kim 1993;Hui, Dube and Chebat 1997;Milliman 1982;Yalch and Spangenberg 1990), color (Bellizzi, Crowley, and Hasty 1983), scent (Spangenberg, Crowley, and Henderson 1996), and crowding (Eroglu and Machleit 1990;Hui and Bateson 1991) as contributing factors to consumers' retail patronage. Combinations of store elements have also been investigated (Baker, Parasuraman, Grewal and Voss 2002;Eroglu, Machleit and Chebat 2005;Matilla and Wirtz 2001;Parasuraman, Grewal and Voss 2002), and include store atmospherics (Baker, Grewal and Parasuraman 1994;Donovan and Rossiter 1982;Iyer 1989;Park, Iyer and Smith 1989), store atmospherics triggering emotional reactions (Babin and Darden 1996;Baker, Levy and Grewal 1992;Darden and Babin 1994;Donovan et al 1994;Wakefield and Blodgett 1999), and store image (Korgaonkar, Lund, and Price 1985;Stanley and Sewall 1976;Steenkamp and Wedel 1991).…”

“…Functionality refers to the ability of the same items to facilitate performance and the accomplishment of goals. (Bitner 1992, p. 66) A number of studies in retail store layout, crowding, and use of orientation aids assessed this dimension (Harrell and Hutt 1976;Hui and Bateson 1991;Wener 1985).…”

“…These studies couple the Mehrabian-Russell theory with other theories such as: priming research (Sharma and Stafford 2000), classical conditioning theory (Yalch and Spangenberg 1990), resource allocation model (Hui, Dube and Chebat 1997), Eroglu-Harrell model of crowding (Eroglu and Machleit 1990), inference theory, schema theory, theory of affordances, and adaptation theory (Baker, Parasuraman, Grewal and Voss 2002), information processing theory (Eroglu, Machleit and Chebat 2005), Gestalt principle applied to retail environments (Wakefield and Blodgett 1999), Lazarus's model of goal-directed emotion-focused and problemfocused coping (Mano 1999), and emotional control (Ward and Barnes 2001). The findings from these studies were listed in Table 2.…”

“…Hui and Bateson (1991) Environmental Psychology (1974), Behavioral and Cognitive Control (Averill, 1973) The link between store environmental elements, mood and patronage…”

“…Hui, Dube and Chebat (1997) Resource Allocation Model applied to music, music reduces the negative effects of waiting, Environmental Psychology…”