The effect of the servicescape on customers’ behavioral intentions in leisure service settings

Abstract

Services research to date has focussed mainly on service encounters of relatively short duration, such as those in travel agencies, banking, insurance, dry cleaning, pest control, fast-food restaurants, and public utilities (see Bitner, 1990;Cronin and Taylor, 1992;Parasuraman et al., 1991). In these types of service encounter customers typically spend only a brief period of time inside the service facility (if at all, as in the case of pest control or utilities). In these cases, service quality is apt to be perceived by customers primarily on the basis of intangible factors such as reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy (see Parasuraman et al., 1988), and less on the tangible aspects, such as the physical facilities of the service provider (i.e., the servicescape; see Bitner, 1992). For example, customers of dry cleaners are likely to place greater emphasis on how long it takes to have the clothes cleaned (i.e., reliability and responsiveness) and how courteous the personnel are (i.e., assurance) than on the aesthetics of the dry cleaning facility.Leisure services (such as amusement parks, water slide parks, concert halls, theaters, recreation or health clubs, hotels, resorts, cruises, and sporting events, etc.), on the other hand, generally require customers to spend extended periods of time in the physical surroundings of the service provider (see Turley and Fugate, 1992). In such cases, the perceived quality of the servicescape may play an important role in determining whether or not consumers are satisfied, which in turn influences how long they desire to stay in the facility (and hence how much money they will spend) and whether or not they intend to repatronize the leisure service provider. For example, while it may be obvious that customers at an upscale restaurant will evaluate the quality of the food and the service personnel, other factors, such as the quality of the architecture, layout and interior design of the facility, may strongly influence how long customers will stay in the restaurant and how often they will return to it. Likewise, the layout and design of a stadium or arena may partly determine whether sports fans will stay for the entire game or exit early to avoid congestion at crowded games. The servicescape is especially salient when one considers other leisure services such as Six Flags, Disney World, Carnival Cruise Lines, and Club Med.This paper builds on selected aspects of Bitner's (1992) servicescape framework (see Figure 1), which illustrates the effects of the servicescape on customers' behavioral responses such as approach/avoidance, spending money, and repatronage intentions, etc. In this paper we examine the effects of layout accessibility, facility aesthetics, electronic equipment, seating comfort, and cleanliness on the perceived quality of the servicescape. We hypothesize that perceived quality will have a positive effect on customer satisfaction with the servicescape, which in turn will affect how long

Building Consumer Loyalty through Servicescape in Shopping Malls

“…These factors are important in many services (e.g., theaters, retail stores, concerts, upscale restaurants) because these can affect the comfort of the customer. Layout that makes people feel constricted may have a direct effect on customer quality perceptions, excitement levels, and indirectly on their desire to return [6]. Therefore we can assume that: H 3 : There is a significant relationship between layout and consumer loyalty.…”

“…Aesthetic Factor -Aesthetics refers to a function of architectural style, along with interior décor, colour scheme, pictures/paintings, plants/flowers, ceiling/wall decorations all of which customers can see and use to evaluate the aesthetic quality of the servicescape [6]. Aesthetic factors are important because they influence ambience.…”

How group-buying servicescape affect consumers’ purchase intention, the regulating effects of price discount and time pressure

“…Later scholars adopt this concept in many offline stores study. For example, (Wakefield & Blodgett, 2013) [7] apply this concept into their study about the servicescape of leisure service settings. However, the advent of Internet and information technology, making a lot of scholars begin to study online network servicescape.…”

The Design of Servicescape Based on Benefit Sought in Hotel Facilities: A Survey Study of Hotel Consumers in Seoul

“…Servicescape needs were assessed using the 5-point scale applied in previous research, as follows: Bitner (1992), Wakefield and Blodgett (1996), Turley and Milliman (2000), Lucas (2003), Ryu and Jang (2008), Kim and Moon (2009), and Lee and Kim (2014). The scale was reviewed by four hotel facility managers and two hotel spatial designers to determine the key variables affecting servicescape in hotel facilities.…”