The Literature Review of Servicescapes

The Literature Review of Servicescapes
Introduction:
Shopping cannot simply be considered as an act of buying in an exchange for goods (C. Gardner and J. Sheppard, 1989). Because of the increasingly cut-throat competition, marketers and practitioners have to go great length to attract and retain customers. That is where the experiential marketing finds its inspiration. According to the vanguard of Morris B. Holbrook and Elizabeth C. Hirschman (1982), experiential consumption is a view that focuses on the “symbolic, hedonic and aesthetic nature consumption in the pursuit of fantasies, feelings and fun”. In doing so, marketers and practitioners have spare no effort in creating extraordinary experiences by motivating multi-sensory systems of pleasure-seeking contemporary consumers in order to survive, of which servicescapes have been mostly acknowledged by both academic theorists and entity practitioners for the reason that servicescapes are all about the stimuli of physical environment of service encounters in a way that attracts customers’ eyeballs in the first place prior to the real buying(Bitner,1992).

The importance of servicecapes could be traced back as early as 1970s when Kotler (1973) used the ‘atmospherics’ to express the “quality of the surrounding place” measured through the stimulation of customers’ sensory systems in terms of “visual(color, brightness, size and shapes), aural(volume and pitch), olfactory(scent; freshness) and tactile(softness, smoothness and temperature). Other theorists have explored the equivalent but different terms of the servicecape; i.e. “healthscapes” (Hutton and Richardson, 1995), “economic environment” (Arnold et al.,1996), “marketing environment” (Turley and Milliman, 2000), “environmental psychology” (Weinrach, 2000), “interactive theatre” (Mathwick et al., 2001), “store environment” (Roy and Tai, 2003), “service environment” (Cronin, 2003) and “social-servicescape” (Tombs and McColl-Kennedy, 2003).

After three decades of evolution initiated from Kotler(1973), this paper is to examine the definitions of the servicescape in a historical order and the changes of its dimensions. Therefore, the first part introduces the theoretical underpinning in order to reveal the relevance of the servicescape in shopping experience; the second part investigates the definition of this term in an historical order; the final part explores the changes of dimensions it encompasses thereby providing a comprehensive understanding of the servicescape.

1. The Theoretical underpinning of Servicescapes

The reason why it is imperative to improve the servicescape is because it is believed that the enhancement of servicescapes can influence customer behavior and store loyalty (Ezeh C. and Harris L.C., 2007). According to two environmental psychologists of Mehrabian and Russell (1974), people react to locales in two opposite ways: “approach and avoidance”. Approach responses are positive ones with customers demonstrating “enjoying, staying and exploring of stores, spending more time and money browsing and patronizing” attracted by either the fabulous decor of stores or the friendly service of working staff out there. On the other hand, Avoidance is the opposite which means that customers are not willing to stay, explore and spend time on it thereby without return in the future (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974).

Again, the approach/ avoidance behaviors of employees much depend on customers’ internal responses to the servicescape in terms of cognitive, emotional and physiological aspects (Bitner, 1992, p.61).

Specifically, the overall servicescapes customers feel about can help customers subjectively gain the knowledge about the level of products, services and patronizers etc (Golledge, Reginald G, 1987). For example, a high-grade restaurant can be categorized through the elaborate exterior and interior decor, orderly layout, the dim lighting, soothing classical music and the attractively spruced-up service staff as well as the customers sitting there with their Sunday’s best and elegant manners. However, one can easily recognize the McDonald from its orange, red and yellow color with the fast-tempo music which is believed to be perceived by customers as an on-the-go product. This will get them in and out of the restaurant faster even if they don't realize it. According to Bitner (1992, p. 62), therefore, cognitive responses are mainly achieved from such non-verbal communication as “office furniture, decor and apparel worn by working stuff” based on which both potential customers and employees can evaluate what levels of this service organization might be and how successful it probably is. For example, the size of the office room, the desk color and material, the design and rewards in all kinds hang on the wall of a lawyer office could be served as external cues to help either clients identify the authority and trustfulness of this law firm or job hunters to make the subjectively initial judgment on the possible rank and status of this very law officer. Furthermore, as service is intangible and experiential, customers have no the intrinsic cues on the service quality especially during their initial consumption. Therefore, they will draw on the external cues to do the assessment (Zeithaml 1988). In a word, “not only perceptions of the servicescape can influence beliefs about the environment itself but also affect beliefs about other, seemingly unrelated, service attributes” (ibid, pp.62)

According to Ezeh C. and Harris L.C., “the measures of pleasure, arousal and dominance (or PAD dimensions) adequately capture the emotional context of servicescapes” (2007).
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“Pleasure is a feeling state that is similar to liking, but also correlates with arousal” (Ingrid Y. Lin, 2004, p.171). Stated otherwise, “environments that elicit feelings of pleasure are likely to be ones where people want to spend time and money whereas unpleasant environments are avoided” (Donovan and Rossiter, 1982). Analogously, people are more prone to respond to arousing surroundings either positively or negatively. To what extent the arousing environment elicits a pleasing emotional response depends on the “personal control”: a sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless (Mehrabian and Russell 1974). That is exactly what the dominance means in this context. According to Bitner(1992), “clear signage, good ventilation and adequate space” are all important factors in deciding personal control or dominance. For example, big shopping malls in an orderly layout of commodities in each of floors well-equipped with such facilities as highly efficient air-conditioners, spacious service encounters as well as clear signage, arrows and directions will be more likely to retain customers. But more importantly, just as other theorists for example Tombs and McColl-Kennedy (2003) argued, whether a consumer would respond positively and thus adopt approach behaviors much depends on “whether the customer wants private or group consumption”. For example, party youngsters might respond positively to arousing environment in terms of crowding and noisy pubs while in the hospital most people would rather have a spatial but private space in cleanness with no noise.

In addition, physical stimuli in terms of ambient conditions (i.e. noise, temperature, light, and air quality) and the human factors (i.e. working stuff’s behavior/image and other customers ‘displayed emotion) are all closely connected with customers’ physiological responses which in turn decide how long they will stay (Bitner, 1992). Besides, physiological responses may exert an influence on other “unrelated beliefs and feelings about the place and other customers there (Griffitt, 1970)”. Research shows that when people eat in a stuffy and hot environment, they are more indifferent to other customers there than one with a good-ventilated and lukewarm temperature (ibid).

From what has argued above, “service settings provoke emotional responses which lead customers to either choose to continue their association with a particular service provider, or to discontinue Patronage” (Hoffman and Turley, 2002). However, what is the servicescape? And how many dimensions does it include?

2. The Definition of Servicescapes

It was Bitner (1992) who firstly coined the term “servicescapes” meaning that the physical surroundings or environment purposefully shaped by service organizations in order to deliver the service offerings to customers. Indeed, Bitner is not the only one who brings about such an idea. Here are some other related definitions of servicescapes:
1 The “…design [of] buying environments to produce specific emotional effects in the buyer that enhance his [or her] purchase probability”(Kotler 1973, p. 50).
2 “All of the objective physical factors that can be controlled by the firm to enhance (or constrain) employee and customer actions” (Bitner 1992, p. 65).
3 The “consciously designed places, calculated to produce commercially significant actions” (Arnould et al. 1998, p. 90).
4 The physical place of service encounters that “evoke emotions, these emotions help determine value, and this value motivates customers to patronize a given choice repeatedly” (Babin and Attaway’s 2000, p. 93).
5. “The design of the physical environment (with or without customer input) housing the service encounter, which elicits internal reactions from customers leading to the display of approach or avoidance behaviours” (Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., 2001, p.61).

According to the abovementioned definitions in a historical order, the main point is that intentionally designed physical environment will exert an effect on the customers’ behavior. Secondly, according to Kotler (1973), the servicescape is only applicable and relevant to retailing sectors or service encounters where individual customers frequently visit compared with manufacturers and wholesalers where business-to-business occurs. In this sense, the servicescape is part of the overall product customers consume even though customers are not actually paid for the servicescape. Thus, servicescape can be both a facilitator for target customers to identify and a differentiator for service managers to survive when the competition is a lot crueler with little differences in product and price.

As Bitner analyzed in 1992(p. 59), she divided the service encounters into three aspects: “self-service” where there are only customers, for example, ATM, post office kiosk; “Interpersonal service” where massive interactions between individual customers and the servicescape take place, for example, hotels, restaurants, schools, banks, hospitals, airlines, drycleaners, hairdressers etc; “Remote Service” where there are only employees, for example, telephone company, insurance company, Company Automated voice-messaging-based Utility services. If the “special functionality, layout” should be improved in self-service when customers need friendly operated machinery with clear and direct signage to help them withdraw money for example and “interior design” in terms of the seat size, material and arrangement should be highly noticed in remote service where employees have to stay there for a long period time to pick up the phone, interpersonal service seems to be the number one place where the servicescape in terms of “ambient conditions, special layout and signs, symbols and artifacts” should all be seriously considered(Bitner,1992, p. 67). In this sense, therefore, servicescapes should be understood in an overall way because “individuals generally receive a series of stimuli of servicescapes, organize them and form a whole image” (Lin, 2004). From the customers’ perspective, servicescapes encompass the appearance and impression of the service encounter’s overall products and services (ibid, p.164).

3. The Classification of Servicecapes

The servicescape mainly includes three aspects in light of Bitner (1992, pp. 60), namely “ambient conditions”, “space and function” and “symbols, signs and artifacts”. Ambient conditions are such intangibles as temperature, air quality, noise, music and odor of a service entity whereas the other two factors are involved with such tangibles as layout, furnishings, signage, decor and personal artifacts controllable in a managerial sense (Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., 2001). Although Bitner’s classification of servicescape are valuable, its model has not included such factors as “social and natural stimuli” which according to Baker (1987) and Ezeh C. and Harris L.C. (2007) are also very significant. Indeed, As Bitner (1992, p. 60) claimed, “Here it is assumed that dimensions of the organization's physical surroundings influence important customer and employee behaviors”, still social and natural factors should be included into the servicescapes in order to establish a general pattern because “customers respond to environments in a holistic manner.( Ezeh C. and Harris L.C., 2007) Thus, Baker (1987) set a typology with three dimentions: ambient factors, design factors and social factors. Later on, Ezeh C. and Harris L.C. (2007) completed a comprehensive model of servicescape including physical, social, socially symbolic, and natural stimuli. Basically, the classification could be divided into the physical dimension and social dimension.

3.1The physical Dimension
3.1.1 Ambient conditions
Ambient conditions are primarily intangible environment stimuli purposefully set for the stimulation of customers’ perception systems (Kotler, 1973). According to Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., (2001, pp.472), these stimuli comprise “visual (e.g. lighting, colors, brightness, shapes)”, “aesthetic cleanliness, olfactory (scent, air quality, fragrance)”, “ambient (e.g. temperature)”, and “auditory (e.g. music, noises) elements”.
Specifically, the ability of music played in the service encounters can be functioned as a catalyst to stimulate correspondingly emotional responses which in turn exerts an influence on purchasing behaviors (Areni and Kim, 1993). For example, 7-11 stores purposefully use elevator music as a strategy to drive away youthful customers who are consistently detracting from their value (Bitner, 1992. P.60). Thus, “music has become a major component of customer marketing, both at the point of purchase and in advertising” (Brunner, 1990. p.94). It is proved that such elements as variations in music effect, tonality, tempo and texture of music should be in line with the context of consumption environments (Ezeh C. and Harris L.C., 2007. p.394). For example, high-grade restaurant or shopping malls typically play slow and soothing music in order to make customers stay longer for browsing while in fast restaurants fast-paced and energetic popular music is played to accelerate the speed of selling.
Morrin and Ratneshwar (2003, p.21) claimed that because “pleasant scents encourage customers to spend more time in the servicescape, environmental fragrance is now becoming a common practice in retailing restaurants and other service-oriented businesses”. Customers are willing to stay longer in a pleasant aroma whereas an unpleasing aroma will lead to uncomfortably physiological responses resulting in physical withdrawal (Levine and McBurney, 1986). That is why the Body Shop always has some appealing scent in order to stimulate customers’ olfactory perceptions. “Cinnamon roll bakeries commonly pump the pleasantly creamy aroma of cakes out into mall traffic areas to entice customers into the store” (Bitner, 1992. P.60). It is proved that the “systematic use of aroma in bakeries increases sales by 300 percent” (Ezeh C. and Harris L.C., 2007. p.394).
There are such other ambient factors as “air quality including the appropriate temperature, humidity and good ventilation” (Bitner, 1992), “lighting” (Lin, Ingrid Y., 2004), “noise” (Baker, 1987) and “cleanliness” (Ezeh C. and Harris L.C., 2007) which are of the same importance as other factors mentioned above because Bitner (1992, p. 67) stated that all these factors are related to physiological responses which in turn decide the time customers stay and browse.
3.1.2 Design Factors
Besides the ambient factors, the other important factor in terms of physical surroundings is design (Baker 1987) which is an integration of what Bitner (1992) called “space and function” and “symbols, signs and artifacts”. Mark S. Rosenbaum and Carolyn Massiah(2011, p.474) used “space and function” meaning that “ physical machinery, equipment(i.e. electronic), technology, furnishings, and their arrangement, as well as the lesser observable furnishings of comfort, layout and accessibility”. It was Baker (1987) who stated that factors can be either functional or aesthetic. While functional factors include proper lay out, signage and comfort while the decor, symbols and artifacts can be subsumed into aesthetic category. Functional factors can help customers finish their buying easily and efficiently. For example, most modern shopping malls have a clear layout about where to find the “demarcating departments (e.g. shoes, children's), directions (e.g. enter/exit), rest rooms, caution (e.g. wet floors), and rules of behavior (e.g. no smoking)” (Rosenbaum M.S.and Massiah C, 2011, p.474.) If the functional factors are the essential elements in a retailing entity or service encounter, Aesthetic factors are more perceptible to customer’s sensory systems in a way that nonverbally express what standard this organization is. For example, there has been a lot of themed restaurants (prison restaurant, Modern Toilet diner), or themed parks such as Disneyland park all trying to create the “experiencescapes” (O'Dell and Billing, 2005, p. 16) . Furthermore, firms will make the best use of their brand value to “tell stories” in a way that creates “brandscapes” to make some customers be hardcore followers (Thompson and Arsel, 2004). In addition, when concerning designing, it should not be only limited in decor. In such places as living departments, hospitals, parks, gardens and grassy areas, the adoption of the appropriate natural scenery is of the same significance because it is argued that “the natural servicescape offered customers the opportunity to engage in therapeutic consumption by relieving mental fatigue”(Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., 2011. p.484). Thus, design should be a proper balance between manmade interior and natural surroundings.

3.2 The Social Dimension

“People in an environment determine the kind of human environments they are because people and human settings are inseparable” (Schneider 1987). Hence, besides the physical surroundings being one of the most important parameters in the servicescape, what can not be ignored are the human factors including “working stuff behavior and image” (Ezeh C. and Harris L.C., 2007); “social density” (Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., 2001); “emotions of other customers” (Ezeh C. and Harris L.C., 2007). Basically, the social dimension emphasizes the humanistic factors which are believed to influence the experience of customers exactly the same way as the physical surroundings.

3.2.1 Service Stuff’s Behavior and Image

To begin with, service stuff’s behaviors are one of the key factors especially those front-line stuff who directly interact with and deliver the service to customers. Cowen (1982) argued that because barbers, bartenders, doctors, and divorce lawyers are essential to people’ mental health, these service working stuff to some extent have formed an informal but supportive bond with their clients. That explains why some customers often patronize such local establishments as “beauty salons, retail shops, and diners” (Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., 2011). Besides, how service staff behaves decides customers’ perceived credibility about the whole service organization (Sharma and Stafford, 2000, p. 184). The more competent the working stuff can display in terms of their problem-solving capabilities, the more probability the customer will patronize next time when they are trying to select the similar stores (Ezeh C. and Harris L.C., 2007, p.397). Again, it was argued by Baker (1987, p.81) that the physical attractiveness of the service staff can greatly improve how customers perceived the overall experience and thus affect their approach-avoidance behavior. Other theorists such as Appiah-Adu et al. (2000) argued that the appearance can be one of the most salient features to affect the customers because the appearance can be served as an non-verbal but external cues on the overall brand and value of the organization they are working for thereby helping customers make judgments about this service before and after it has been consumed. For example, Kotler (1973) notes that the airline working stuff are screened according to the ability to establish the mutual trust and confidence with customers in a way that assuage the restlessness of passengers especially when there is a turbulence or some accidental emergency. The appearance of the crew, the uniforms they wear and the manners they behave in turn help to establish trustfulness and professionalism. Hence, both working stuff’s image and behavior should be considered the indispensable elements of the servicescape that could influence customer’s approach-avoidance decision (Baker et al., 1994).

3.2.2 Customers’ Role

Secondly, shopping cannot be simply regarded as buying; it is more involved with satisfying other needs of customers, such as the need for gathering, a sense of community, extraordinary experiences etc (Aubert-Gamet, V., 1997). Oldenburg (1999, p. 16) coined the term “third places” to signify “public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.” This third place is localized and patronized by people living in the neighborhood where customers have the possibility to communicate with other regular familiarities to form a kind of home-but-away-from-home bond when meeting their sense of social belonging (Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., 2011). Most importantly, it was argued by Nicholls (2010) that positive customer-to-customer interaction (CCT) has the ability to improve customers’ perceived satisfaction with the physical surrounding on the one hand and on the other hand counterpart the negative service experiences in the setting. The revelation here is that service managers should pay more attention to try to engage customers in the servicescape where the layout and decor could establish the mutual interactions not only within customers but between customers and the service encounters. For example, Club Med facility confirms that seating arrangements are purposefully designed to enhance the communications between customers (Bitner, 1992). Another example is Sapporo Teppanyaki restaurant, the concept was for the “meals to be theatrically prepared by a knife-wielding, joke-telling chef at a teppanyaki table surrounded by a wooden eating surface in front of the guests” (Citizendia, 2009. Benihana. [online] Availabe at:[Accessed 5 November 2011 ]). Layout in this kind is set for the communication not only among different strangers by sharing the same experience of getting stunned by the display of cooking but also between eaters and the chef.
Other theorists such as Aubert-Gamet (1997) argued further that customers could be functioned more than as a passive receptor of the servicescape. Rather, customers could be as a co-creator of the servicescape. According to Aubert-Gamet (1997), in the context of postmodernity, customers have the power to divert or appropriate the physical surroundings that are supposed to be part of the architects, designers and managers. For example, shopping malls perceived as the place for merchandising are appropriated and reinterpreted by customers as having such more functions as “important meeting place”, “recreational browsing”, and the “locations for a stroll during a bad weather”.( ibid, p.32).

Social density (Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., 2011) means that the number of customers within one service entity will have an effect on the “personal control” (Bitner, 1992) which in turn decide the time customers stay. Whether the “high social density or crowding” has a positive effect or not depends on the specific context where customers stay and the specific personality and mood of customers during their shopping experiences (Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., 2011. P. 479). For example, diners would rather have a private space when they are in love while it is better to hang out with a bunch of friends if going Karaoke bars or clubs. In addition, displayed emotions of other customers could cause the approach-avoidance behavior (Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., 2011. P. 480). Schneider (1987) stated that the level of engagement displayed by other customers create a specific human environment which will in turn motivate other customers sitting nearby. This situation always happens in group consumption when people are involved in such activities as exercising, dining, or shopping (Rosenbaum M.S. and Massiah C., 2011. P. 481).

Conclusion:
This paper examines an overall picture of the servicescape by incorporating the social dimension into the commonly agreed physical dimension because the servicescape is never an isolated fragments only limited into such independent factors as lighting, music or decor; rather, it should be understood as a whole. Just as Hoffman and Turley (2002, p. 33) argued, “…clearly the interaction of the inanimate environment, contact personnel and other customers is an important area of study”. However, there remains less empirical research proving the effect of the servicescape as a whole (Cronin, 2003). Furthermore, unclear is how long the servicescape can affect and which part of servicescapes should be specifically emphasized according to different service encounters out there (Elisabeth C. Brüggen, Bram Foubert and Dwayne D. Gremler, 2011.) because these questions are much more practical to managers when they considering “remolding the servicescape”.