Services Marketing:
CHAPTER 6
Service Environment – Physical
Evidence
Lecturer: Dr. Vu Hoang Linh, Ph.D.
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Learning Objectives
• Recognize the four core purposes service
environments fulfill.
• Know theoretical foundation from environmental
psychology that helps understand how customers
and employees respond to service environments.
• Be familiar with integrative servicescape model.
• Know the three main dimensions of the service
environment.
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Learning Objectives
• Discuss the key ambient conditions and their effects
on customers.
• Determine the roles of spatial layout and
functionality.
• Understand the roles of signs, symbols, and artifacts.
• Know how service employees and other customers
are part of the servicescape.
• Explain why designing, an effective servicescape, has
to be done holistically, and from the customer’s
perspective.
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Service Environments
An Important Element Of Service Marketing Mix
• Service environments (i.e., servicescapes) relate
to style and appearance of physical
surroundings and other experiential elements
encountered by customers at service delivery
sites.
• Designing service environment is an art;
involves time and effort, and can be extensive
to implement.
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Service Environments
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The Purpose Of Service Environments
Four main purposes of servicescapes:
1. Shape customers’ experiences and behaviors
– Physical surroundings help to “engineer” appropriate feelings
and reactions in customers and employees, can help to build
loyalty towards firm
2. Signal quality and position, differentiate and
strengthen brand
– Customers use service environment as an important quality
proxy, and firms go to great lengths to signal quality and portray
desired image
3. Core component of value proposition
4. Facilitate service encounter and enhance both service
quality and productivity
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The Theory Behind Consumer Responses To
Service Environments
Two models to understand consumer
responses to service environments:
1. The Mehrabian-Russell Stimulus-Response
Model
2. The Russell Model of Affect
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1. The Mehrabian-Russell Stimulus-
Response Model
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2. The Russell Model Of Affect
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The Servicescape Model
An Integrative Framework
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The Servicescape Model
• Mary Jo Bitner developed a comprehensive model that
she named “servicescape”
• An important contribution of Bitner’s model is the
inclusion of employee responses to the service
environment.
• Internal customer and employee responses can be
grouped into cognitive responses, emotional
responses and physiological responses.
• Dimensions of service environments:
1. ambient conditions
2. space/functionality
3. signs, symbols and artifacts
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Dimensions Of Service Environment
— Effect Of Ambient Conditions
• Ambient conditions refer to characteristics of
environment that pertain to the five senses.
• Composed of hundreds of design elements and
details that work together to create desired service
environment.
• Ambient conditions are perceived both separately
and holistically, and include music, sounds and noise,
scents and smells, color schemes and lighting, and
temperature and air movement.
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Design Elements of a Retail Store Environment
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Ambient Dimensions
Music
• Various structural characteristics of music such as tempo,
volume and harmony are perceived holistically, and their
effect on internal and behavioral responses is moderated
by respondent characteristics.
• People tend to adjust their pace, either voluntarily or
involuntarily, to match tempo of music.
• In situations that require waiting for service, effective use
of music may shorten perceived waiting time and
increase customer satisfaction.
• Pleasant music has even been proved to enhance
customers’ perceptions of the service personnel.
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Ambient Dimensions
Scent
• Ambient scent or smell pervading an environment may or
may not be consciously perceived by customers and is
not related to any particular product.
• Service firms have recognized the power of scent, and
increasingly made it a part of their brand experience.
• Presence of scent can have a strong impact on mood,
feelings, and evaluations, and even purchase intentions
and in-store behaviors.
• Scents have special characteristics and can be used to
solicit certain emotional, physiological, and behavioral
responses.
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Aromatherapy
The Effects of Selected Fragrances on People
See Table 10.2
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Ambient Dimensions
Colors
• Color is stimulating, calming, expressive, disturbing,
impressionable, cultural, exuberant, symbolic.
• Hue is the pigment of the color; value is the degree of
lightness or darkness of the color; chroma refers to hue
intensity, saturation, or brilliance.
• Warm colors encourage fast decision-making and are
best suited for low-involvement service purchase
decisions or impulsive buying.
• Cool colors are favored when consumers need time to
make high-involvement purchase decision.
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Common Associations And Human
Responses To Colors
Table 10.3 Common Associations and Human Responses to Colors
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Spatial Layout And Functionality
• Spatial layout refers to floor plan, size
and shape of furnishings, counters, and
potential machinery and equipment, and
ways in which they are arranged.
• Functionality refers to ability of those
items to facilitate performance of service
transactions.
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Signs, Symbols, And Artifacts
• Signs are often used to teach behavioral rules in service
settings
• Explicit signals include signs used (1) as labels, (2) for
giving directions, (3) for communicating the service script,
and (4) for reminders about behavioral rules
• Servicescape designers should use signs, symbols and
artifacts to guide customers clearly through process of
service delivery, and to teach the service script in as
intuitive a manner as possible
• Customers become disoriented when they cannot derive
clear signals from a servicescape
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Benefits of Well-Designed Signage
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People Are Also A Part Of
The Service Environment
• Appearance and behavior of both service
personnel and customers can strengthen
or weaken impression created by a
service environment.
• Social dimensions should be considered
when assessing the quality of
servicescapes.
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Putting It All Together
Design with a Holistic View
• Servicescapes have to be seen holistically
• Professional designers focus on specific types of
servicescapes, and provide designs for specific
servicescapes
Design from a Customer’s Perspective
• Servicescape designs should be done to guide and
assist customers
• Simple and customer-friendly servicescapes score
above the state-of-the art and complicated ones
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Aspects That Irritate Shoppers
Ambient conditions:
– Store is not clean.
– Too hot inside the store or the shopping center.
– Music inside the store is too loud.
– The store smells bad.
Environmental design variables:
– No mirror in the dressing room.
– Unable to find what one needs.
– Directions within the store are inadequate.
– Arrangement of store items has been changed in a way that
confuses customers.
– Store is too small.
– Losing one’s way in a large shopping center.
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Tools To Guide Servicescape Design
• Keen observation of customers’ behavior and
responses
• Feedback and ideas from frontline staff and
customers using a variety of research tools
• Photo audit
– Ask customers (or mystery shoppers) to take photos of
their service experience
• Field experiments to manipulate specific dimensions
in an environment for certain effects to be observed
• Blueprinting or flowcharting (see Chapter 8)
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The Service Environment as Perceived
by Customers
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