How The Servicescape Shapes Customer Experiences

In the digital age, the servicescape is a little-discussed marketing topic. But for any physical business, it matters.

Servicescape is a word that is not familiar to many people.

It is an academic term for the physical environment where a service takes place.

The servicescape contributes to the quality of the customer experience.

This blog explores the servicescape of a business and how services can provide a better experience for customers.

“Physical environments, also termed servicescapes, play an important role, both positive and negative, in customers’ impression formation.” (Bitner, 1992)

What is the servicescape?

The servicescape is the physical environment where a service transaction takes place.

It facilitates the customers’ experience, but it also influences their first impressions before entering the store or interacting with a staff member. This first impression helps customers ease any discomfort of the unknown and then guides their perception and expectations of the service.

Customers interact with the service continuously, for example, at a restaurant. You might have numerous interactions with staff and use the restroom. Service providers need to create a pleasant, convenient, and satisfying experience for customers.

“The design of the physical environment and service staff qualities that characterise the context which houses the service encounter, which elicits internal reactions from customers leading to the display of approach or avoidance behaviours.” (Bitner, 1992)

Bitner (1992) introduced the term servicescape to define the context for a service encounter. It is the physical setting where customers consume a service and/or product and the company and customer interactions.

Businesses can (and should) modify their servicescape to match customer expectations and influence customer perceptions. This perception will engage customers to act in a certain way.

If their experience is negatively perceived, chances are the customer will not come back. So, there is a relationship between the servicescape and customer loyalty. It is something businesses need to get right. Investing in your servicescape can improve customer relationships and facilitate more sales.

Other definitions for the servicescape have included:

“The physical environment, atmospherics, marketing environment, economic environment, interactive theatre, healthscapes, environmental psychology, servicescape, store environment, service environment, and social-servicescape.” (Harris & Ezeh, 2008)

Characteristics of a Servicescape

The physical aspects of the service environment are organisationally controllable, objective and measurable.

The servicescape includes:

• the exterior and the interior of a ‘brick and mortar’ physical store
• the ambience of the service encounter, such as background music and cleanliness
• the overall design and furnishings
• and staff competence and personal presentation.

The physical components of a servicescape include:

Exterior

• Landscape
• Exterior design
• Surrounding environment
• Parking
• Signage

Facility Interior

• Music
• Layout
• Equipment
• Air quality temperature
• Interior design

Others

• Virtual servicescape
• Web pages
• Employee uniforms
• Stationary
• Business cards

These make up three dimensions of environmental stimuli according to Bitner’s original framework: ambient conditions, spatial layout and functionality and signs, symbols, and artefacts.

There is now a fourth element identified as contributing to the experience: the social dimension.

Ambient conditions

A business's ambience can be the deciding factor of whether or not a customer comes back, especially in a café, bar or restaurant.

The customer wants to feel as relaxed and as comfortable as possible. If it is too hot, or too cold, this will not help the customer enjoy their experience.

Services too often overlook their ambience, but as we have moved from a product-based to a service-based economy, customers' common expectation is to have a certain level of atmosphere.

Aspects such as colour, music, noise, smell, and lighting contribute to an ambient environment. These affect our senses and influence our experience.

Ambience fills most Cafés, such as background music and people talking, the scent of coffee beans, and big bright menu displays.

Compare going to your favourite café to sitting in a quiet, empty room drinking a coffee alone.

“Ambient conditions represent background environmental stimuli, or atmospherics that affect human sensations. These stimuli comprise visual (e.g. lighting, colours, brightness, shapes, aesthetic cleanliness, olfactory (scent, air quality, fragrance) ambient (e.g. temperature) and auditory (e.g. music, noises) elements.” (Rosenbaum & Massiah, 2011)

Spatial layout and functionality

The physical attributes should be the starting point for businesses to observe and measure how effectively the layout and functionality enhance employee and customer activity. It is objective and controllable.

Spatial layout refers to the arrangement of furnishings and equipment, their design and what they look like, and the general spatial relationship between these objects in the store. Consider comfort, layout, and accessibility as this can influence consumer approach or avoidance decision-making. Will they turn around and walk back out?

Functionality is the extent to which the business can facilitate the service and provide customer support. This component is dependent on how much help the customers require.

Signs, symbols, and artefacts

Business signage is the first and most obvious place to communicate with customers. A large sign on the exterior of the building helps communicate your brand to people driving past. Signage inside the store helps reinforce branding.

As well as your branding, signs can share how to behave in stores such as the toilets' location or where in-store certain items are.

Symbols and artefacts help contribute to the vibe and atmosphere of a servicescape. Examples of this are the artwork on the wall, and décor design — is it themed or inspired by another culture?

People usually interpret these similarly, as the store design will have a specific symbolic meaning and purpose.

However, an individual’s ethnicity, for example, can be a moderator for how they perceive a servicescape dependent on how authentic it is to their expectation, influencing their response.

“Bagozzi (1975) noted that most marketplace exchanges are mixed exchanges, in which consumers fulfil not only their utilitarian needs but also their social and psychological needs. Thus, customer approach/avoidance decisions are influenced not only by physical stimuli but also by social, humanistic stimuli.” (Rosenbaum & Massiah, 2011)

The social dimension

The social aspect of a service encounter depends on the staff and the environment creating a positive consumer experience. Components include where customers are placed, their involvement and their interaction with employees.

How much are customers able to contribute to the feeling of the atmosphere?

Service providers can be an outlet to remedy loneliness through consumption communities.

Often locally owned and independent, owners and employees at these businesses ‘know’ all about the neighbourhood and the people living there. They usually have several ‘regulars’ — customers often spend time there as a home away from home.

It becomes a community where people have a sense of belonging and can engage in social encounters free from any constraints and judgement based on their socioeconomic status.

People subconsciously seek connections with ‘the rest of life, which Wilson (1984) called biophilia. Commercial services such as local bars can encourage these natural encounters, providing value to customers personally and psychologically. Oldenburg (1999) called these “third places”.

These service experiences can be refreshing to consumers and enhance their well-being through feelings of ‘being away’ and ‘compatibility’.

Being away does not require distance but gives people a feeling of ‘escape’, beyond the realms of home and work temporarily — exporting them to a different place.

Natural settings are popular destinations for restoration, such as topical beaches, botanical gardens, and mountain ranges.

“The sense of being away does not require distance; however, it does require that a person feel as though he or she is momentarily in another world.” (Rosenbaum & Massiah, 2011)

The roles of the servicescape

If your business has a physical store, your servicescape plays four critical roles in your business success. I will separate these into two categories: Facilitation and socialising; and brand image and differentiation.

Facilitation is keeping the purchasing and service delivery process as convenient and efficient as possible, whilst socialising facilitates interactions between customers and employees and between the customers.

Brand image is the impression customers get from your servicescape, and differentiation sets your business apart from your competitors.

“The physical environment influences sales, time spent in the store, perceptions of the service experience, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, product choice and customer retention. The physical elements directly influence purchasing behaviour and as such can either aid or hinder a service organisation from achieving its marketing goals.” (Tombs, McColl-Kennedy, 2003)

Facilitation and socialising

The design and fit-out of a service help facilitate two main goals: first to be as efficient as possible to maximise how productive staff are at their job and ensure the customer has the experience they want.

Ineffective designs can be frustrating to staff and customers alike. A servicescape’s design also illustrates to customers where they can and cannot go.

We do not want to hinder the performance of staff or their enjoyment of their jobs. Equally, we do not want to focus on maximising staff performance if that reduces customer experience quality.

In services such as restaurants or cafés, the servicescape design helps both customers and employees socialise to facilitate a pleasurable experience with friends, family or business clients.

Overcrowding in retail stores in shopping centres can hurt the atmosphere. However, in some contexts such as live sports and concerts, crowding is positive for consumers as it adds to people’s enjoyment.

Social contagion spreads happiness or ‘atmosphere’ throughout the crowd. Cafes, bars and nightclubs can have a similar feeling, where part of the attraction is because people like to socialise.

The ideal social density changes between service encounters, and because it affects the customer experiences and their intent for future consumption, it is something business owners need to understand.

Find out whether a social experience is essential to your consumers and create a spatial layout that facilitates more significant social interaction.

Other business customers might want to avoid each other as much as possible, such as banks, doctors or solicitors.

Brand image and differentiation

The servicescape for a business is much like the packaging for a product or a website. It conveys an absolute expectation to customers, and they perceive it in their unique way. It will attract some people and others will not like it.

One person will feel comfortable in one place and not so much in another.

An example of this is Hell’s Pizza here in New Zealand.

They took a ‘slice’ of the pizza market away from Pizza Hut and Dominoes with their unique branding.

Your servicescape helps differentiate your brand from the next- for example, McDonald’s versus Burger King.

The food is remarkably similar, but the restaurants are vastly different, and you likely would not confuse the two. McDonald’s ‘Golden Arches’ at McDonald’s was the first dead giveaway.

All of this creates an image in the minds of consumers of what to expect. It helps position your brand in the market to attract your target customers. The playgrounds at McDonald’s targeted families and unashamedly so.

Your servicescape communicates your unique value proposition for customers, and it will help attract attention to your business.

Conclusion

The servicescape of a place of business is the key to creating a memorable customer experience.

Happy customers mean they are more likely to come back. Businesses should think about creating an engaging and ambient environment for customers and emphasise positive customer service.

Thank you for reading.

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