Servicescape or service environment is about the style and appearance of the physical surroundings and other experiential elements encountered by customers at the service delivery sites.
Lovelock & Wirtz (2004) stated that the surrounding and atmosphere affect buyers behaviour in threee crucial ways;
1. Message-Creating Medium - Symbolic cues to communicate the distinctive nature and quality of service experience
2. Attention-Creating Medium - To make the servicescape stands out from other competing establishments and to attract customers from target segments
3. Effect-Creating Medium - Colors, textures, sounds, scents and spatial design to enhance the desired service experience and/or to heighten an appetite for certain goods, services or experiences.
These help the brand to create its distinctive image and unique positioning. Servicescape is a part of value proposition.
Moreover, there is another important fundamental model of how people respond to environments which is called "The Mehrabian Russell Stimulus Response".
The model explains that the environment, its conscious and unconscious perception and interpretation, influence how people feel in that environment. Feelings, rather than perceptions or thoughts, drive behaviour which typically are 'approach' or 'avoidance'.
The Russell Model of Affect also elaborates different types of emotional responses to environments.
Emotional responses to environments can be described along two main factors; pleasure and arousal. Pleasure factor depends on the level of how people like or dislike that partucular environment. On the other hand, arousal factor depends on its information loads.
Furthermore, there are 4 interesting roles of servicescape (CollegeofBusiness, 2011)
1. Package: a visual metaphor for the intangible service. It is similar to product's package but on the contrary, it is the wrap of service. It is the first impression of the service, predetermination of its intended image in customers mind which provokes a particular sensory or emotional reaction.
2. Facilitator: aids the performance of the persons in the environment, both customers and service employees, to get the most out of the opportunity and perform best in their role. It can also establish efficient flow of activities.
3. Socializer: assists the socialization of the employees and customers, conveying expected roles, behaviours, and relationships.
4. Differentiator: helps differentiate a firm from its competitors and also one area of service from others. Additionally, it can signal the market segment that is the targets for service offering.
After that, we had in-class group activity regarding this subject area and we chose a luxury brand to work on around the concept of servicescape.
Our group chose Cartier. We discussed about Cartier boutique's environment. We all agreed that it has pleasant environment with elegant interior design based on the mix of modernism and heritage. It plays classical music as a background ambience, building more enjoyable shopping atmosphere. Drinks are always served for customers who visit the shop. Corporate colours, which are red and gold, are used simultaneously and consistently to convey its strong concept of passion. Besides, Cartier always focuses on its quality products, suitable as a gift for celebration and special occasions, and uses storytelling to enhance its brand heritage and craftsmanship, with its long history of serving royalties and its 'King of Jewellers' position.
It is obvious now that for service segment, employees are one of the most important factors that determines the performance and quality of the service. Especially in luxury brands, it is necessary to have standardized training and high quality staffs which represent the brand. Good employees should be passionate and knowleadgeable in what they do, interested in the brand itself, be able to provide information, empowered, caring and understanding. Their personality should match with the brand, have good image and behaviour, employ good interaction and communication skills, look clean and appealing, well-groomed as they are the face of the company.
Service culture empowers employees to solve customer problems. It is supported by a reward system based on customers satisfaction. However, in order for employees to perform well, they have to love and be happy with their job.Winning the heart of the employees is what the company has to do first. For employees to fully appreciate their job, they must be allowed more latitude in dispensing their duties, leading to the concept of empowerment.
Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take action, control the situation and make decision on the most effective way. It allows employees to make faster decision making process which in turn increases productivity, enhances the service experience and improves performance. Nevertheless, not everyone likes the idea of empowerment. It can have negative effect on the employees since it can be stressful with big responsiblities to do everything on their own as well.
Too much power and control isn't always good, isnt it?
Bibliography
1. Lovelock, C. and Wirts, J. (2004). Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy (5th edition), London: Prentice Hall.
2. College of Business (2011). Chapter10: Physical Evidence and the Servicescape. Available at http://cob.jmu.edu/reidrd/Slides/Chp%2010%20Servicescape.PDF (Accessed 13 March 2011).
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