The servicescape concept refers to the way that the 'place of business' is created to support the service concept. Services send messages through its environment to communicate to consumers how to use its service, and the meanings the service has.
Booms and Bitner (1981) are credited with the original research that coined the term servicescape. The service-scape concept includes the ways that place-based factors moderate both customer and employee behaviour. The framework illustrates that ambient conditions, space factors and signs and symbols in an environment will create in users (both employees and customers) an experience facilitated through the environment. This environmental experience should support the service concept. There will be individual factors that moderate this experience, and this experience will then lead to certain responses in both employees and customers. A range of responses will eventuate around three main categories of response: cognitive (what people think), emotional (what they feel), and physiological (what their bodies experience). This, in turn, will lead to behaviours of approach and/or avoidance from both customers and employees and will lead also to social interactions between customers and employees.
Bitner wrote in 2012: "Clearly the design and presentation of the servicescape can serve to attract customers into the service facility. Signage, colors, attractive design, music, or scents can be used to draw customers into a place. Once inside, the servicescape will help to shape the customer's experience and influence his or her satisfaction with the service delivery. In some cases, the servicescape may even be a determining factor in whether the customer returns or gives more of his or her business to the firm".
Niketown
A place like Niketown Chicago is not actually designed specifically to sell a product, but to showcase what Nike means. Nike let its designers loose to create a place for the worship of athletes, especially the basketball icon Michael Jordan (Sherry Jnr, J., 1998).
Booms and Bitner (1981) are credited with the original research that coined the term servicescape. The service-scape concept includes the ways that place-based factors moderate both customer and employee behaviour. The framework illustrates that ambient conditions, space factors and signs and symbols in an environment will create in users (both employees and customers) an experience facilitated through the environment. This environmental experience should support the service concept. There will be individual factors that moderate this experience, and this experience will then lead to certain responses in both employees and customers. A range of responses will eventuate around three main categories of response: cognitive (what people think), emotional (what they feel), and physiological (what their bodies experience). This, in turn, will lead to behaviours of approach and/or avoidance from both customers and employees and will lead also to social interactions between customers and employees.
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| By BronHiggs - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54853114 |
Bitner wrote in 2012: "Clearly the design and presentation of the servicescape can serve to attract customers into the service facility. Signage, colors, attractive design, music, or scents can be used to draw customers into a place. Once inside, the servicescape will help to shape the customer's experience and influence his or her satisfaction with the service delivery. In some cases, the servicescape may even be a determining factor in whether the customer returns or gives more of his or her business to the firm".
The focus of designing servicescape is on the five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing.
Other people have developed the service-scape concept since Bitner's original 1992 article. One more recent use of the idea has been by Rosenbaum and Massiah (2011) who argue that the:
Other people have developed the service-scape concept since Bitner's original 1992 article. One more recent use of the idea has been by Rosenbaum and Massiah (2011) who argue that the:
"servicescape comprises not only objective, measureable, and managerially controllable stimuli but also subjective, immeasurable, and often managerially uncontrollable social, symbolic, and natural stimuli, which all influence customer approach/avoidance decisions and social interaction behaviors. Furthermore, customer responses to social, symbolic, and natural stimuli are often the drivers of profound person-place attachments". (p. 471)
In brief, this means that servicescapes provide the material by which customers (and employees) co-create value in the servicescape. This is not a new idea as it was the focus of Sherry's important edited collection of research about servicescapes, published in 1998. Sherry wrote about Niketown Chicago in a chapter in this book.
Rosenbaum and Massiah do introduce further embellishments to the idea, and reading their article suggest the following further observations (amongst others):
- not everything about the place is manageable;
- people have profound place attachments and these are not necessarily shared through the same cultural codes (e.g. in a tourist experience);
- creating service-scapes with 'restorative' potential (e.g. in hospitals) is one implication of their study.
Rosenbaum and Massiah's framework is given below:
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| This image is from Rosenbaum and Massiah (2011). The article and diagram can be found here. |
Nike's mission is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. The asterix (*) in the missions statement isn't a grammar mistake, but refers to an additional statement as part of Nike's mission - if you have a body, you are an athlete. In a further refinement of their mission statement, they also say, their 'Consumer Affairs Mission' is to represent the highest service standard within and beyond our industry, building loyal consumer relationships around the world http://nikeinc.com/pages/consumer-affairs.
Nike's environments are designed so that the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and touch sense evoke the Nike brand. For instance,
"Nike once did a test on consumer responses to identical pairs of gym shoes. One test was conducted in a room that was completely odour-free. The other was artificially imbued with a floral scent. The floral scent increased the desirability of the shoes by 84 per cent of respondents." http://strategiccreative.com.au/2012/04/25/designing-servicescapes/
The following video from Youtube is of various customers and employees saying things about the service-scape at Niketown London. Watch this and also read the short vignette on pages 248-249 of Gronroos 'A service-scape example: Nike Town Chicago', then you will get an initial feel for how Nike has designed their facility to evoke a sense of place that supports their service concept.
Bitner, M.J. (1992). Servicescapes: the impact of physical surroundings on customers and employees, Journal of Marketing, 56 (2): 57-71.
Bitner, M. (2012). The servicescape. Handbook of services marketing and management. In Swartz, T. & Iacobucci, D. (eds.) Handbook of service marketing and management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Booms, B.H. & Bitner, MJ (1981). Marketing strategies and organisation structures for service firms. In J Donnelly, J & W.R. George (eds.). Marketing of services. Chicago, IL: American Marketing Association.
Pine, J. & Gilmore, J., H. (1998). Welcome to the experience economy. Harvard Business Review.
Rosenbaum, M. & Massiah, C. (2011). An expanded servicescape perspective. Journal of Service Management, 22: 471—490.
Sherry, J. F., Kozinets, R. V., Storm, D., Duhachek, A., Nuttavuthisit, K. & Deberry-Spence, B. (2001). Being in the zone: Staging retail theater at ESPN zone Chicago. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 30: 465-510.
