Managing the customer experience -...

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Managing the customer experienceJoey was visiting the capital of an Asian country where he had read in his guidebook about a new themed restaurant which incorporated an imitation volcano. Every hour, spectacular lighting eff ects, rumbling sounds and a feeling of movement in the tables and chairs simulated the eruption of a volcano, which were a great tourist attraction in the region. For Joey, this was a ‘must see’ to be experienced, but his friend entered the restaurant tired and hungry. He just wanted to eat and he got no enjoyment from sitting through the light and sound display. Worse still, some American visitors from California were traumatized by the experience, bringing back memories of the fact that they were living in an active earthquake zone. Joey might have enjoyed the experience of the volcano fi rst time round, but even he had to admit that after the third or fourth time, it became repetitive and boring – now he just wanted to use the restaurant for eating. When services companies move from providing purely utilitarian benefi ts to more hedon-istic benefi ts, the nature of the value that they deliver to customers becomes much more complex to understand. In the case of a restaurant with an imitation volcano, the ‘experience’ might have been exciting to some, neutral to others, and bad for yet others. Even those who found the experience good one day might fi nd that another day their needs are diff erent and that what once generated positive emotions is now dominated by negative feelings. In this chapter, we will explore some of the complexities of designing services which provide a high level of ‘customer experience’, beginning with the conceptual issues about defi ning the term, and working through to practical issues of delivery.

Learning objectivesAfter reading this chapter, you should understand:

•Th eoretical underpinnings of the concept of ‘customer experience’

•Frameworks for understanding and managing customer experience

•Th e eff ects of other customers on individuals’ experience of a service

• Issues and problems for the services marketer that arise from having to produce a service ‘live’ in front of customers in a safe and secure environment

Chapter

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82 Principles of Services Marketing

3.1 Introduction

In the previous chapter we looked at systems approaches to designing services. Systems thinking can be crucial in producing services as efficiently as possible and for giving guidance to staff, cus-tomers and other third-party organizations about who should be doing what, where and when. Just imagine a restaurant which did not have systems in place for defining who will take customers’ orders, who will order supplies for the kitchen, and how frequently this should be done; what pro-cesses will be used for checking that customers are happy with their meal. With a good system, waiting staff will clearly know which customers they will have to serve and how long it should take them to be served; supplies of food will arrive regularly so that the restaurant has enough food to satisfy all customers’ requests; and a designated member of staff will ask if customers are happy with their meal at a predetermined time and will have a blueprint for action to take if the customers are not satisfied.

But having good systems is a necessary, but not a sufficient basis for customer satisfaction. The actual length of waiting time in a restaurant may not be as important as how the waiting is subjec-tively perceived; waiters in the restaurant may follow their service blueprint and ask customers if they are satisfied, but the way in which they ask can be just as important as the timing of their intervention. Systems approaches may maximize efficiency, but often it is customers’ subjective experiences of service effectiveness which may create value in their eyes.

The systems approaches described in Chapter 2 may be described as ‘hard’ approaches to design-ing services, where service design can be reduced to phenomena which can be relatively easily measured and managed. In this chapter, we will turn to relatively ‘soft’ approaches to designing the service by focusing on more qualitative and subjective aspects of service design. So instead of focus-ing on the utilitarian benefits that consumers receive from a service, we will instead focus more on hedonic benefits and customers’ subjective experience of the service.

3.2 Customer experience

Companies are increasingly using the framework of ‘customer experience’ to define what they offer to their customers. Although the term has become widely used, there are many definitions of just what constitutes customer experience. An all-embracing definition is provided by Gupta and Vajic (2000), who stated that an experience occurs when a customer ‘has any sensation or knowledge acquisition resulting from some level of interaction with different elements of a context created by the service provider’. Some authors have broadened the concept of customer experience, with sometimes seemingly circular definitions, for example ‘total customer experience emphasizes the importance of all contacts that a consumer has with an organization and the consumer’s holistic experience’ (Harris et al., 2003). Such broad definitions take us back to an early definition of Abbott who noted that:

''What people really desire are not products, but satisfying experiences. Experiences are attained through activities. In order that activities may be carried out, physical

objects for the services of human beings are usually needed . . . People want products because they want the experience which they hope the products will render.''

(Abbott, 1955, cited in Holbrook, 2006, p. 717)

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83ChaPter 3 Managing the customer experience

Unfortunately, use of the term ‘experience’ has been confused by its frequent association with the hedonistic values of a product rather than the more basic utilitarian value defined by Abbott. As a result of such confusion, its use runs counter to a lot of consumer behaviour literature, which emphasizes how consumers’ repeated experience of a phenomenon leads to a learned response. While repeated exposure may lead to a learned response, hedonistic definitions of customer experi-ence imply that the value of an experience may lie in the lack of a learned response. The true bene-fit may lie in attitudinal outcomes of ‘surprise’, ‘delight’ and ‘excitement’. The first encounter with a stimulus may be highly valued because of its novelty, but the stimulus is less likely to be subse-quently sought because of its lack of novelty value.

If ‘customer experience’ is regarded as comprising essentially non-utilitarian benefits that a consumer seeks from a purchase, it could be expected that interest in customer experience advances during periods of prolonged economic prosperity. In the field of leisure and tourism, it has been suggested that the most rapid developments analogous to ‘customer experience’ occurred in the UK during periods of prosperity, notably the 1890s, 1930s, 1950s and, more recently, the late 1990s (Urry, 2002). As well as growth in overall GDP per head, these periods have also been associ-ated with increasing disparity in income distribution, with an affluent group able to afford high-experience services, while poorer groups can afford only basic utilitarian services. More recently, there has been evidence of growing inequalities within some societies, and in January 2010, the National Equality Panel reported that the gap between the richest and poorest segments in the UK had widened. This widening disparity may explain the apparent anomaly of simultaneous rapid growth in ‘low-cost, low-frills’ (and therefore by implication ‘low-experience’) sectors within the airline, retail and hotel markets. To detractors of the ‘experience economy’ the growth of ‘no-frills’ sectors is evidence of consultants’ hype and the limited applicability of the customer experience model. They also point to falling demand for many high-experience services following the ‘credit crunch’ and recession of 2008, pointing to Starbucks’ decision to close over 900 of its coffee shops worldwide. It seemed that interest in customer experience could decline in the post-2008 years of austerity just as quickly as it rose in the preceding boom years. However, given a growing disparity in income, price-driven and experience-driven business models can coexist. Moreover, with con-tinuing rising expectations, it could be expected that non-utilitarian dimensions of experience will continue to become a more important component of the total service offer.

Creating a customer experience is about more than the sum of its individual components, which may typically comprise:

• the physical setting (Grove et al., 1992; Gupta and Vajic, 2000);

• customer-focused product design with expected levels of quality (Price et al., 1995);

• the service delivery processes (Harris et al., 2001);

• aspirational or utilitarian brands (de Chernatony and McDonald, 2003);

• supporting relationships (Gummesson, 1997).

A number of authors have recognized the importance of sequencing to the development of a memorable customer experience (e.g. Chase and Dasu, 2001; Pine and Gilmore, 1998, 1999). According to Chatman (1978), experiences should have a sequence structure with a story struc-tured in a manner similar to musical pieces. Creating a story-like time pattern in experience design can provide sequences of emotions similar to those provided by episodes in human life (Deighton, 1992). Pine and Gilmore (1999) noted that experience of an emergent phenomenon should be designed for enhancement over time. The sequence of events in an experience design should improve over time and end on a positive note because an unpleasant ending dominates the

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memory of the entire experience. Returning to the drama analogy, this is similar to musicals invariably ending on a high note.

Sequencing issues have been addressed in discussion of ‘flow’, described as an experiential state ‘so desirable that one wishes to replicate it as often as possible’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988). To remain in flow, an individual must be presented with progressively more challenging scenarios in order to ensure that the level of complexity is consistent with their motivation and skills. Flow has been examined in relation to a number of leisure services, including gambling, adventure parks and computer-mediated environments that involve individuals becoming completely engrossed (Hoffman and Novak, 1996; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Trevino and Webster, 1992). It has been suggested that the experience of flow may be particularly high where an individual is uncertain about the outcome (Arnould and Price, 1993). Operators of online gambling services have recognized the importance of understanding flow, as we will see in the next chapter.

When does a customer experience begin and end? It may be too simplistic to believe that it begins when the consumer initiates a service process and ends on completion of the agreed service. Prior to the service process beginning, individuals may gain experiential benefits through anticipation. For example, many people enjoy the experience of looking through holiday brochures before they choose a holiday, and long before they begin their holiday. There is increasing evidence that anticipation of an event may be recognized as an important experiential benefit, evidenced by the way that some organizations use queues and waiting time to generate emotions of excitement and anticipation for the main event (Cowley et al., 2005). After the event, an experience may be extended through the purchase of memorabilia. Memorabilia contribute to an experience in two important ways. First, they are a visible reminder of the experience, extending the memory of it after the actual encounter; second, memorabilia can facilitate peer discussion of the experience (Goulding, 1999).

What are the boundaries of a customer experience? Service providers may be interested in per-ceptions of that part of a service encounter that they control, but consumers’ perception of their ‘total experience’ may embrace other non-controllable components. As an example, a dominant element of the experience of dining at a restaurant may be the lack of available public parking spaces or perceived levels of street crime in the vicinity of the restaurant.

3.2.1 Understanding customers’ emotionsA crucial aspect of defining a successful customer experience lies in understanding individuals’ emotional states, before, during and after the service encounter. When involvement with an item or service is high, consumers can experience strong emotional reactions to a stimulus. Emotions act as a source of information, which is used to evaluate the stimulus and lead to the formation of an attitude. Emotions are more likely to play an important role in attitude formation and change when they are relevant to the product or service being consumed (Koenig-Lewis and Palmer, 2008; Price et al., 1995). For example, an individual who is tired and hungry may see a restaurant primar-ily as a source of food, and efforts by restaurant management to provide an experiential environ-ment may fail to appeal to that individual’s emotional state. It should follow that the consumer’s selective perception is directed towards the food rather than the environment, and therefore the experience retained in memory will focus on the food component. For an individual on vacation and visiting the restaurant for a leisurely social meal, selective perception is more likely to be directed towards environmental cues, which will be retained in memory. Emotional involvement is not an attribute of a product or service; rather it is the importance of it to the consumer. The same product or service can be low-involving for some and high-involving for others. Emotions can transform an event into an experience.

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Emotions have been difficult to define, and it was noted by Fehr and Russell that ‘everyone knows what an emotion is, until asked to give a definition’ (1984, p. 464). Furthermore, emotions should be differentiated from the related affective term ‘mood’. According to Westbrook and Oliver (1991, p. 85), emotions have a ‘relatively greater psychological urgency, motivational potency, and situational specificity’. Bagozzi et al. (1999) additionally noted that mood is perceived as longer lasting and lower in intensity than emotion, and defined emotions as a mental state of readiness that occurs from cognitive evaluations of events or thoughts and may result in specific actions. A further distinction between moods and emotions was made by Frijda (1993), who noted that emotions are intentional and associated with a specific stimulus while moods are more diffuse and generally unintentional. Therefore, emotions are relatively easier to identify and to measure and of more interest to consumer researchers (White and Scandale, 2005).

From the debate about the nature of emotions, two dominant bases for their conceptualiza-tion and measurement have emerged. The ‘dimensional approach’ conceptualizes all emotions as belonging to three independent bipolar constructs of pleasure, arousal and dominance (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974). The ‘basic emotion approach’ does not attempt to aggregate emotions in this way, but seeks to measure individual emotions that are relevant to a context. The interrelation-ship between individual emotions was developed by Russell (1980) who used a spatial model to organize these emotions into bipolar pairs of opposites, for example pleasure–displeasure and excitement–depression. This approach has been widely used and found to be appropriate to a variety of contexts (Liljander and Bergenwall, 2002; Liljander and Strandvik, 1997; Mano and Oliver, 1993; Oliver, 1997; Russell, 1980). A number of authors have sought to classify emotions into negative and positive emotions, with some evidence that they are separate constructs and not polar extremes of a single construct with structurally different impacts on future buying behaviour (Smith and Bolton, 2002; Varela-Neira et al., 2008), and on response to advertising messages (Homer, 2006).

Actually measuring emotions in a service context can be very difficult. Previous studies of emotions have frequently involved retrospective recall, which may be subject to reporting error as intervening experience may moderate the reporting of experienced emotions. The nature of affective expectations may be more complex than cognitive expectations and it has been suggested that high-involvement services are able to elicit emotional responses before the service consump-tion starts (see Bagozzi and Pieters, 1998; Perugini and Bagozzi, 2001; Perugini and Conner, 2000). Bagozzi and Pieters (1998) state that the emotional experiences anticipated for a future service will influence goal-directed behaviour. There is evidence in the literature that consumers’ fore-casts about how much they will enjoy a service encounter will have an effect on how much they actually enjoy the service (see the Affective Expectations Model by Wilson and Klaaren, 1992). Baumgartner et al. (2008, p. 695) propose that ‘. . . such mental simulations about future states may lead to actually experiencing the future emotion at present, when the affective forecast leads to the feelings, thoughts, motivational goals, and action tendencies that accompany actual emotions’. Such anticipation of emotions may be manifested in the way that an individual becomes excited about a forthcoming vacation, or fearful about future surgery. An implication of this is that a positive pre-consumption affect is likely to lead to positive post-experience satisfaction levels and repurchase intention (Mattila and Wirtz, 2000). However, in an educational context, Athiyaman (1997) found that pre-enrolment attitude had little or no effect on post- enrolment attitude.

Given the complexity of emotions, it is probably not surprising that on a day-to-day basis, most service providers settle for the quite simple measures, rather than the complex multiple-item measures described above. One approach to understanding the holistic nature of a customer

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experience is to draw an experience map showing the general level of positive/negative emotions evoked as an individual makes their journey through a service process. There may at first sight appear to be similarities between this approach and blueprinting, which was discussed in the previ-ous chapter. The difference, however, is that, while a blueprint is driven by operational systems and sub-systems, the customer experience map focuses on customers’ feelings and emotions at differ-ent points in what should be a seamless service process. An example of a customer experience map applied to a full-service restaurant is shown in Figure 3.1.

Can a customer experience be defined in the objective and operational manner that is possible for the more sub-systems-based approaches such as blueprinting? Probably the greatest problem in developing a simple and operationally acceptable framework for customer experience is the com-plexity of context-specific variables. The discussion above indicated that experience is conditioned by differences between individuals, differences over time in an individual’s emotional state and

Figure 3.1 Complex service processes typically have high points and low points in terms of the feelings and emotions evoked in customers as they pass through the process. Based on survey research, an experience map can seek to identify where these points occur, in order that management can improve on the low points and review the sequence of experience states, and so ensure that customers leave the service process with positive feelings. For example, if payment is a major source of frustration, could this process be moved from the end to the beginning of the service process, so that customers are more likely to leave the restaurant with positive feelings? Of course, an event that generates positive feelings for one customer may generate negative feelings for another, and even the same customer may experience different feelings from one day to the next, reflecting variability in the service process and variability in customers’ prior emotional states. With these caveats, this simplified diagram shows how a customer’s overall emotional state may fluctuate during a visit to the restaurant.

POSITIVEFEELINGS

Restaurantappearance

Greeting

Internalatmosphere

Dessert is betterthan expected

Waiting toplace order

Sequencing of service processes

Wait forfood delivery

Toiletsnot clean

Delight

Satisfactory

Neutral

Bad

Terrible

NEGATIVEFEELINGS

Problemwith bill

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a variety of situation-specific factors. To be of managerial usefulness in planning and control, a measure of experience must take account of these moderating influences. A further conceptual prob-lem in measuring and managing experience is the identification of an optimal level of experience. For parallel and contributory constructs such as quality and satisfaction, there is an implicit assumption that consumers will prefer outcomes with higher scores on these scales. However, experience is more complex, and non-linearity may imply lower cut-off points at which an experience is not recognized, and a higher point beyond which ‘more’ experience may be associated with negative benefits (imagine a restaurant with excessive sounds and video screens). An alternative, qualitative approach adopted by Holbrook focuses on the ‘three Fs’ of fantasies (dreams, imagination or unconscious desires), feelings (emotions such as love, hate, anger, fear, joy and sorrow) and fun (hedonic pleasure derived from playful activities or aesthetic enjoyment) as key aspects of the consumption experience (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982; Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982). However, far from being a new approach to studying consumer behaviour, the authors accepted that this experiential approach had a long lineage, dating back to Alfred Marshall in the nineteenth century and Adam Smith in the eighteenth century (Reisman, 2012).

3.3 Frameworks for managing the customer experienceSo far, customer experience has been presented as a series of ideas for defining what a service feels like to consumers. But how can such abstract ideas be transformed into strategies and tactics for managers to implement? One school of thought holds that if a concept cannot be measured, then it cannot be managed. But another view might hold that some of the most successful services busi-nesses have been developed on the basis of entrepreneurs having an eye for detail and understand-ing the subjective bases for value in the eyes of consumers.

The ideas underlying customer experience are not new, and historically many successful entre-preneurs have used essentially qualitative research techniques to develop distinctive customer experiences. The development of Joe Lyons coffee shops and Butlins holiday camps in the early twentieth century were based on a process of inspired listening combined with a trial and error approach to new service development. Developing a new customer experience involves risk, and research techniques – especially quantitative techniques – may be incapable of eliciting a response from potential customers where the proposed experience is hypothetical, and devoid of the emo-tional and situational context in which it will be encountered.

Figure 3.2 Many consumers regard a service outlet not so much as a functional place where a service can be delivered efficiently, but rather an experience to be enjoyed in its own right. hard rock Cafés provide food and drink, but this is only a small part of the total service offer. at hard rock Cafés throughout the world, consumers are not just buying a cup of coffee, but are buying an experience in an imaginatively themed bar.

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Services marketing management benefits from a number of proposed frameworks for under-standing how the subjective experience of a service is perceived by consumers. We will begin by looking at the concept of a servicescape, which incorporates some elements of a systems approach, followed by an approach referred to as servuction, which emphasizes the consumer’s role in subjec-tively constructing the service concept in their mind. Dramaturgy models have been proposed and draw heavily on analogy with theatre. Finally, we will look at models of ‘flow’, which emphasize consumers’ engagement in an interactive process.

3.3.1 the ‘servicescape’The concept of a ‘servicescape’ was developed by Booms and Bitner to describe the environment in which a service process takes place (Figure 3.3). If you were to try to describe the differences a cus-tomer encountered when entering a branch of McDonald’s, compared with a small family-owned restaurant, the concept of servicescapes may be useful. Booms and Bitner defined a servicescape as ‘the environment in which the service is assembled and in which seller and customer interact, com-bined with tangible commodities that facilitate performance or communication of the service’ (Booms and Bitner, 1981, p. 36). There is evidence of the effect of servicescape on consumers’ intention to use a service (e.g. Hooper et al., 2013).

The design of a suitable service environment should explicitly consider the likely emotional states and expectations of target customers. Booms and Bitner distinguished between ‘high-load’ and ‘low-load’ environments, both of which can be used to suit particular emotional states and customer types. They noted that:

Figure 3.3 Servicescape – a conceptual framework

HOLISTIC PERCEPTION OF SERVICE ENVIRONMENT

SENSORY CUESVisual – cleanliness, lighting etc.

Sound – music, background noiseSmell – natural/artificial

SIGNAGEFunctional directionsEmotional messages

PROCESSESVisibility of service processes

Appearance of staff

BUILDING DESIGNSpaciousness

LayoutFurnishings

Leads to behavioural and emotional responses

APPROACH STAGE

Interest arousedApproach behaviour initiated

Perception of barriersto entry reduced

Interest aroused forfurther purchasesBarriers to furtherpurchases reduced

Explicit exit(service process finished)

Implicit exit (service providerencourages customer to leave)

EXPLORATION STAGE EXIT STAGE

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''A high-load signifies a high information rate; a low-load represents a low information rate. Uncertainty, novelty, and complexity are associated with high-load environments;

conversely a low-load environment communicates assurance, homogeneity, and simplicity. Bright colours, bright lights, loud noises, crowds, and movement are typical elements

of a high-load environment, while their opposites are characteristic of a low-load environment. People’s emotional needs and reactions at a given time

determine whether they will be attracted to a high- or a low-load environment.'' (Booms and Bitner, 1981, p. 39)

The servicescape must encourage target customers to enter the service environment in the first place. Booms and Bitner discuss ‘approach behaviour’ in terms of physically moving customers towards exploring an unfamiliar environment, affiliating with others in the environment through eye contact and performing a large number of tasks within the environment. Avoidance behaviour includes an opposite set of responses. The likelihood of approach behaviour is directly linked to the two dimensions of pleasure and arousal, with a stimulating and pleasing environment being most likely to attract custom. Brightly lit window displays, a prominent and open front door, and front-of-house greeting staff are typical actions designed to induce approach. A door that is hard to find or difficult to open is more likely to achieve the opposite effect. Having induced an approach, the servicescape should encourage further exploration (for example, a bank branch may try to promote related financial services to customers with attractively designed information posters and video screens). Finally, the servicescape may need to encourage customers to leave (restaurants and coffee shops that rely on fast turnaround of customers may design seats that become uncomfortable after a time, thereby discouraging customers from staying too long and denying their table to the next paying customer).

After entry to the service production system, the servicescape must be efficient and effective for the service provider in securing customers’ co-operation in the production system. Clearly explained roles for the customer, expressed in a friendly way, will facilitate this process of compliance. The physical aspects of the environment are brought to life by the actions of employees; for example, staff could be on hand to help customers who find themselves lost in the service process. Ultimately, the servicescape should encourage customers to repeat their visit.

In practice: Welcome to the servicescape

Service consumption usually takes place in a building provided by the service provider (although, of course, many services take place in the consumer’s own home). ‘Servicescape’ is a term used to describe the environ-ment in which a service is delivered and, to be successful, the servicescape has to do a number of things. First, it has to attract customers. Eye-catching displays such as those found in this coffee shop (Figure 3.4) must grab attention from potential customers who are passing by. Prospective customers should be encouraged to explore further and so restaurants place their menus in the win-dow and try to give customers a good view of the inside of the restaurant, either through clear windows or by using pictures showing tables that may be upstairs or

Figure 3.4 Designing an inviting servicescape

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3.3.2 Service ambienceAmbience is an important aspect of the servicescape and can be very difficult to define (see Rollo et al., 2009). A pleasant ambient environment may be taken for granted and ambient factors are often only noticed by customers when they are particularly bad. In a typical service, ambience can be attributed with a number of dimensions: lighting, colours, sounds, smell, temperature and the availability of signage to guide customers through the service system. These individual elements must work together to encourage initial approach to the service system, further exploration and finally exit from the service process. The elements of service ambience can work subconsciously to create a favaourable emotional response and this has led some commentators to ask whether it is ethical to manipulate customers’ response through ambient cues. When used together, ambient cues can create a unique signature identity for a service business to distinguish it from its near competitors. Chains of coffee shops may offer a fairly generic type of service, but in terms of ambient values, many people might con-sider a branch of Starbucks to be quite different from branches of Café Nero or Costa Coffee, for example.

The ambience of a service environment becomes particularly important for consumer evaluations where the purpose of service consumption satisfies hedonistic rather than utilitarian needs. Wakefield and Blodgett (1994) suggested that in situations of hedonic consumption, ambience had the capacity to increase approach and exploration behaviour, and resulted in longer duration of a visit to a service outlet. Ambience has less effect where the purpose of the visit to a service outlet is utilitarian. Atmospherics may be effective for a restaurant in obtaining a favourable response from diners dining out in the evening, but would be less effective for customers at lunchtime who seek the utilitarian benefits of eating quickly and cheaply, rather than the hedonic and social benefits of a leisurely meal.

Researchers have identified three patterns of responses to ambient cues – cognitive, affective and behavioural:

•Cognitive responses include the development of attitudes towards the service environment and service provider (e.g. Kang and Hillery, 1998), and evaluations of the credibility of the service provider (e.g. Sharma and Stafford, 2000).

•Affective responses include pleasure and arousal (Donavan and Rossiter’s, 1982) and a range of individual context-specific positive and negative emotions such as excitement, boredom and anger (Izard, 1977).

otherwise not visible. Barriers to further exploration must be reduced and, for this reason, many service establishments deliberately leave their front door open – even the effort of pushing the door may act as a barrier and deter some people. Inside, many restaurants employ ‘greeters’, who seek to rapidly commit the prospective customer to the restaurant and initiate the service process. Inside the restaurant, the servicescape must be functional for the employees, as well as creating the right ambience for the target customers. Sometimes, the servicescape can be subtly changed to meet different needs; for example, soft lighting may be used in the evening to create a leisurely atmosphere, while bright lighting is used for more hurried lunchtime diners. For special occasions, completely new servicescapes can be created; for example, restaurants often create a festive environment in the run-up to Christmas. It is not just the visual aspects of the servicescape that can be managed – restaurants also pay close attention to ambient music, which is typically faster at lunchtime and slower in the evening. Restaurants also use smells such as fresh baking or coffee to tempt prospective customers in. Although a lot of effort is spent on encouraging entry and exploration, the servicescape may also need to discourage customers from staying too long. At closing time, for example, staff typically want to clean up and go home as soon as possible, and a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle hints are used in an attempt to speed the customer’s departure, such as seat-ing which may provide welcome relief at first, but begins to feel uncomfortable after half an hour or so.

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•Behavioural responses include approach-avoidance behaviour (e.g. Kim and Runyan, 2011); time spent in the service environment (e.g. Harrell et al., 1980); level of consumption/purchase (Mattila and Wirtz, 2008).

Service providers frequently undertake experiments to test the consequences of different types of service ambience. These can range from a very small scale of variation in one aspect of ambience, for example new signage in the entrance area, through to a complete redesign of the whole outlet. A large chain would compare performance of the changed, experimental outlets with performance of a control group of service outlets which are similar in terms of size, location, local competitive pressure etc., the only difference being that their design is not changed. In a well-designed experiment, any change in performance in the experimental group could therefore be attributed to the new design treatment, and if change in performance is positive and cost-effective, this treatment will in due course be rolled out to the whole network of service outlets. As with any experimental marketing, there is a danger that not only will the company conducting the experiment by closely looking at the results, its com-petitors may be observing as well. If they notice that patronage appears to be greater in the experi-mental stores, they may use the knowledge gained from the experiment to redesign their own outlets.

Although ambience may be a matter of subjective judgement, service providers seek to specify the elements of ambience quite precisely in order to reproduce a similar customer experience from one service outlet to another and consistently over time. To some, such consistency is the basis of powerful brand building. To others, such consistency may become synonymous with boring uni-formity and undermine the excitement of new discovery which many would define as an essential element of customer experience.

LightingThe intensity, location and hue of lighting can transform a space by picking out positive features of a service environment and allowing other less pleasant aspects to disappear into the background. Many service outlets seek to exclude natural light with the aim of controlling the environment and reducing the temptation for customers’ eyes to wander outside. Retailers, for example, typically want customers to focus their attention on the stock in the store, and the sight of external cues is a distrac-tion from this. Lighting also has a safety function by ensuring that hazards are adequately lit at all times.

As well as having a practical function in inducing a cognitive response, lighting can also seek to induce an affective response. Soft lighting can create a warm inviting ambience which can encour-age approach behaviour and further exploration within the service outlet. The effects of lighting can be very subtle, and many retailers have realized that soft hues can flatter the appearance of individuals while harsher lighting has the opposite effect. Lighting can be adjusted during the day or week to suit different types of service encounters; for example, a large open space within a hotel which is brightly lit during the working day as a conference centre can be transformed by lighting to make a dance floor for a wedding reception at the weekend.

ColoursColour can have a role in attracting customers to a service outlet and encouraging exploration. Colour has now been extensively studied in a range of marketing and service-based contexts (e.g. Grimes and Doole, 1998; Gorn et al., 1997), and while it is difficult to define universal rules of colour, a number of findings can inform the design of the service environment.

Bright colours such as yellows and reds have come to be associated with speed, which might explain their use in many chains of fast-food outlets. Subdued pastel shades are associated with a calming influence and can be effective in service environments where customers face potentially high levels of stress, for example airport terminals and dentists’ waiting rooms.

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Although researchers have sought universal rules governing response to colour, there appear to be significant distortions based on race, gender, age and personality. It has been noted that colours associated with pleasure and fear are culturally determined and differences have been noted in responses to colour dependent upon age and gender (Silver and Ferrante, 1995).

SmellsDistinctive smells can encourage approach behaviour and further exploration by customers once within the service environment. Smells have a powerful ability to evoke memories and companies go to great lengths to understand which smells attract and which repel. Smell is often used in con-junction with other atmospheric cues to create an ambience of authenticity, for example the Eastern authenticity of a Chinese restaurant where smell combined with colour and décor can create the illusion of being in the Far East rather than Western Europe. The use of smells raises practical as well as ethical issues, and some of these are raised in the vignette ‘Smells sell?’.

In practice: Smells sell?

Smell has been used for a long time by organizations to create a pleasant service environment. Coffee shops have often circulated the smell of freshly roasted beans by the entrance door in the hope that such smells would be an irresistible invitation to passers-by to enter. Supermarkets have managed smells carefully, for example by extracting unpleasant smells of fish and detergents, and instead circulating fresh bread smells. The effect of smell on consumers’ evaluation of a service experience, and their sub-sequent purchase/repurchase/recommendation, has been well researched (see, for example, Bosmans, 2006). Among a number of reported findings, the smell of mulled wine has been seen to increase sales of Christmas food, and the smell of toast has been associated with sales of electric toasters. Improvements in technology no longer constrain a service provider to those smells that are an inherent part of their production processes – such as bread smells for a bakery and coffee smells for a coffee shop. Manufactured smells that are completely unrelated to production processes can be imported. The electrical shop selling toasters, for example, would almost certainly have to import an artificial smell, rather than producing it naturally by toasting bread.

Why are companies so keen to spend money creating artificial smells? Most simply, if a smell is seen to work, its use will be further developed. A large multi-outlet chain can experiment with smells by measuring the effects of specific smells on sales in experimental outlets, compared with sales in matched control outlets. More fundamentally, smell can act as part of a service organization’s distinctive identity, in much the same way as its distinctive visual identity. Even with a blindfold, many book-buyers may be able to recognize the distinctive smell of a Waterstone’s bookshop, or of a Starbucks coffee shop. Why do smells have such effects on buyers? Stimulus–response models can provide some explanation. Some responses may be part of our basic psychological make-up; for example, the smell of fresh food to a hungry person is likely to create a desire for food. However, other stimuli may have a more indirect effect through association with evoked memories. There is no physiological reason why the smell of popcorn should help a video rental business to hire out more videos, but an effect arises from association of popcorn with previous visits to the cinema, maybe associated with happy childhood memories. Of course, a smell that evokes such a response in one person may have no effect in another, and services organizations expand-ing overseas need to understand cultural definitions of smell, as well as basic physiological responses.

Is the use of smells in the service environment ethical? Can the use of artificial smells be justified where there is no link to actual production methods, and some would argue the company is cynically exploiting consumers’ subconscious memories? Are some groups of customers particularly vulnerable to such an approach, for example children, who may be attracted to a store by the smell of confectionery? Or is the use of smell evidence of services organizations’ strong customer focus and their determination to create a pleasant experience, whose success can be measured by customers returning and recommend-ing the business to others?

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SoundsSimilar to smells, the sound present in the service environment may be very subtle and its effects only noticed by customers when it becomes intrusive. One extreme form of sound environment is complete silence, which may be reminiscent of the study area in a traditional library. Many customers may find silence intimidating because of the presumed social-norm pressure to maintain silence. Dialogue between customers and the service personnel may be perceived as being more difficult where the customer’s requests may be the focus of unwanted attention from others in the environ-ment, rather than having their dialogue lost in the anonymity of background noise.

Sound can have utilitarian and hedonic functions. The pace of music can quicken bodily pro-cesses; for example, fast music may be associated with more rapid movement around the store, whereas slow music will slow the pace of customers’ movement. Sounds can also create a distinct identity for a service outlet; for example, Italian music may reinforce the Italian-style décor to suspend diners’ belief that they are not in the centre of Manchester, but eating in a little piece of Italy.

Service providers carefully choose their music to match their target audiences. A service business targeting customers in their fifties may identify with 1960s music played in the service setting and this may cause a behavioural response of prolonging the time spent there. The same audience of fifty-year-olds may be alienated by the sound of a modern boy band and this may reinforce avoid-ance behaviour and a feeling of not being able to identify with the service provider.

temperatureMany physiological studies have demonstrated the effects of temperature and humidity on human performance (e.g. Van De Vliert, and Van Yperen, 1996). Particularly high levels of temperature and humidity may induce a lethargic response which is often contrary to service providers’ desire to encourage exploration and activity within the service environment. For this reason, many retailers install air conditioning in their outlets to encourage greater exploration behaviour.

In cases where a compliant response is sought, temperatures may be raised. During the middle section of a long-haul flight, airlines typically raise the temperature to induce sleep by passengers, thereby allowing the perception of the length of the flight to be shortened.

SignageSignage has a practical function of guiding customers around the service environment, but signs can vary in their degree of perceived friendliness and formality. Signs in uniform colours such as black on white or yellow, using a standard font such as Arial, may be very functional in a hospital or railway station, but convey little feeling. Friendly fonts, varied colours and imaginative forms of guidance (for example footprints painted on the floor and ‘racetracks’ cut into carpeted areas to guide people through the store) can help to induce affective as well as cognitive responses.

DécorThe décor of a service outlet comprises the furniture and general style of decoration applied. Most service environments have to balance practicality against aesthetic appeal. Tables and chairs which look smart and trendy may be much more difficult to clean and maintain than their practical and plain alternatives.

Décor can be used with colour, sound and smell to make a distinctive identity for a chain of service outlets; for example, the style of tables, chairs, floors and the wall covering may differ from one chain of coffee shops to another, creating a distinctive identity for each.

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appearance of employeesWe will look at the role of employees in making successful service encounters in Chapter 10. For now, we can note that the appearance of employees may be considered to be part of the ambience of the service environment. Physical attributes of front-line employees include their demographics (e.g. age, sex and ethnicity), physical attractiveness and non-verbal cues (e.g. posture, facial expres-sion, smile). The dress of employees contributes to the ambience of the service environment. Some have taken dress to include not just the clothes that people wear, but also body modifications, such as hairstyle, nails, jewellery and tattoos (Eicher and Roach-Higgins, 1993).

Customers should be able to identify with the physical characteristics of front-line employees. The physical characteristics should also be in accordance with their expectations. For a wine bar targeting young professional people, the ambience is likely to be much improved if front-line staff are young, fit and glamorous rather than elderly, overweight and with tattoos (Söderlund and Julander, 2009).

It has been found that front-line employees’ dress can influence customers’ initial response towards the service provider. One study found that where front-line staff wore a professional uniform, customers rated the service quality of the outlet more highly compared to a situation where they wore casual personal clothes (Shao et al., 2006). The appropriateness of front-line employees’ dress has been shown to influence customers, expectation of service quality and their subsequent purchasing (Kim and Ok, 2010).

Sometimes the ethnicity of front-line serving staff can add to the ambience and authenticity of the service experience. A Chinese restaurant employing non-Chinese front-line staff will probably lack the authenticity of a restaurant in which Chinese personnel are visible.

3.3.3 Dramaturgical approachesService encounters can be conceptualized as a drama, similar to a theatrical production. At first sight there would appear to be many similarities between service encounters and theatrical drama:

the stage – where the service encounter takes place;roles –the purpose of service employees (and customers);scripts – specified procedures for providing service;costumes – uniforms worn by employees.

The stage is the location where the encounter takes place and can itself affect the role behaviour of both buyer and seller. A scruffy service outlet may result in lowered expectations by the customer and in turn a lower level of service delivery by service personnel (see Bitner, 1990). Both parties work to a script that is determined by their respective role expectations. An air stewardess is acting out a script in the manner in which she performs her safety and customer service duties. The script might include precise details about what actions should be performed, when and by whom, including the words to be used in verbal communication. In reality, there may be occasions when the stewardess would like to do anything but wish an awkward customer a nice day.

The theatrical analogy extends to the costumes that service personnel wear. When a doctor wears a white coat or a bank manager a suit, they are emphasizing to customers the role they are playing. Like the actor who uses costumes to convince his audience that he is in fact Henry VIII, the bank manager uses the suit to convince customers that he is capable of taking the types of decision which a competent bank manager takes.

The concept of role playing has been used to apply the principles of social psychology to explain the interaction between service producer and service consumer (e.g. Solomon et al., 1985). It sees

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people as actors who act out roles that can be distinguished from their own personality. In the sociological literature, roles are assumed as a result of conditioning by the society and culture of which a person is a member. Individuals typically play multiple roles in life, as family members, workers, members of football teams etc., each of which comes with a set of socially conditioned role expectations. A person playing the role of worker is typically conditioned to act with reliability, loyalty and trustworthiness. An analysis of the expectations associated with each role becomes a central part of role analysis. The many roles that an individual plays may result in conflicting role expectations, as where the family role of a father leads to a series of role expectations that are incompatible with his role expectations as a business manager. Each role may be associated with competing expectations about the allocation of leisure time.

In a service encounter, both customers and service personnel are playing roles that can be separated from their underlying personality. Organizations normally employ staff not to act in accordance with this personality, but to act out a specified role (although, of course, personality characteristics can contribute to effective role performance). It follows that employees of banks are socialized to play the role of cautious and prudent adviser and to represent the values of the bank in their dealings with customers. Similarly, customers play roles when dealing with service providers. A customer of a bank may try to act the role of prudent borrower when approaching a bank manager for a small business loan, even though this might be in contrast to his fun-loving role as a family member.

Both buyers and sellers bring role expectations into their interaction. From an individual customer’s point of view, there may be clear expectations of the role that a service provider should play. Most people would expect a bank manager to be dressed appropriately to play his or her role effectively, or a store assistant to be courteous and attentive. Of interest to marketers are the specific role expectations held by particular segments within society. As an example, a significant segment of young people might be happy to be given a train timetable by an enquiry office assistant and expected to read it themselves. On the other hand, the role expectations of many older people might be that the assistant should go through the timetable and read it out for them. Similarly, differences in role expectations can be identified between different countries. While customers of supermarkets in the USA often expect the checkout operator to pack their bags for them, this is not normally part of the role expectation held by UK shoppers.

It is not just customers who bring role expectations to the interaction process. Service pro-ducers also have their idea of the role that their customers should perform within the co-creation process. In the case of hairdressers, there may be an expectation that customers should give clear instructions at the outset, arrive for the appointment on time and (in some countries) give an adequate tip. Failure of customers to perform their role expectations can have a demotivating effect on front-line personnel. Retail sales staff who have been trained to act in their role may be able to withstand abusive customers who are acting out of role – others may resort to shouting back at their customers.

The service encounter can be seen as a process of simultaneous role playing in which a dynamic relationship is developed. In this process, both parties can adapt to the role expectations held by the other party. The quality of the service encounter is a reflection of the extent to which each party’s role expectations are met. An airline that casts its cabin crews as the most caring crews in the business may raise customers’ expectations of their role in a manner that the crews cannot deliver. The result would be that customers perceive a poor-quality service. By contrast, the same standard of service may be perceived as high quality by a customer travelling on another airline, which had made no attempt to try to project such a caring role on their crews. The quality of the service encounter can be seen as the difference between service expectations

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and perceived delivery. Where the service delivery surpasses these expectations, a high quality of service is perceived (although sometimes, exceeding role expectations can be perceived poorly, as where a waiter in a restaurant offers incessant gratuitous advice to clients who simply want to be left alone).

Over time, role expectations change on the part of both service staff and their customers. In some cases, customer expectations of service staff have been raised, as in the case of standards expected from many public services. In other instances, expectations have been progressively lowered, as where customers of petrol stations no longer expect staff to attend to their car, but are prepared to fill their tank and to clean their windscreen themselves. Change in customers’ expectations usually begins with an innovative early adopter group and subsequently trickles through to other groups. It was mainly young people who were prepared to accept the simple, inflexible and impersonal role played by staff of fast-food restaurants, which many older segments have subsequently accepted as a role model for restaurant staff.

Goodwin (1996) has described how a role-playing drama can involve game-based strategies to outwit an opponent. Service providers sometimes manipulate customers’ perceptions of reality, for example by concealing queues to make them appear shorter than they actually are. Some customers also play games, by trying to obtain a higher level of service than the one to which they are entitled (e.g. airline customers seeking an upgrade). Customers may seek reward by abusing guarantees and complaint-handling policies, complaining about non-existent problems and demanding refunds.

In practice: all the world’s a stage

An analogy is often drawn between front- line service workers and actors in a theatre. Typically, both may seek to create an illusion in the eyes of their audiences. The actor play-ing Romeo in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet can use costumes and a stage set to take his audience back to Italy in the Middle Ages. The members of the audience suspend belief in the reality around them until they leave the theatre and sixteenth-century Italy suddenly becomes twenty-first-century Manchester again. Many service providers similarly aim to suspend belief through the use of costumes and ‘stage’ props. Many people go to a coffee shop to escape from the rush of everyday life, and some UK chains have tried to create the illusion of escape to a typical Viennese or Parisian coffee house, for example. But is the analogy between theatre actors and front-line service personnel a valid one? The front-line coffee-shop worker arguably has a much harder task than the stage actor. Unlike the actor, he has to interact with his ‘audience’, treating each customer as an individual and entering into a dialogue, in contrast to the typical stage actor, who, with a few exceptions, does not directly interact with the audience. Nevertheless, many services organizations base their recruitment on ‘audition’-type practices, in which the ability to ‘perform’ can be just as important a selection criterion as formal qualifications.

Figure 3.5 acting a part?

to come

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3.3.4 FlowThe concept of flow has featured frequently in studies of users’ interaction with service processes. The concept of flow has been defined by Csikszentmihalyi as a:

''. . . mode of experience when an individual becomes absorbed in their activity. This mode is characterised by a narrowing of the focus of awareness, so that irrelevant perceptions

and thought are filtered out; by loss of self-conscious, by a responsiveness to clear goals and unambiguous feedback; and by a sense of control over the environment . . .''

(Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, p. 36)

In a state of flow, use of a service should be autotelic, that is, intrinsically motivated by a task which is worth doing for its own sake. From being simply a context for undertaking a simple transaction, an individual in a state of flow may enjoy the experience of finding out about related services, or other product/price offers that better meets their needs.

In one study, the antecedents of flow were described as the perception of clear goals, an immedi-ate feedback and challenges that are matched with skills. Indicators of flow and its intensity have included scores that measure:

• the balance between an individual’s skills and the challenges they face;

• their focus of attention;

• loss of self-consciousness;

• feelings of control;

•momentary loss of anxiety and constraint;

• significant feelings of pleasure.

However, researchers have noted context-specific effects on flow, with a suggestion that some per-sonal characteristics may enable individuals to engage in flow experiences more frequently, more intensely and for longer periods than others (Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi, 1988).

The study of flow originated in challenging sports contexts, for example white water rafting, but has since been applied to many other leisure-based service contexts. More recently, the concept of flow has been extensively applied to web-based situations. Web-based service providers consider the achievement of a state of flow in their customers to be desirable for a number of reasons. Individuals are presumed to lose self-consciousness and distort the passage of time. Lengthy periods of time may pass by, but the site user may only be conscious of having been at the site for a few minutes. A positive flow discourages a desire to leave and in many online service encounters the longer an individual is at a site, the more profitable they are, whether they are spending money directly or simply clicking through on advertisers’ links.

Interactivity is a key to the achievement of a state of flow, and rapid feedback facilitates flow. To remain in flow, users need to be presented with challenges that they perceive as achievable and that are subsequently and rapidly reinforced through feedback. This may be something simple, such as planning a train journey and getting the best possible time and fare information through a process of exploration and comparison. Many online service providers have developed the concept of flow to a much greater extent, especially where a website is a destination for service fulfilment in itself (such as a music download site or chat room), rather than the means of obtaining information about a service that will substantially be provided elsewhere (for example, an airline ticket booking site). The concept of flow is well illustrated in the numerous online gambling operations that have developed (see Thinking around the subject, below). A root cause of online gambling’s success is its ability to capture flow through users’ desire to take risks and to attain rapid feedback.

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thinking around the subject: taking a punt online

The gambling industry in Britain is substantial, with a turnover of over £84 billion in 2006/07 (Gambling Commission, 2009). The most popular gambling activities in 2007 were the National Lottery Draw (57 per cent of the UK population had participated in the past year), scratchcards (20 per cent), betting on horse races (17 per cent) and playing slot machines (14 per cent).

Gambling in Britain has been in long-term decline. Statistics provided for the Gambling Bill in 2005 showed that the number of people participating in gambling activities had declined from 37.5 million in 1966 to 28 million in 2004. However, online gambling has been increasing rapidly and a Keynote report published in 2011 showed that expenditure online had reached £11.9 billion (Keynote, 2011). The Gambling Commission had estimated that 6 per cent of the population had used an Internet site for gambling. The National Lottery was the most popular gambling site for punters, making it one of the 40 most-visited sites in the UK. William Hill came in second, followed by Partypoker.com.

The appeal of online service to gambling companies is overwhelming. Growth in the UK has been driven by a range of gambling, betting and online casino sites, and not just by the National Lottery. Gamblers have been attracted by the speed and convenience of betting online, facilitated by greater availability of broadband Internet access.

Many of the traditional high-street betting shops have developed a web presence, where they have much lower transaction costs compared to their town-centre and racecourse shops, for which they have to pay high overheads. By moving their customers online, the overhead costs of running a branch network can be greatly reduced. Companies can also use the Internet to overcome problems of inseparability by locating their operations in obscure offshore countries where taxation is lower. By going online, betting companies can get access to customers who might not traditionally have considered visiting a betting shop. The Internet also allows access to groups of people who may otherwise be prevented by law from being served. The Internet recognizes no international boundaries, and it has proved difficult to prevent citizens of a country where gambling is illegal from using a gambling website based in another country. It can also in practice be much more difficult to prevent access to under-age players, whose identity can-not be as readily established online as face to face.

Above all else, gambling companies like to go online because of the addictive nature of the Internet. Once an individual achieves a state of ‘flow’, they have a tendency to distort time and lose self-conscious-ness. Gambling meets many of the criteria for establishing flow, especially the interactivity of challenges and the rapid feedback.

Of course, online gambling has raised many ethical and legal issues. Many countries restrict access to gambling services, in the belief that they may be associated with a range of social disorders. However, the nature of the Internet makes the medium both particularly attractive to gambling operators and, at the same time, particularly difficult to control. The US government, frustrated by the inability of its anti-gambling laws to control offshore online operations, has resorted to a number of more indirect approaches to control these companies, including making it illegal for American banks to carry out transactions with such companies, and effectively preventing executives of the gambling companies from visiting the USA for fear of being arrested.

Is online gambling the perfect business model for online service delivery? Is the market so attractive that competition between companies would inevitably intensify, forcing down profitability? Or would intense competition result in even more devious practices being used to make customers addicted to gambling online? Given the international environment in which online companies cross national bor-ders, how could governments hope to regulate this sector? Indeed, should it be regulated?

3.3.5 ServuctionThe frameworks that we have looked at so far take fairly company-focused definitions of the service environment. Servuction takes a slightly different perspective by concentrating on consumers’ perceptions of a service environment, and effectively, they define the service concept, rather than the service provider. The framework, developed by Eiglier and Langeard (1987), emphasizes

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experiential aspects of service consumption and is based on the idea of organizations providing consumers with complex bundles of benefits (Figure 3.6).

Components of the servuction model combine to create the experience for the consumer. These other components comprise the physical environment, contact personnel of the service provider and customers. In addition, the servuction system comprises unseen processes of the service provider. Everyone and everything that comes into contact with the consumer is effectively deliv-ering the service. Bateson (1989) has noted that identifying the servuction system can be difficult because of the often large number of contacts between the service provider and the customers. The servuction approach is particularly relevant to services that involve high levels of input from fellow consumers or third-party producers. Consumers essentially create their own bundle of benefits from the contributory elements of the service offer. The servuction model has been applied to the marketing of towns as tourism and shopping destinations (Warnaby and Davies, 1997) in which consumers must essentially define their own bundle of benefits from the complexity of facilities provided by multiple organizations within the town. One person’s definition of the benefits of a leisure visit to Paris may be quite different from another person’s – only consumers can define the service offer that matters to them.

3.4 the effects on customer experience of other customersMany services can only sensibly be produced in large batches, while the consumers who use the service buy only individual units of the service. It follows therefore that services such as train journeys, meals in a restaurant and visits to the theatre are consumed in the presence of other customers. Here, there is said to be an element of joint consumption of service benefits. A play cannot be produced just for one patron and a train cannot run for just one passenger – a number of customers jointly consume one unit of service output. An environment is created in which the behaviour pattern of any one customer during the service process can directly affect the experiential

Figure 3.6 Servuction – a conceptual framework

Other customers

Serviceoffer 1

Serviceoffer 2

Serviceoffer n

Other customers

My bundle of service benefitsbased on selected:• service processes• service environments• fellow customers

Core serviceprocessesand values

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values of the service for all consumers. In the theatre, the visitor who talks during the performance spoils the enjoyment of the performance for others.

Researchers have observed an effect on consumers’ satisfaction of the density of other customers present in the service process, although evidence of effects is mixed. In a retail context, Machleit et al. (2000) found that higher levels of perceived crowding lowered customers’ satisfaction. Somewhat different findings were obtained by Eroglu et al. (2005), who proposed a model linking perceived crowding with emotions, value and satisfaction and concluded that crowding had a positive influence on retail customers’ level of satisfaction. The apparent contradiction between these studies may be explained by the finding that while crowding with fellow customers was negatively associated with hedonic benefits, it was not associated with utilitarian benefits. Pan and Siemens (2011) distinguished between retail settings and more intangible service settings and found that the rela-tionship between density of customers and behavioural intention was relatively simple and linear in the case of retail contexts, but more complex in service settings such as hairdressers. They noted that even this distinction was a simplification, because the results changed where customers were under a time pressure.

Further evidence of the complexity of customer satisfaction across a range of levels of crowding was found by Argo et al. (2005) who conducted field experiments in a retail context by manipulat-ing the number of fellow shoppers. They found a non-linear V-shape function, indicating that when the number of shoppers increases from zero to one person, negative emotions decrease. But they found that when the number increased from one person to three, negative emotions increased.

It is not just the absolute number of other customers in the service environment that may affect any individual’s satisfaction, but also the nature of those other customers and what they are doing. A study by Söderlund (2011) found that visible consumption and purchasing activities by other customers had an effect on an individual’s attitude towards a retailer and their overall evaluation of it – if lots of people were busy eating, drinking, or buying and generally looking happy, this would result in the customer having a more favourable evaluation of the service provider and being more likely to purchase. It has also been suggested that satisfaction with the service environment will be greater where there is perceived similarity of social standing between an individual and their fellow consumers. In a study of retailers, Dickson found that individuals tended to avoid stores that were used by people perceived as being different from their own perceived social status. Many bar owners realize that an important factor influencing consumers’ decision about whether to enter and stay at the bar is based on whether the people in the bar are considered to be ‘their kind of people’.

The actions of fellow consumers are often therefore an important element of the service experi-ence and service companies seek to manage customer–customer interaction. By various methods, organizations seek to remove adverse elements of these encounters and to strengthen those ele-ments that add to all customers’ enjoyment. Some commonly used methods of managing encoun-ters between customers include the following:

•Selecting customers on the basis of their ability to interact positively with other customers. Where the enjoyment of a service is significantly influenced by the presence of other customers, formal or informal selection criteria can be used to try to ensure that only those customers who are likely to contribute positively to service encounters are accepted. Examples of formal selection criteria include tour companies who set age limits for certain holidays – people booking an 18–30 holiday can be assured that they will not be holidaying with children or elderly people whose attitudes towards loud music might prevent enjoyment of their own lifestyle. Formal selection criteria can include inspecting the physical appearance of potential customers – many nightclubs and restaurants set dress standards in order to preserve a high-quality environment

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in which service encounters take place. Informal selection criteria are aimed at encouraging some groups who add to customers’ satisfaction with the service environment, while discourag-ing those who detract from it. Colour schemes, service ranges, advertising and pricing can be used to discourage certain types of customer. Bars that charge high prices for drinks and offer a comfortable environment will be informally excluding the segment of the population whose aim is to get drunk as cheaply as possible.

•Determining rules of behaviour expected from customers. The behaviour of one customer can significantly affect other customers’ enjoyment of a service. Examples include smoking in a restaurant (which is now against the law in many countries), talking during a cinema show and playing loud music in public transport. The simplest strategy for influencing behaviour is to make known the standards of expected behaviour and to rely on customers’ goodwill to act in accordance with these expectations. Where rules are not obeyed, the intervention of service personnel may be called for. Failure to intervene can result in a negative service encounter continuing for the affected party, and the service organization may be perceived as not caring by its failure to enforce rules. Against this, intervention that is too heavy-handed may alienate the offender, especially if the rule is perceived as one that has little popular support. The most positive service encounter results from intervention that is perceived as a gentle reminder by the offender and as valuable corrective action by other customers.

•Facilitating positive customer–customer interaction. For many services, an important part of the overall benefit is derived from positive interaction with other customers. Holidaymakers, people attending a conference and students of a college can all derive significant benefit from the interaction with their peer group. A holiday group where nobody talks to each other may restrict the opportunities for shared enjoyment. The service providers can seek to develop bonds between customers by, for example, introducing customers to one another or arranging events where they can meet socially.

Figure 3.7 Cheltenham races. (Copyright Cheltenham tourism/David Sellman)

In practice: a day at the races

Services are often produced and consumed in public. Indeed, one of the benefits of a service may be the ambience that is provided by a crowd of fellow customers. One reason for the continuing high attendances at horse-race meetings, in the face of increasing levels of televised racing and online gambling, is the atmosphere that is gener-ated by thousands of fans simultaneously cheering their horse on. But this atmosphere needs to be carefully managed if it is not to detract from the overall service offer. The horse-racing authorities are keen to avoid problems that have been experi-enced in the past by football clubs. The latter increasingly manage the expected behaviour of supporters, mindful of the fact that live football increasingly targets women and family groups, rather than being the traditional all-male pre-serve. Football clubs have become more vigilant in curbing antisocial behaviour, such as racially sensitive chanting and the use of flags and banners that obscure fellow fans’ view of the game, as well as in controlling drunken and disorderly behaviour.

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3.4.1 the Internet service delivery environment‘Servicescape’ was discussed earlier in this chapter as a model for understanding service processes and the environment in which consumer–producer interaction takes place. You will recall that the model recognized the importance of environmental cues for encouraging approach behaviour, exploration and, eventually, departure. Can a similar approach be applied to online environments?

A number of studies have sought to extend the principles of Bitner’s original servicescape model to online environments. Many such approaches have used Bitner’s stimulus–organism–response model, initially developed by Mehrabian and Russell (1974). But what are the electronic equiva-lents of stimuli such as store atmosphere, layout, smells and the body language used by staff during the service encounter? Web-based stimuli are much narrower in their scope than those typically encountered in a face-to-face encounter. Smell and body language, for example, are just two of the cues that have been difficult or impossible to emulate in an online environment. Many studies have therefore focused on the content and design of a website.

Shih (1998) developed the concepts of ‘telepresence’ (defined as the extent to which a website visitor feels a real presence of the company behind the website) and information vividness (defined as the way in which the breadth and depth of information are presented and appeal to the senses). To what extent did the website provide all the information that a visitor was looking for, and how vividly did the required information stand out from other information that was of no interest? Did the imagery used create liking for the organization or specific service processes?

The web environment must encourage potential visitors to click through to the site in the first place, so the design of banner ads elsewhere on the Internet becomes an Internet version of a greeter at the door beckoning people to enter. When they have arrived at the site, the design of the site should encourage exploration. Links to other pages must be clearly and logically laid out, and combine both rational and emotional reasons for a visitor to follow through to another page. The information content of the site must appear relevant to a visitor and be of such a high quality that it develops credibility in the source and a desire to click through to additional pages. A number of studies have demonstrated the importance of high-quality information for visitors’ evaluations of a website (e.g. Elliott and Speck, 2005; Park and Kim, 2003).

As well as providing credible factual information about the service on offer, a website often needs to develop an emotional appeal. The use of aesthetics and imagery that are appropriate to the target audience can help to differentiate otherwise similar websites. However, a balance must be struck, as in real-life service encounters, between providing information that users really need and the danger that this becomes lost among emotional messages.

Finally, the online environment must be user friendly. Human–computer interaction has emerged as a field of study of the way people use technology, and the study of how visitors use a website has parallels with how visitors interact in a face-to-face encounter. Website usability refers to the ease of navigation around a site, the ease of learning how to use the site and the level and quality of support available. The speed of download, or the time taken to receive a reply to a request, is analogous to the time that a consumer waits for service in a face-to-face encounter. Bachelder (2000) noted that slow download speeds could be just as off-putting as a queue for service. A number of studies have shown that fast download speeds are crucial to achieving a high rate of flow, discussed in Section 3.2 (McMillan and Hwang, 2002; Novak et al., 2000). There is evidence that slow download speed has a negative effect on consumers’ emotional responses (Rose and Straub, 2001), leading to early exit from a site. Page and Lepkowska-White (2002) noted a significant correlation between download speeds and the number of pages visited, the time spent at the website and attitudes towards a business.

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3.5 the effects on customer experience of health, safety and security considerations

Often, the experience that marketers want to offer their customers may not be the same as what operations managers and employees are able or willing to deliver. The desire for a high level of cus-tomer experience may sound fine in theory, but be difficult to deliver in practice. A true marketing orientation and focus on customers is increasingly being challenged by the need to ensure that a service is provided safely and securely.

The inseparability of services implies that customers effectively walk into the ‘factory’ where their service is produced. This analogy is important when it comes to understanding the need to ensure a safe and secure environment in which a service is produced. As we will see in this section, services organizations often face challenges in reconciling the need to maximize customer experi-ence, while at the same time maintaining a safe and secure service process.

A contemporary example of the issues raised concerns smoking in service outlets such as bars and restaurants. For many bars and restaurants, smokers may have been good customers, spending more than average, and likely to defect to an alternative venue if smoking was restricted. Marketers had to make the initial calculation whether the loss of smokers would be offset by attraction of additional customers for whom a smoke-free environment was more attractive. But there was a bigger consideration that goes beyond marketing. Should a company run the risk that its employees may sue it for the harmful effects of passive smoking? Marketers may now be frustrated by legis-lation to ban smoking in workplace environments, now adopted in many European countries. Given the inseparability of services, a ban on smoking at work to protect employees effectively reduces marketers’ discretion, even if market research indicates that a segment of customers would prefer a smoking environment.

At the heart of many decisions about the service encounter is the idea of risk assessment. What is an acceptable risk has changed over time, and varies between countries. Very few services could be considered completely risk-free – even serving a cup of coffee from a coffee takeaway stall runs the risk that the water may be too hot and scald the customer. But the likelihood of this happening, coupled with having reasonable processes in place to make sure this does not happen, means that coffee shops quite happily accept the risk of serving coffee. Sometimes, risk is a central concern of a service encounter, and marketing people generally do not need any reminder of its importance. An outward-bound adventure centre offering courses in abseiling and canoeing, for example, must have robust risk assessment procedures in place, with clearly specified guidelines for managing these risks (for example, allocating a minimum supervisor-to-student ratio and requiring the use of safety equipment and compulsory training for supervisors). At other times, it may be very easy to ignore risk, and companies may fail to undertake a proper risk assessment. What about the risk to the health of staff and customers working in a shop or leisure facility with inadequate ventilation or poor lighting?

There have been a number of cases of reported conflicts between the marketing function of a service business, wanting to improve customer experience at lower cost, and the operating depart-ments, which must ultimately carry responsibility for shortcomings in operating practice. An inquiry into the sinking of the passenger ferry Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987 noted the opera-tional pressure to depart on time (and therefore reduce customer complaints about delays), even if this meant the ship leaving with its doors open, a consequence of which was the capsizing of the ship and the loss of 193 lives.

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In practice: Dress to impress

Visitors to Bavaria’s beer festivals come away with memories of the beer and barmaids. The ser-vice encounter is made memorable by the distinc-tive dress worn by barmaids, which combines tradition with visual appeal (especially to men, who make up a large part of the festivals’ mar-ket). The barmaids’ dress, known as a ‘dirndl’, comprises a figure-hugging dress and apron with a tight, low-cut top. The sight of a barmaid dressed in a dirndl and carrying several glasses of beer helps to transform a drink into an experi-ence. Customers love the dress, brewers love it and apparently the barmaids do too. But this apparently happy service environment was threatened in 2006 by the EU’s Optical Radiation Directive, by which employers of staff who work outdoors, such as those in Bavaria’s beer gardens, must ensure that staff are protected against the risk of sunburn. The serious point underlying the EU legisla-tion is that in the UK alone about 70,000 new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed each year. Faced with this directive, how should the provider of an outdoor service encounter react? If they leave scantily dressed employees exposed to the sun, they could face fines, and possible legal action by employees who subsequently develop skin cancer. But, contrary to many newspaper reports, the EU directive does not specifically require Bavarian barmaids (or outdoor workers elsewhere) to cover up their low-cut dresses. Management must undertake a risk assessment and consider what is appropriate to a specific service encounter. Perhaps the unique character of the Munich Oktoberfest could be preserved with the help of sun cream and by reducing each barmaid’s hours of exposure to the sun.

Figure 3.8 a traditional Oktoberfest waitress

Managers must be very careful to specify a service encounter in a manner that rigorously addresses the issue of risk. Too often, when a service encounter results in injury or death, the initial reaction is to blame the low-level operative who made a mistake. However, this mistake has to be seen in the context of pressures from other sources within the service production process. For example, the immediate cause of a train crash might be a driver who wrongly crossed a red signal. Although this driver may take the immediate blame for the crash, further enquiry often reveals a catalogue of service design failures, for example raising questions about the recruitment and train-ing of drivers, failure by management to rectify a problem which had previously been reported to it, and management’s commitment to the installation of the latest safety equipment that would have prevented this type of accident. There have been calls for greater use of the charge of corporate manslaughter against managers of companies who design and implement unsafe services, and it has been argued that pursuing a prosecution against an errant junior employee would not serve the public interest as much as a prosecution of the managers who designed poor service processes in the first place.

Service marketers must increasingly be aware of the possibilities for terrorism to disrupt their service encounters. Terrorism can impact on marketing in a number of ways:

•The need to take security measures may make a service process unattractive to some consumers, who no longer use the service. For example, there has been a suggestion that increased delays at airports due to security screening have led some people to believe that the hassle of flying is too great, and so they have chosen other means of transport, or not travelled at all.

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•The fear of terrorism itself may deter some people from using a service. For example, few people ventured into the restaurants and bars of central Belfast during the periods of the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland. With the return of peace, restaurants in Belfast’s ‘Golden Mile’ are busy once more.

•By contrast, rigorous security measures may be perceived by many customers as a price worth paying in order to ensure that they can consume the service without fear of interruption. For example, the Israeli airline El Al is acknowledged to have the strictest security of any airline, which has been used by the airline to promote reassurance to consumers.

Although terrorism has become a much more important item on the agenda of many services organizations since the events of 11 September 2001, terrorism is of course not new. Companies operating in Northern Ireland and Israel have long experience of designing the threat of terrorism into their service blueprint.

Terrorist attacks can affect manufacturers as well as service organizations, but their effects on service organizations can be very much greater. Manufacturing companies can take steps to protect the security of their production facility by controlling and confining access to employees only. Cases of deliberate damage to manufactured goods are rare, and manufacturers have taken steps to reduce this risk throughout their distribution channels, for example by introducing tamper-evident pack-aging. This is in contrast to services organizations, where customers typically enter the production process and cannot be easily screened out in the way that unauthorized entry to a factory can be prevented. Indeed, the whole point of most services is for customers to enter the service ‘factory’, so, with relatively open access, risks are much greater.

Services organizations have become targets for terrorist groups. Sometimes, the group may be campaigning against a specific company. This has been the case, for example, with the direct action that has been taken against the companies who supplied services to Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company that has undertaken experiments on live animals and which has been targeted by numer-ous animal rights groups. At other times, a service company may simply represent the values of a group that protestors are opposed to, and an attack is a means of making this point publicly and with maximum impact. When left-wing groups of protestors smashed windows at a branch of Royal Bank of Scotland during the G20 summit of leaders of the richest nations in London in April 2009, they probably did not have any particular grudge against the bank, but the bank symbolized a set of capitalist values and interventions in the world to which the group was opposed. Whatever the reason, services offer relatively easy opportunities for terrorist groups to have great impact through the publicity and disruption that their actions cause. Attacks on underground trains, aircraft and shopping centres can attract considerable publicity for a cause.

What lengths should an organization go to in order to reduce the possibilities of a disruptive attack on its service processes? There are a number of issues here:

•What is the best estimate of the probability of a terrorist attack actually occurring? Many services organizations use risk assessment methodologies, often employing specialist risk assessors.

•What will be the downside cost of an attack actually occurring, in terms of physical damage and damage to an organization’s reputation?

•What is the public’s perception of the probability of an attack and its likely consequences? Consumers often make apparently irrational choices; for example, over the past couple of dec-ades it has been estimated that the probability of being injured or killed in a terrorist aircraft attack is much less than the probability of being injured or killed in a road traffic accident. Despite this, it is quite common for the fear of flying to be much greater than fear of driving.

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•What is the public’s perception of measures taken to reduce the threat of terrorism? Are con-sumers likely to be deterred by extensive security measures, such as body searches and identity checking, or do these provide a source of reassurance?

•What security measures are operationally feasible? Would it, for example, be feasible to search all passengers entering a busy commuter train station during the peak period?

In practice: a serious threat from a funny comedian?

‘Security’ has become a blanket reason used by many services companies to explain why they cannot fulfil a customer’s request. Of course, there are often good security reasons that explain the response, but there are many instances where apparently silly ‘security’ responses are made. Consider the case of the veteran comedian Joan Rivers, 76 years old, much loved by the public and hardly likely to cause any danger for an airline. But in January 2010 she was ‘bumped’ off a Continental Airlines flight from Costa Rica to New York, because of an apparent anomaly in her passport. Like many American celebrities, her passport gave her married name (Joan Rosenberg) as well as the words ‘AKA Joan Rivers’. Her ticket was issued in the name by which she was best known. According to Rivers, ‘some stupid bitch’ at the gate decided that she couldn’t understand an ‘Also Known As’ passport. Rivers was deemed a danger to national security and removed from the New York-bound flight. It seemed that while the gate agent had difficulty working out who she was, there were fans in the departure area asking for autographs and taking pictures.

In many services industries, empowered staff would use their common sense and would weigh up the situation and come to a decision. But the security industry is labour intensive and there can be fierce competition for contracts between security services providers, who operate on low margins. Staff tend to be paid the minimum wage level and opportunities for choosing top-quality staff and training them in judgement skills are limited. So, in order to comply with government requirements, it is easier for com-panies to rely on strict rules-based blueprint approaches to security checking.

Fans of Joan Rivers who were waiting in New York for her to perform may have been disappointed when she was late. Disappointment may have also been experienced by the thousands of little old ladies who have innocently tried to take nail scissors on board an aircraft, but have had them confiscated because ‘those are the rules’. Despite the ‘rules’, a smart and determined terrorist might have developed a much more ingenious method of smuggling harmful objects on board the aircraft.

Often, the appearance of a strictly enforced security policy may give some reassurance to customers that management is taking measures to avoid a terrorist attack. But sometimes the visible appearance of security may be a front for much deeper flaws. In the case of Joan Rivers, ‘security’ may have been a catch-all excuse to hide operational problems. It had been reported that her flight to New York was over-booked, so ‘security’ made a convenient and politically acceptable reason for ejecting passengers, rather than admitting that the airline had overbooked. While there may have been few reported cases of little old ladies using their nail scissors as weapons to overpower cabin crew, it may be easier to imagine a determined terrorist breaking a glass bottle to use as a much more lethal weapon. Little old ladies with nail scissors may be an easy and visible sign that security was being treated seriously by an airline, but would airlines voluntarily enforce a bottle ban, thereby annoying even more passengers, and causing a loss of valuable duty-free sales in airport shops?

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Case study

Creating a drama at t.G.I. Friday’sIs it a pub? Is it a restaurant? Or is it theatre? The operators of T.G.I. Friday’s would hope that their cus-tomers see it as all three. For diners who tire of the scripted industrialized service processes of many fast-food chains, the service encounter at a branch of T.G.I. Friday’s may come as welcome relief.

T.G.I. Friday’s is a themed American restaurant and bar group in the USA and in 2010 had over 900 restaurants operating in 59 countries. In the UK, the chain operated since 1986 as a franchise through Whitbread plc (in 2007 Whitbread sold the operating rights of its 45 UK restaurants back to a consor-tium consisting of Carlson Restaurants Worldwide and ABN Amro Capital).

The credo of T.G.I. Friday’s, according to Richard Snead, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, parent company of T.G.I. Fridays, is ‘to treat every customer as we would an honoured guest in our home, and it is reflected in everything we do’.

There are four crucial components of the company philosophy which contribute to successful service encounters at their restaurants:

• Employees. These are seen as the key to service quality. This applies not only to front-line staff who visibly contribute to guests’ experience, but also to back-room staff.

• Product. A meal is a focal point of a customer’s visit and consistency of standards is important.• Package. This comprises the building and furnishings which must be kept well maintained.• Ambience. This is an important part of the meal experience that is difficult to specify, but memorable

to customers.

The first T.G.I. Friday’s was opened at First Avenue and 63rd Street in New York City in 1965 and fea-tured the now familiar red and white stripes. Inside were wooden floors, Tiffany lamps, bentwood chairs and striped tablecloths. Décor has become a key element in the T.G.I. Friday’s experience, transforming an otherwise bland and boring industrial-type building into a theatrical stage. For T.G.I. Friday’s interior décor, a full-time antique ‘picker’ travels extensively to auctions and flea markets. Memorabilia have to be authentic and, if possible, unique to the area where a new restaurant would be located.

T.G.I. Friday’s offers ‘mass customization’ in which the company offers a basically standard service to all customers, but the customer can personalize their meal through an extensive range of menu permuta-tions. The company’s approach to managing the service encounter distinguishes between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ elements. Hard elements include core service processes and tangible elements of the product offer, such as car parking facilities, the menu offered and target service times. The fundamental design of T.G.I. restaurants is remarkably similar throughout the world, with a large central bar area with dining facilities surrounding the bar and authentic American decorative memorabilia. Even the location of the toilets is standard, and an American guest visiting the T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant in Coventry would immediately know where to look for them. Each restaurant offers a range of approximately 100 American/Mexican food menu items and approximately the same number of cocktails. Service target times form part of the ‘hard’ element of the service encounter and the company requires that starters should be served within seven minutes of receipt of a customer’s order. A computer program helps managers to monitor the achievement of these service times. The hard elements of the service encounter tend to be specified by head office and branch managers are expected to achieve specified standards. Menus and the product range are designed and priced centrally at head office.

However, it is the ‘soft’ elements of the service encounter that distinguish T.G.I. Friday’s from its competitors. Crucial to the distinction is the empowering of employees to take whatever actions they see fit in order to improve customers’ experience. Employee performance requires, therefore, more than the traditional acts of greeting, seating and serving customers. Employees have to be able to provide both the behaviours and the emotional displays to match with customers’ feelings. Getting serving staff to join in a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ may not be easy to script, but spontaneous singing when a meal is served to a group of diners celebrating a birthday can make all the difference in customers’ experience of their meal. Of course, recruitment of the right kind of people becomes crucial and prospective candidates

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Summary and links to other chaptersThis chapter has built on the previous chapter by supplementing a ‘hard’ systems approach to ser-vice design with a ‘softer’ experiential-based approach. Attempts to measure the quality of a service encounter are considered in more detail in Chapter 9. In labour-intensive services, the quality of the service is influenced by the efforts of employees, and their role is explored in Chapter 10. Delays during a service process can impact directly upon consumers; therefore, service providers aim to avoid bottlenecks by carefully matching their capacity with the level of demand, and these issues are explored in Chapter 12.

are selected as much for their sense of fun as on the strength of their CV. Initial interviews take the form of ‘auditions’ in which potential recruits are set individual and group tasks to test their personality type. Opportunities are given for trained staff to express their personality and individuality, for example by wearing outlandish clothes that make a statement about their personality.

T.G.I. Friday’s has become a preferred place of employment for restaurant staff, who have enjoyed relatively good working conditions, above-average earnings for the sector – especially when tips are taken into account – and a sense of fun while at work. The chain has won numerous awards as a good employer, and in 2013 was third overall winner in the annual UK ‘Sunday Times Best Places to Work’ awards. In the voting process, for the awards, 87 per cent of employees said they felt a strong sense of ‘family’ in their teams, and 84 per cent said that working with their colleagues gave them a real ‘buzz’. Staff also said that their managers were ‘excellent role models’ who gave confidence through their leader-ship skills and that they felt motivated to give their best every day.

Is the pattern of service encounters developed by T.G.I. Friday’s a sustainable business model? Among the portfolio of restaurant formats formerly operated by Whitbread plc, T.G.I. Friday’s has been a star performer, in contrast to some of its more traditional formats such as Beefeater, which have become less popular with consumers. A glance at the customer review site www.ciao.co.uk provides an insight into customers’ experience of the service encounter. Overall, contributors seem to be happy with the format, although a number of people observed that service standards could decline when a restaurant becomes very busy. It may be fine for serving staff to sing to customers when times are quiet, but how can they do this and still meet their service delivery-time targets when the restaurant is busy? A number of cus-tomers also commented on the very high prices charged by T.G.I. Friday’s, with more than one person describing them as ‘rip-off prices’. But, in order to get the best staff who can create a memorable experi-ence, is it worth paying staff a little more and passing this on to customers as higher prices?

Case study review questions1 What are the connections between theatre and T.G.I. Friday’s? Is the dramaturgical analogy a good

one?2 Identify the types of benefits that consumers may seek from a visit to T.G.I. Friday’s. How would you

define the experiential benefits of a visit?3 Identify and critically evaluate the contributions of ‘hard’ systems approaches and ‘soft’ experiential

approaches to managing service encounters at T.G.I. Friday’s.

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Chapter review questions

1 If you were a customer experience manager for a consumer services company, what issues would likely be on your agenda? What challenges would you need to address in implementing a programme to improve customers’ experience of the service?

2 Many analyses of the service encounter have drawn analogies with the theatre. Critically assess the extent to which this analogy is valid.

3 What is the value to services marketers of the concept of ‘flow’? Are there any important differences between application of the concept in online and offline environments? What ethical issues are raised by the concept?

activities

1 Consider a high-contact service that you have consumed recently, such as a visit to a bar, restaurant, library or dentist. Construct an experience map, using the principles shown in Figure 3.1. Be careful to consider when your experience began and ended, and identify all the sensory cues that you picked up during the service process. What elements of experience stand out in your memory? Why is this? Why is it important for the service provider to understand your long-term memory of the encounter?

2 Visit a website such as YouTube.com or MySpace.com that is a ‘destination’ website in its own right, rather than merely a means of undertaking a specific transaction. Try to apply the framework of servicescape to the website. In particular, explore the methods used by the website operator to encourage approach behaviour and subsequent exploring of the website. What similarities are there between real-life service environments and virtual service environments? Is the analogy a good one or do we need fundamentally different frameworks for analysing the two?

3 Reflect on the concept of ‘flow’ in Internet environments. Have you ever noticed that the time spent at a website passed by faster than you thought? Were you encouraged to click through to additional pages on the site? What factors about the design of the website encouraged you to achieve a state of ‘flow’?

Key termsBanner ads Paid for advertising on websites, which typically targets a predetermined profile of visitors to the website.Co-creation A service benefit can be realized only if more than one party contributes to its production, e.g. customer–producer co-creation implies that customers take a role in producing service benefits.Flow A mode of experience when an individual becomes absorbed in their activity and feels a sense of control over the environment.Hedonistic benefits Benefits that are essentially based on pleasure rather than practicality.Role playing Behaviour of an individual that is a result of his or her social conditioning, as distinct from innate predispositions.Script A pattern of behaviour that is tightly specified by another party.Servicescape A description of the environment in which service delivery takes place.Servuction A description of the producer–consumer service production system.Utilitarian benefits Benefits that are essentially based on practical use rather than pleasurable outcomes.

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Selected further reading

The central role of the encounter between an organization’s staff and its customers has led to a considerable literature in defining service encounters and prescribing methods for improving the quality of encounters. The following are important early papers in the development of this stream of literature:

Bitner, M.J., Booms, B.H. and Tetreault, M.S. (1990) ‘The service encounter: diagnosing favourable and unfavourable incidents’, Journal of Marketing, 54 (1), 71–84.

Shostack, G.L. (1984) ‘Designing services that deliver’, Harvard Business Review, 62 (1), 133–9.

Experiential aspects of service environment design are explored in the following:

Grayson, R.A.S. and McNeill, L.S. (2009) ‘Using atmospheric elements in service retailing: understanding the bar environment’, Journal of Services Marketing, 23 (7), 517–27.

Harris, L.C. and Ezeh, C. (2008) ‘Servicescape and loyalty intentions: an empirical investigation’, European Journal of Marketing, 42 (3/4), 390–422.

Rollo, A.S., Grayson, L. and McNeill, S. (2009) ‘Using atmospheric elements in service retailing: understanding the bar environment’, Journal of Services Marketing, 23 (7), 517–27.

Slåtten, T., Mehmetoglu, M., Svensson, G. and Sværi, S. (2009) ‘Atmospheric experiences that emotionally touch customers: a case study from a winter park’, Managing Service Quality, 19 (6), 721–46.

Kim, N. and Lee, M. (2012) ‘Other customers in a service encounter: examining the effect in a restaurant setting’, Journal of Services Marketing, 26(1), 27–40.

The following papers offer further discussion of role playing and scripting, which is an important aspect of service encounters:

Goodwin, C. (1996) ‘Moving the drama into the factory: the contribution of metaphors to services research’, European Journal of Marketing, 30 (9), 13–36.

Harris, K., Harris, R., Elliott, D. and Baron, S. (2010) ‘A theatrical perspective on service performance evaluation: the customer critic approach’, Journal of Marketing Management, 27 (5–6), 477–502.

Parker, C. and Ward, P. (2000) ‘An analysis of role adaptations and scripts during customer-to-customer encounters’, European Journal of Marketing, 34 (3/4), 341–58.

Williams, J.A. and Anderson, H.H. (2005) ‘Engaging customers in service creation: a theatre perspective’, Journal of Services Marketing, 19 (1), 13–23.

The subject of customer experience management is discussed in the following:

Tynan, C. and McKechnie, S. (2009) ‘Experience marketing: a review and reassessment’, Journal of Marketing Management, 25 (5/6), 501–17.

Ferguson, R.J., Paulin, M. and Bergeron, J. (2010) ‘Customer sociability and the total service experience: antecedents of positive word-of-mouth intentions’, Journal of Service Management, 21 (1), 25–44.

Meyer, C. and Schwager, A. (2007) ‘Understanding customer experience’, Harvard Business Review, 85 (2), 116–26, 157.

Palmer, A. (2010), ‘Customer experience management: a critical review of an emerging idea’, Journal of Services Marketing, 24 (3), 196–208.

Pine, B.J. and Gilmore, J.H. (1999) The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.

Price, L., Arnould, E. and Tierney, P. (1995) ‘Going to extremes: managing service experiences and assessing provider performance’, Journal of Marketing, 59 (2), 83–97.

A number of articles have sought to develop frameworks for analysing the online service environment, using analogies with the frameworks that were introduced in this chapter:

Harris, L.C. and Goode, M.M.H. (2010) ‘Online servicescapes, trust, and purchase intentions’, Journal of Services Marketing, 24 (3), 230–43.

Karakas, F. (2009) ‘Welcome to World 2.0: the new digital ecosystem’, Journal of Business Strategy, 23 (4), 23–30.Rosenbaum, M.S. (2005) ‘Meet the cyberscape’, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 23 (7), 636–47.

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