Search Results (14)

This study aimed to examine the influence of core services and the physical servicescape and social servicescape on consumer satisfaction and loyalty via perceived price fairness, flow experience, and rapport in fitness centers. Additionally, the present study explored how exercise involvement moderates the relationship between perceived price fairness, flow experience, rapport, and consumer satisfaction. For these purposes, targeting adults using fitness centers in South Korea, a total of 763 participants were sampled based on a cross-sectional design and used for data analyses involving confirmatory factor analysis for measurement validation and latent moderated structural equation modeling for hypothesis testing. The results showed that the core services, physical servicescape, and social servicescape enhance perceived price fairness, flow experiences, and rapport between staff and consumers, respectively. The study findings also indicated that exercise involvement significantly moderates the effect of price fairness and flow experience on satisfaction but not rapport. These insights offer practical and theoretical implications for fitness center management, emphasizing the importance of tailored service strategies in retaining loyal customers. Full article

This study explores the psychological motivations that drive ChatGPT users to embrace and sustain the use of such technology based on the fundamental notion of the environmental psychology theory, including servicescapes. To do so, this study delves into the influence of ChatGPT’s e-servicescapes on users’ emotional states and intention to engage with ChatGPT for decision-making processes. This study conducted an online survey among ChatGPT users in the United States. Structural equation modeling revealed that negative emotions were significantly influenced by various e-servicescape sub-dimensions, including security, visual appeal, entertainment value, originality of design, and social factors. Positive emotions, on the other hand, were influenced by factors such as visual appeal, customization, interactivity, and relevance of information. Both positive and negative emotions significantly affected user satisfaction, which, in turn, shaped their behavioral intention to engage with ChatGPT. This study contributes to the understanding of digital environmental psychology and chatbots by extending the notion of e-servicescapes to the context of AI-based services. It underscores the significance of e-servicescapes in shaping user experiences and provides valuable insights for business scholars and marketing practitioners. Full article

Dining plays a pivotal role in the travel experience, with numerous studies identifying the significant impacts of restaurant attributes on tourists’ destination experiences and their sense of place. The identified attributes include the origin of food produce, menu design, the physical and social servicescape, and restaurant reputation, all of which have the potential to enhance customers’ sense of place. Therefore, based on theories of the production of locality, this study explores how destination restaurants “put place on the plate” and identifies how destination restaurants promote place. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the representatives of seventeen Michelin (one star, two stars, three stars, and Bib Gourmand)-awarded restaurants across Mainland China. The results reveal three primary strategies employed by destination restaurants in promoting place: forging partnerships with the local community to produce, present, and reproduce localities; leveraging local knowledge embedded in the local produce, recipes, cooking techniques, and local culture; and practicing translocality to introduce a regional cuisine to diverse and cosmopolitan consumers. This research provides a comprehensive understanding of the way in which notions of locality and place are used by destination restaurants and the way in which this may promote not only restaurants but also regional culinary cultures and destination attractiveness. Full article

Drawing on servicescape theory, this research investigates guests’ perceptions of and responses to the protection and prevention practices launched by hotels at different stages of the pandemic. The research finds that hotel guests’ general response-efficacy beliefs positively influence their perception of the effectiveness of the protection and prevention practices adopted in hotels’ physical and social servicescapes, and such positive relationships also show a significant increase from 2020 to 2021. The servicescape effects’ downstream results show that hotel guests are willing to pay premium prices for safety servicescapes manifested as protection and prevention practices implemented at the private space or related to employees. This research sheds light on servicescape theory by deconstructing the overall hotel servicescape concept into multiple dimensions, particularly in a health threat situation such as the pandemic, and empirically examining each dimension’s effects on guests’ monetary response at different timepoints. From a practical perspective, this study provides managerial insights into which servicescape dimensions warrant operational investments by hotels. Full article

As omnichannel shopping behavior becomes increasingly popular among consumers, how to leverage the respective advantages and synergies of online and offline channels to retain customers for a long time is an urgent issue for retailers to solve. The purpose of this study is to explore the key advantages of online and offline channels influencing the omnichannel shopping experience in the decision-making process, and investigate their impact on consumer perceived value and brand relationship performance, as well as the interaction effect of online channel advantages and offline channel advantages. This study identifies the key advantages of online channels (search convenience, customer-generated information richness, and social connection) and offline channels (direct product experience, sales-staff assistance, and servicescape aesthetics) through a qualitative study and relevant literature review. Then, the proposed research framework was tested using the structural model equation in AMOS and hierarchical regression techniques in SPSS utilizing data from 347 shoppers. The results show that all variables except customer-generated information richness have positive impact on consumer perceived value. Other than search convenience and customer-generated information richness, consumer perceived value mediates the effect of other variables on brand relationship performance. Additionally, the interaction effect of online and offline channel advantages positively impacts consumer perceived value. Full article

In the pursuit of sustainability and competitiveness, digital aspects of the tourism experience become increasingly more significant and wine tourism is no exception to this. Still, studies building on established concepts and sustainable practices in the corporate environment often prioritize physical attributes. One such example refers to winescape frameworks, which are yet to explicitly incorporate the digital experience, despite the growing importance of the digital servicescape. This study contributes to this area by commenting on available data on winery websites and adopting the winescape concept to analyze social media activity during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The population of the study includes 53 wineries, located in two well-known Greek wine tourism destinations, namely Crete and Santorini. The results identify the most common winescape components that wineries emphasize, revealing similarities and differences across the two destinations. Implications highlight the winescape dimensions that (should) matter the most when considering digital experiences, and provide insights for wine tourism scholars and businesses alike towards a more sustainable wine supply chain. Full article

In the airline industry, customer satisfaction occurs when passengers’ expectations are met through the airline experience. Considering that airline service quality is the main factor in obtaining new and retaining existing customers, airline companies are applying various approaches to improve the quality of the physical and social servicescapes. It is common to use data analysis techniques for analyzing customer propensity in marketing. However, their application to the airline industry has traditionally focused solely on surveys; hence, there is a lack of attention paid to deep learning techniques based on survey results. This study has two purposes. The first purpose is to find the relationship between various factors influencing customer churn risk and satisfaction by analyzing the airline customer data. For this, we applied deep learning techniques to the survey data collected from the users who have used mostly Korean airplanes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the one of the few attempts at applying deep learning to analyze airline customer propensities. The second purpose is to analyze the influence of the social servicescape, including the viewpoints of the cabin crew and passengers using aircraft, on airline customer propensities. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method of considering human services increased the accuracy of predictive models by up to 10% and 9% in predicting customer churn risk and satisfaction, respectively. Full article

(1) Background: Physician rating websites (PRWs) are a rich resource of information where individuals learn other people response to various health problems. The current study aims to investigate and analyze the people top concerns and sentiment dynamics expressed in physician online reviews (PORs). (2) Methods: Text data were collected from four U.S.-based PRWs during the three time periods of 2018, 2019 and 2020. Based on the dynamic topic modeling, hot topics related to different aspects of healthcare were identified. Following the hybrid approach of aspect-based sentiment analysis, the social network of prevailing topics was also analyzed whether people expressed positive, neutral or negative sentiments in PORs. (3) Results: The study identified 30 dominant topics across three different stages which lead toward four key findings. First, topics discussed in Stage III were quite different from the earlier two stages due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Second, based on the keyword co-occurrence analysis, the most prevalent keywords in all three stages were related to the treatment, questions asked by patients, communication problem, patients’ feelings toward the hospital environment, disease symptoms, time spend with patients and different issues related to the COVID-19 (i.e., pneumonia, death, spread and cases). Third, topics related to the provider service quality, hospital servicescape and treatment cost were the most dominant topics in Stages I and II, while the quality of online information regarding COVID-19 and government countermeasures were the most dominant topics in Stage III. Fourth, when zooming into the topic-based sentiments analysis, hot topics in Stage I were mostly positive (joy be the dominant emotion), then negative (disgust be the dominant emotion) in Stage II. Furthermore, sentiments in the initial period of Stage III (COVID-19) were negative (anger be the dominant emotion), then transformed into positive (trust be the dominant emotion) later. The findings also revealed that the proposed method outperformed the conventional machine learning models in analyzing topic and sentiment dynamics expressed in PRWs. (4) Conclusions: Methodologically, this research demonstrates the ability and importance of computational techniques for analyzing large corpora of text and complementing conventional social science approaches. Full article

Given that cruise line companies are rushing to restart their operations with modified dining services, the aim of this research is to establish a conceptual framework that precisely outlines female passengers’ behavioral intentions towards dining on cruise ships in the time of the COVID-19 crisis. It does so by extending the theory of reasoned action (TRA) by including the social servicescape of the cruise ship dining experiencescape (stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) paradigm) and perceived health risk from COVID-19 (the prospect theory). The developed theoretical framework based on this tripartite approach has predictive power for intentions. Its effectiveness and comprehensiveness are also demonstrated. Despite the positive effect of the social servicescape on attitude and emotions and the positive attitude of female cruise travelers, the negative effect of the perceived health risk from COVID-19 appears to be the dominant factor that ultimately discourages the behavioral intentions of female cruise passengers towards dining on a cruise ship in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The present research provides a crucial guiding framework that helps cruise academics and operators to maximize existing and potential passengers’ favorable decisions and behaviors for cruise ship dining. Full article

The fact that an already damaged retail industry is being challenged by a pandemic makes the industry’s survival a matter of urban resilience. Sustainable and adaptive strategies are needed to reverse the negative development of the retail sector, and in this conceptual paper, a new perspective is suggested based on episodic retail settings. Such a perspective can increase a physical store’s attraction and may serve as a flexible operation strategy for urban retailers and give added value to urban consumers as they shape an ongoing dramatological discourse and facilitate social interaction in a way that traditional fixed-store formats are unable to compete with. By applying the scientific circle of enquiry (SCE), the authors develop an interdisciplinary perspective cutting across the sustainability, service science, and urban studies fields. On this ground, they present a set of conceptual premises and a tripartite conceptual framework delineating how to effectively design episodic retail settings that are adaptive and sustainable. The paper concludes with suggestions for research questions to further advance this field of study. Full article

The present paper studies the importance of social servicescape factors to customer satisfaction in middle-priced restaurant services. This paper fills the existing literature gap on the importance of social servicescape factors onto customers’ satisfaction in middle-priced services. A survey of 514 respondents from three capitals of the Baltic States was conducted for the purpose of the present study. Descriptive statistics together with an independent samples t-test and partial least squares path analysis were employed for data processing. The results obtained confirmed the hypothesis about the importance of social servicescape attributes to customer satisfaction. The study also highlighted the difference in gender attitudes towards intangible aspects of service delivery. The research confirmed the existence of a relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase intentions, although to a lesser extent than could have been anticipated from the literature review. The findings of the study covered by the present paper allow us to position middle-priced restaurants closer to luxury ones compared to casual restaurants Full article

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) research has been extended in the literature to the customer domain by examining the role of customer behavior in the service sectors. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the effect of the physical environment and social servicescape on the co-creation value, and the impact of the co-creation value on customer satisfaction, which, in turn, influences the customer’s citizenship behavior. A field study was conducted in Malaysian cultural and creative industries settings and a total of 254 participants were approached. Structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to test the hypothesized relationships among variables. The proposed research model was largely focused on the four perceived values (i.e., physical servicescape, social servicescape, co-creation value, and customer satisfaction) that significantly influence tourists’ citizenship behavior. This study sheds new light on the notable roles of physical servicescape, social servicescape, co-creation value, and customer satisfaction on enhancing tourists’ citizenship behavior. The theoretical implications and practical implications are discussed. Full article

Research into the influence of service quality on customer loyalty has typically focused on confirming isolated direct causal influences regarding particular dimensions of quality, usually undertaken in the context of positive, firm-customer relations. The present study extends analysis of these factors through a new lens. First, the study was undertaken in a market context following a crisis that has had far-reaching consequences for customers’ relational behaviors. We explore the case of the Spanish banking industry, a sector that accurately reflects these new relational conditions, including a rising demand for more socially responsible banking. Second, we propose a holistic model that combines the effects of four key factors associated with service quality (outcome, personnel, servicescape and social qualities). We also apply an innovative predictive methodological technique using partial least squares (PLS) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) that enables us not only to determine the direct causal effects among variables, but also to consider different scenarios in which to predict customer loyalty. The results highlight the role of outcome and social qualities. The novelty of the social qualities factor helps to underscore the importance of social, ethical and sustainable practices to customer loyalty, although personnel and servicescape qualities must also be present to improve the predictive capability of service quality on loyalty. Full article

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of physical and social servicescapes on cognitive and affective satisfaction, as well as airport image, with gender as a moderating effect between variables. A total of 283 airport users were surveyed, and structural equation modeling was used to investigate the relationships between variables. The results showed that only physical servicescape had a significant effect on cognitive and affective satisfaction, and affective satisfaction had a significant effect on airport image. In addition, the gender differences indicated a significant effect between the physical servicescape and cognitive satisfaction. This study is distinct in that it is the first attempt to verify the relationship between airport physical servicescape, social servicescape, airport users’ cognitive and affective satisfaction, and airport image on gender differences. Full article