Studies on the Relationship between Social Cues in the Servicescape and Customers' Behavioral Intention

With the rise of service economy around the world,people shift the centre of attention away from tangible products toward intangible products gradually,and the dominant logic of marketing is undergoing the change from the product centrality to customer centrality step by step.For services firms,physical environment and physical evidence are important parts of services offerings,and the primary form of competition as well.With the fast development of economy and continuous changes in people's life style,the consumption habit of China's resident,urban residents in particular,is in a constant state of change.Leisure industries have become much more diversified and colorful,which focus on tourism,entertainment and catering.People have combined shopping with relaxation little by little.Hedonic service consumptions(like themed restaurants,hairdressing salons,high fidelity cinemas,etc.) become the consumption hotspots.Customers stay longer in the service places and pay more attention to the facilities and environment of the service firms during hedonic shopping.Service environment has become an important marketing tool to enhance customers' experiences.Some well-known service enterprises,like Starbucks,McDonald's,and so on,even put forward that the service environment is one of the most significant strategic tools in the Service-Dominant Logic.These service firms try implanting social and cultural elements into the environment,products and management to meet the needs of customers' experience.Retailers facing an increasingly competitive market-place are finding it more difficult to differentiate their stores solely on the basis of merchandise,promotion,or location.The store itself,however,can offer a unique atmosphere,or environment,that may influence the consumer's patronage decision.Bitner(1992) defined the servicescape as various kinds of tangible and intangible environmental elements,and then servicescape had gradually become a generic term in the research of service environment.As an important component of service environment,servicescape has a significant influence in customer's service experience.Previous researches on servicescape always focus on the influence of physical cues.As the rational consumption demand transfers to emotional,the impact of social cues is more and more important.In recent years,both researchers and service enterprises payed much attention to the relationship between the social cues and customer behaviors.Customers in the servicescape always have positive emotions and high perceived service quality because of the social cues.For further exploration,this study added scene impression and self-congruence to the action mechanism of social cues in the servicescape and customer behavioral intention.Based on literature review,a conceptual model was put forward.A questionnaire survey was conducted and the data was analyzed by structural equation mode.The results reveal that the social cues embedded in the servicescape play a positive effect on the scene impression.This scene impression will significantly affect the customer's actual self-congruence and ideal self-congruence,improve the customer's positive emotions,enhance the customer's perceived service quality,and thus will strengthen the customer's purchase intention and repatronage intention.Moreover,consumption types(hedonic shopping and utilitarian shopping) play a significant moderating effect on the relationship between social cues in the servicescape and customer's scene impression.There exist no obvious differences between the effects of service personal factors playing on customer's scene impression in the hedonic shopping and that in the utilitarian shopping.While in the utilitarian shopping,other customer factors play a greater role on customer's scene impression.The conclusion provides a new perspective for the managers,emphasizes that the service staff and other customers in the servicescap are important marketing methods to attract and keep customers,to meet the demand of customers well,to improve customer's positive emotions and perceived service quality,and then to deepen the service place's identity,finally to spur the purchase decision.