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Call for Book Chapters

The Tourism Atmospheric Turn:
Environmental, place, and process impacts on marketing and customer behavior

Editors: Michael Volgger* and Dieter Pfister**

*Curtin University (AUS)
**University of St. Gallen (CH)

Submitted to:

Advances in culture, tourism and hospitality research – Vol. 16
Series Editor: Arch G. Woodside
Publisher: Emerald

We are witnessing an experiential turn in the service industries and in tourism and hospitality in particular. However, we continue to lack in-depth appraisals of experiences that go beyond questionable rankings of de-contextualized attributes in importance-performance analyses. The need is urgent for more analyses of customer experiences that make use of appropriate methods that take the configurational, situation-specific and affective nature – i.e. the atmospheric context – of experiences into consideration (Helkkula, 2011; Mattila & Wirtz, 2001; Wetter-Edman et al., 2014). Service experience is an idiosyncratic, holistic and higher-order construct. In tourism and hospitality, the holistic experience quality (Otto & Ritchie, 1996) is influenced at least by (1) the quality of the service encounter (Botschen et al., 1996; Parasuraman et al., 1985), (2) the utilitarian quality of the tangible product involved (e.g., food, room, bed, chair, pillow,) and (3) the quality of the setting where the service encounter takes place.

This volume focuses on the latter aspect and scrutinizes impacts of the “atmospheric quality” or the “charm of setting” (Kao et al., 2008) on tourism and hospitality service situations. Scrutinizing “situational influences” is necessary as there are varied and layered interactions in behavior and decision making between tourists (“life space”, Lewin, 1936) and the tourism destination space (Woodside & MacDonald, 1993).

The concept of atmospheric quality—sometimes also “servicescape” (Bitner, 1992; Lin, 2004; Lin & Mattila, 2010)—connects service design with a spatial dimension and thus can be associated with the work of interior designers, landscape designers and architects; it also resonates with the field of Gestalt psychology (Lewin, 1936). It also has strong connections to performative arts and to the specific topic of staging performances (Grove et al., 1992, 1998; Pine & Gilmore, 1999). According to Pfister (2013), the atmosphere of a specific place is describable as the holistic situation created by people, material artefacts, stories and histories as well as emotions present in a specific place at a specific time. Understood in this sense, the atmosphere has functional, emotional and cultural dimensions and is closely associated with the meaning of a place and how this meaning is delivered. Consciously or unconsciously, customers will perceive the atmosphere with their senses while being on-site. A specific atmosphere will elicit customers’ emotional responses to “sensory pleasures” (Kao et al., 2008) by experiencing fun, excitement, happiness or enjoyment, and will influence customer behavior. As atmospheres are multi-dimensional, consumers are likely to evaluate any atmospheric stimulus against a criterion of congruence (Mattila & Wirtz, 2001).

Atmospheric impacts have long been studied in a retail context (e.g., Turley & Chebat, 2002). Examples of deliberately created atmospheric settings may include “silent” airports, car-free destinations, culturally or religiously restricted access to sites, ambient odors and light effects in entertainment facilities, specifically designed visitor information centers and flagship stores and dress codes. The highly-controlled atmosphere of amusement parks and theme parks or the co-created atmosphere of concerts and other events are other prominent examples that highlight the importance of atmospheric impacts on customer behavior.

This book builds on “trade tales” (see Vol. 14, 2017) and customer stories (Woodside et al., 2008). We invite each author to consider customer tales relating to un-managed atmospheric settings and customer tales relating to a more purposefully and creatively designed atmospheric setting for the service encounter. By taking customer tales as the primary source of evidence, the book is mostly interested in learning whether and under what conditions carefully designed atmospheric qualities do make a difference in terms of customer behavior and customers’ experience quality. For instance, authors may seek to examine the following questions:
 

If you plan to submit your work for inclusion in this edited book please contact the editors directly with your title and abstract.

Michael Volgger: michael.volgger@curtin.edu.au
Dieter Pfister: dieter.pfister@unisg.ch

Key deadlines:

Expressions of interest and abstracts (400 words max) due – 15 Dec 2018
The authors of the selected abstracts will then be invited to submit full chapters.
Authors notified – 31 Dec 2018
Full chapters (5,000 words max) due – 30 Mar 2019
Publication (Tentative) – Late 2019

References

Bitner, M.J. (1992). Servicescapes: The impact of physical surroundings on customers and employees. Journal of Marketing, 56, 57-71.

Botschen, G., Bstieler, L., & Woodside, A.G. (1996). Sequence-oriented problem identification within service encounters. Journal of Euro-Marketing, 5(2), 19-52.

Chen, C. F., & Chen, F. S. (2010). Experience quality, perceived value, satisfaction and behavioral intentions for heritage tourists. Tourism Management, 31(1), 29-35.

Grove, S. J., Fisk, R. P. & Bitner, M. J. (1992). Dramatizing the service experience: a managerial approach. Advances in Services Marketing and Management, 1, 91–121.

Grove, S. J., Fisk, R. P. & Dorsch, M. J. (1998). Assessing the theatrical components of the service encounter: a cluster analysis examination. Service Industries Journal, 18(3), 116–134.

Helkkula, A. (2011). Characterizing the concept of service experience. Journal of Service Management, 22(3), 367-389.

Kao, Y.-F., Huang, L.-S., & Wu, C.-H. (2008). Effects of theatrical elements on experiential quality and loyalty intentions for theme parks. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 13(2), 163–174.

Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Lin, I.Y. (2004). Evaluating a servicescape: The effect of cognition and emotion. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 23, 163-178.

Lin, I.Y., & Mattila, A. S. (2010). Restaurant servicescape, service encounter, and perceived congruency on customers’ emotions and satisfaction. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 19(8), 819-841.

Mattila, A. S., & Wirtz, J. (2001). Congruency of scent and music as a driver of in-store evaluations and behavior. Journal of Retailing, 77(2), 273-289.

Otto, J. E., & Ritchie, J. R. B. (1996). The service experience in tourism. Tourism Management, 17(3), 165-174.

Pfister, D. (2013). Atmospheric Design: Zur Bedeutung von Atmosphäre und Design für eine sozial nachhaltige Raumgestaltung. Basel.

Pfister, D. (2017). Der Bauherr: Wie der Eigentümer seine Strategie im Raum erlebbar macht. Basel: edition gesowip.

Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The experience economy: Work is theatre and every business a stage. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A. & Berry, L. L. (1985). A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research. Journal of Marketing, 49(4), 41–50.

Poehlman, T. A., Dhar, R., & Bargh, J. A. (2016). Sophisticated by Design: the Nonconscious Influence of Primed Concepts and Atmospheric Variables on Consumer Preferences. Customer Needs and Solutions, 3(1), 48-61.

Turley, L. W., & Chebat, J. C. (2002). Linking retail strategy, atmospheric design and shopping behaviour. Journal of Marketing Management, 18(1-2), 125-144.

Wetter-Edman, K, Sangiorgi, D, Edvardsson, B, Holmlid, S, Grönroos, C & Mattelmäki, T (2014). Design for value co-creation: exploring synergies between Design for Service and Service Logic. Service Science, 6(2), 106-121.

Woodside, A. (Ed.) (2017). Trade tales: Decoding customers’ stories. Bingley, UK: Emerald.

Woodside, A. & MacDonald, R. (1993). “General system framework of customer choice processes of tourism services”. In R. Gasser & K. Weiermair (Eds.), Spoilt for choice: Decision making processes and preference changes of tourists – intertemporal and intercountry perspectives (pp. 30-59). Innsbruck: Kulturverlag.

Woodside, A. G., Sood, S., & Miller, K. E. (2008). When consumers and brands talk: Storytelling theory and research in psychology and marketing. Psychology & Marketing, 25(2), 97-145.

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