The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and understand the effect of a servicescape’s ambient and social conditions on consumers’ Approach/Avoidance behavior in a retail context. More specifically, this thesis investigates the effect of music (ambient stimuli) and employees’ self-disclosure (social stimuli) on consumers’ Approach/Avoidance behavior in a retail store. Paper I comprised two experiments. Experiment 1 investigated the influence of the independent variable No music/Music. Likewise, experiment 2 studied the influence of the independent variable No music/Slow-tempo music/Fast-tempo music. The dependent variables in both experiments were pleasure, arousal, and the resulting Approach/Avoidance behavior. Paper II investigated the influence of the independent variable self-disclosure. The dependent variables were Approach/Avoidance behavior, measured by pleasure, arousal, liking, satisfaction, and reciprocity. The conclusions of this thesis are that both ambient and social stimuli in a servicescape affect consumers’ internal responses, which in turn affect their behavior. Depending on the situation (type of purchase), retail (bank, supermarket, or electronic retail store), and stimuli (ambient or social), the internal and behavioral responses are different.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and understand the effect of a servicescape’s ambient and social conditions on consumers’ service encounter experience and their approach/avoidance behavior in a retail context. In three papers, with a total sample of over 1600 participants (including 550 actual consumers) and seven experiments, the author investigates the effect of music (ambient stimuli), employees’ self-disclosure (verbal social stimuli) and employees’ gazing behavior (nonverbal social stimuli) on consumers’ service encounter experience and approach/avoidance behavior in a retail store.

Paper I comprised two experiments, and the aim was to investigate the influence of music on emotions, approach/avoidance behavior. Paper II comprised two experiments, and the aim was to investigate the effect of frontline employees’ personal self-disclosure on consumers’ reciprocal behavior. Paper III comprised three experiments, and the aim was to investigate the influence of employee’s direct eye gaze/ averted eye gaze on consumer emotions, social impression of the frontline employee and encounter satisfaction in different purchase situations.

The results in this thesis show that music affects consumers in both positive and negative ways (Paper I). Self-disclosure affects consumers negatively, in such a way that it decreases encounter satisfaction  (Paper II) and, finally, eye gaze affects consumers by regulating both positively – and in some cases also negatively – consumers’ social impression of the frontline employee and their encounter satisfaction (Paper III).

The conclusions of this thesis are that both ambient and social stimuli in a servicescape affect consumers’ internal responses, which in turn affect their behavior. Depending on the purchase situation, type of retail, and stimuli, the internal and behavioral responses are different.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how frontline employee self-disclosure influences consumers’ reciprocal behavior. To investigate the effects of frontline employee self-disclosure, two experiments were conducted with a total sample of 475 participants. The results show that when frontline employees disclose personal information in one-time encounters, they are perceived as less competent and more superficial. The results also show that self-disclosure negatively affects reciprocal behavior, but that this is mediated through liking, competence, superficiality, and satisfaction. These findings suggest that it is not always beneficial for employees to use self-disclosure as a strategy for garnering a consumer's trust or satisfaction, which counters previous research that suggest that disclosure of personal information is a good way to positively influence consumers in the retail environment.

This study concerns the effect that music has on consumer behavior in two different retail contexts during regular opening hours. Two studies were conducted in a field setting with consumers (N=550). Consumers were recruited to answer questions regarding behavioral measures, attitudes, and mood during days when background music was played. The conclusions from the two studies are that music affects consumer behavior, but also that the type of retail store and gender influences both the strength and direction of the effect

This aim of this study is to enhance the understanding of customer behavior and customer experience in the context of city centers and peripheral shopping centers and how the use of digitalized services affects this experience. In this paper we adopt a qualitative approach to explore consumers´ activities when visiting a city and/or a shopping center and the experiences connected to the visit. The study is based on data from 832 (55% female) with a M age = 48 years (range 17-91 years) consumers.

When visiting a city center and/or a shopping center, customers engage with a variety of different touchpoints (Socchi, Hart and Haji, 2016). From a customer perspective these touchpoints create experiences that generates many types of values. In recent years, the mass media has warned for the demise of city and shopping centers commerce. This purported demise is mainly due to the strong growth of e-commerce. To meet this competition, the retail and hospitality industry has developed strategies to create new customer experiences and thus attract customers back to the city center’s physical places. As a consequence of the technical development, companies frequently try to influence customers’ experiences through various digitalized services, where these digitalized service have the potential to improve customer experience by providing superior and personalized services (Roy et al. 2016). The question is what impact such services have on customers’ experiences and how this, in turn, affects the profitability of the retail and hospitality industry as a whole.

In order to shed light on the activities and experiences of visitors to city and shopping centers regular consumers were approach during a regular visit to such an area and asked to answer a few open ended questions.  The data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Thematic analysis aims to identify and report on thematic patterns across the sample, which allows researchers to make interpretations of the data that reflect the reported reality of participants (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Hayes, 2000; Ruane and Wallace, 2013).

The preliminary analysis of the data shows a variety of activities and touchpoints when visiting the city and shopping center. Seven themes emerged in our analysis of the participants´ responses: Relationship, Goal fulfillment, Experiences, Physical venue, Milieu, Practical usability and Non-intrusive.

In order to make more sense of the seven themes a model were developed. In this model three of the themes were connected to the customer, two connected to the service provider and the last two connected to digital technology. These three clusters interact in different ways.

The customer cluster contains the themes relationships, goal fulfilment and experiences. The themes in this cluster describe and vivifies the customer. The customer is not just a “shopping robot” jumping from touchpoint to touchpoint along a customer journey. The customer instead is a person with goals to fulfil but at the same time someone who has a great need of relationships on different levels and a person who will and want to experience things.

The service provider cluster contains two themes. One were named physical venue and this is where the service provider, be it a storeowner or a restaurant owner for example, has the most direct control. It is also where the customer will go to fulfil his or her goals. Here the direct contact between customer and service provider can and will take place. The second theme in this cluster were named “milieu”. The milieu can be the space the customer needs to pass in order to get to the physical venue or other factors that the service provider do not have control over (e.g. public spaces and weather)

The third and most interesting cluster concerns the digital technology, named practical usability and non-intrusive. Digitalization is highly interesting when it comes to the relationship between the customer and the service provider. The first theme described the importance of the usefulness of digital technology, and  in regards to digitalization the results indicates that digitalized services mostly fulfill utilitarian needs and works best in functional touchpoints. The theme called non-intrusive describes the relation between the customer and the digital technology. It may be somewhat drastic to talk about a two edged sword but on the one hand digital technology makes life easier and sometimes more joyful and at the same time the technology may disturb goal activities which leads to negative experiences.

These findings is important because it offers help to those managing city and shopping centers in identify touchpoints that need to be digitalized and those who need to be reinforced through social activities This knowledge could also help managers develop strategies to create new customer experience, i.e. create good valuescapes, and thus tease customer back to the city and shopping center´s physical places.

REFERENCES

Braun, V. and Clarke, V., (2006), 'Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3 (2) 77-101

Hayes, N. (2000), Doing Psychological Research, Open University Press, Buckinghamshire.

Ruane, L. and Wallace, E., (2013), 'Generation Y females online: insight from brand narratives', Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16 (3) 315-335

Roy, S. K., Balaji, M. S., Sadeque, S., Nguyen, B., and Mlewar, T. C., (2016), 'Constituents and consequences of smart customer experience in retailing', Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 124 257-270

Stocchi, L., Hart, C., and Haji, I., (2016), 'Understanding the town centre customer experience (TCCE) ', Journal of Marketing Management, 32 (17-18) 1562-1587

Purpose – The research concerns the effect of frontline employees’ averted or direct gaze on consumers’ evaluation of the encounter. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that in normal interactions, a direct or averted gaze affects people’s evaluation of others. The question was whether this finding would hold true in commercial interactions.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted three experiments using a written scenario with a photograph among a total sample of 612 participants.

Findings – This research showed that consumers’ social impression of the frontline employees mediated the effect of the employees’ gazing behaviour on consumers’ emotions and satisfaction with the encounters. The findings also showed that averting gaze had a negative effect on consumers’ first impression of the frontline employee, which affected consumers’ satisfaction with the encounter. The findings also showed that a direct gaze had a negative effect on encounter satisfaction when consumers sought to purchase embarrassing products.

Originality/value – The research demonstrated that the effect of gaze on encounter satisfaction was mediated by the social impression and moderated by consumers’ approach/avoidance motivation.

There is a need for digital innovation initiatives in rural areas, where rural development has been marginalised in favor of urban development. By combining tourism research on digital innovation in rural areas with service design, and value-creating processes, this paper contributes with processes for rural digital innovation and solutions encompassed for Swedish businesses in rural settings. The proposed project Smart villages in Sweden aims to increase knowledge and understanding, together with businesses, of how smart solutions can address some of the challenges in rural Sweden and how these can contribute to thriving businesses. The general research question is: How can ‘Smart Villages’ be used as a concept to overcome challenges and support sustainable communities for businesses in Sweden? Smart in this context means developing and innovating services and digital solutions that have grown out of the local needs and conditions.  

Based on a proven methodology, a three-step model, this paper argues for the use of a participatory approach, a place-based approach, focusing on bottom-up perspective and a collaborative, creative way of working in rural digital development and innovation. Adding a geomedia perspective this paper contributes with a methodological approach to create sustainable villages and adding that technology can only support sustainable development if the technology itself is sustainably developed. The presented digital innovation process for rural businesses therefore shifts focus from technology as focus for development, to technology to support for development.

Introduction

The aim of our research is to contribute with methods for rural sustainable tourism and community development. The work also entails identifying solutions encompassed for local actors in rural settings, thereby strengthening stakeholders and contributing to sustainable, resilient and attractive rural communities.

Our current research project ‘Smart Villages in Sweden’ is evolving a development process, resulting in ideas, concepts and prototypes for local solutions that addresses local challenges, using the concept of ‘Smart Villages’ as a focal point. We are using a place-based approach for innovation in a broader context with the result of developing services or solutions adapted to suit rural communities. We argue that developing such a process is vital for a sustainable and long-term durable outcome, as it ensures that the ideas, concepts and prototypes produced are based on the local communities’ situation. This is in line with EU´s concept of Smart Villages (2019) which refers to communities in rural areas revitalising rural services and improving resilience using innovative solutions.  

We are using a participatory approach developed during several years of previous research, albeit in a wider sense where tourism development is put in the context of a general notion of sustainable community development. Two communities and the surrounding countryside in the county of Värmland, Sillerud and Sysslebäck, are our cases in this project. This year, we are carrying out the second work package of the project, which involves a method where various community stakeholders from our local cases are involved. Using this approach entails both challenges and opportunities. During this session we would like to discuss our results and experiences so far.  

Theoretical framework

In this project, we are starting from the theories of service ecosystems and the transformative service approach, as this is in line with the concept of smart villages. Service ecosystems are defined as a network-based collection of actors that work together to create and deliver value to customers. It can include companies, customers, suppliers, governments, and other stakeholders who collaborate and interact in various ways to create and deliver value (Akaka et. al., 2012). The theory of the Transformative Service Approach is about companies and organizations not only delivering products and services, but also having a broader role in society by contributing to creating positive changes and transformations in customers and society in general (Andersson et. al., 2013). Important aspects of these two approaches are that they focus on the dynamics between different actors in an ecosystem and how it affects the creation and delivery of value over time. This means that the ecosystem is in constant change and development through interactions and transactions between the actors.

The Smart Villages concept is based on the idea that value is determined uniquely by and together with actors linked to the specific location (Cāne, 2021), and understanding the context of value creation is the key to successful service offerings. The methodology within the smart villages concept involves a bottom-up, collaborative approach that aims to produce both practical results and scientific results. Overall, the research highlights the importance of engaging with rural communities and stakeholders in the process of understanding and promoting smart villages (Aziiza & Susanto, 2020). Important to note is that what makes a local community ‘smart’ is not limited to increased levels of digitisation or connectivity. ‘Smartness’ stems from the use of digital technologies as vehicles for local development goals and the improvement of the quality of life of citizens (Smart Villages briefing note, 2019). ‘Smart’ does not automatically mean sustainable; producing and using new technology in itself have effects on the environment, for example. In this project it is therefore important that we focus on ‘smart’ solutions that will contribute to economic and social sustainability in terms of vibrant rural business and communities.

Methodology

In our research, we take a participatory approach (Trischler et al, 2018), where we use a place-based method, focusing on bottom-up perspective and a collaborative, creative way of working together with the aim of producing both practical outcomes as well as scientific results and knowledge (Ryan Bengtsson et al, 2022). This method has been formed over seven years of research in close collaboration with businesses and organisations and is influenced by research actively engaging actors (see for example Haraway, 2016 and Ren & Jóhannesson, 2017). The method used is divided into three steps where the collaborative process can be viewed as a ladder, each step forming the base for the next. Knowledge and new perspectives create an input into the next step.  

In our ongoing project, the method consists of the following three steps: an inventory, a mapping process and evaluation phase. So far, we are coming towards an end of the second step. The first step involved gathering vital information about the two local communities that serve as cases in this research. This information has given us as input into the following steps of the collaborative process. The two main sources of information in the first stage were qualitative interviews with key actors in our local communities and quantitative visitor surveys. The second part of the method involved working with stakeholders in the local communities in a series of workshops led by the research team. The participants have been co-creating ideas and solutions on how to increase the competitiveness as well as quality of life in their communities. The third step will involve collaborative testing and evaluating the most viable of the creative ideas and solutions.  

Results

As mentioned, the research project Smart Villages grows out of, and further develops our research on participatory processes in community and destination development. At this conference, we will present our recent findings in terms of methodological challenges and opportunities, as well as the practical and analytical outcomes so far.

Methodological findings indicate that an adaptive approach when defining local stakeholders is vital, as the local context varies, and each community encompass a unique mix of stakeholders. Therefore, the importance of gathering information of the place and its actors is essential in the initial stages of the process. Furthermore, we argue for the importance of involving local key actors at an early stage in the process. This is a necessary empowering factor, which will increase the changes of local ownership of the process and the practical results.

Practical outcomes include for example the start-up of a local group in one of the cases, taking on a local ownership, with the aim of strengthening this rather fragmented and divided community. By facilitating contact between students and community key actors from our other case, they have been provided with new ideas to implement.

Analytical outputs involve for example categorising opportunities put forward by the local stakeholders. These can be divided into three main types of actions for strengthening the places’ competitiveness:

1)       information about existing local attractions and events (tangible)

2)       storytelling about the local culture and collaboration (intangible)

3)       improvement of existing service and visitor experience (for residents, visitors, and part-time visitors)

Our findings also imply the need for further research into the combination of digital and physical solutions when it comes to sustainable community and destination development. Our participants often suggest digital solutions as a tool of drawing attention to physical meetings. Many ideas put forward are based on a social need to meet, often across group boundaries such as those between residents and visitors. If implemented, this could increase positive social effects of tourism and reduce opposition against tourism growth.  

References

Akaka, M. A., Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2012). An exploration of networks in value cocreation: A serviceecosystems view. Review of Marketing Research, 9, 13–5.

Anderson, L., Ostrom, A. L., Corus, C., Fisk, R. P., Gallan, A. S., Giraldo, M., ... & Williams, J. D. (2013). Transformative service research: An agenda for the future. Journal of Business Research, 66(8), 1203-1210. 

Aziiza, A. A., & Susanto, T. D. (2020). The Smart Village Model for Rural Area (Case Study: Banyuwangi Regency). In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 722, No. 1, p. 012011). IOP Publishing.

Cāne, R. (2021, June). Development of smart villages as a factor for rural digital transformation. In ENVIRONMENT. TECHNOLOGIES. RESOURCES. Proceedings of the International Scientific and Practical Conference (Vol. 1, pp. 43-49).

Haraway, D.J. (2016) Staying with the Trouble - Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press

Ren, C., van der Duim, R., & Jóhannesson, T. (2017). Co-creation of tourism knowledge. in Ren, C., Jóhannesson, T., & van der Duim, R. (Ed.) Co-creating tourism research - Towards collaborative ways of knowing. London & New York: Routledge.

Ryan Bengtsson, L., Braunerhielm, L., Gibson, L., Hoppstadius, F. & Kingsepp, E. (2022). Digital media innovations through participatory action research. Interventions for digital place-based experiences. Nordicom, 43 (2), 134 - 151

Smart Villages Pilot Project Briefing Note (2019) https://digitevent-images.s3.amazonaws.com/5c0e6198801d2065233ff996-registrationfiletexteditor1551115459927-smart-villages-briefing-note.pdf

Trischler, J., Pervan, S. J., Kelly, S. J., & Scott, D. R. (2018). The value of codesign: The effect of customer involvement in service design teams. Journal of Service Research, 21(1), 75-100.

Introduction

There is a need for digital innovation initiatives in rural areas, where rural development has been marginalised in favor of urban development (see for example Cowie et al., 2020; Pant etal., 2017). By combining tourism research on digital innovation in rural areas (Braunerhielm etal. 2019; 2018; Ryan Bengtsson et al, 2022) with service design (Vink et al., 2020), and value-creating processes (Nöjd et al. 2020), the aim of our research is to contribute with methods for rural sustainable tourism and community development and identify solutions encompassed for businesses in rural settings. Therefore, we contribute with ways of conducting participatory research- and innovation processes, focusing on places as both destinations and local communities. Our current research project is using a participatory approach developed during several years of previous research, albeit in a wider sense where tourism development is put in the context of a general notion of sustainable rural development. The purpose of our recent project ‘Smart Villages’, is to gain increased knowledge and understanding of how smart solutions can address some of the challenges in rural Sweden. Our general research question is: How can ‘Smart Villages’ be used as a concept to overcome challenges and support sustainable communities?

This mixed methods study investigated how value is created in the physical retail space and how the customer experience is influenced by digital technology. A cross-sectional survey, with both qualitative and quantitative components, was distributed across a heterogeneous sample of 832 customers. The results revealed an overarching model comprised of three interrelated clusters: customer, service provider, and digital technology. We propose that this model can be understood as a valuescape, where customers' specific goals, needs, and desires drive them to interact and co-create value with service providers in the physical retail space, with digital technology either enhancing or disrupting this value co-creation process. The results also show that the importance of aligning digital solutions with customers’ drives increases at the same pace as reliance on technology. The findings offer guidelines on how to utilize digitalization to leverage customer experiences and thus strengthen the attractiveness of physical retail spaces.