The mediating influence of pleasure and arousal on layout and signage effects

Abstract

The effects on customer emotional responses and behaviour of two physical environment factors—layout and signage—and the overall servicescape were investigated in two retail settings: one where banking transactions were conducted in an automatic teller machine lobby and the other in a branch bank. The emotional responses studied were pleasure and arousal. The findings were generally replicated across both service settings. Better layout, signage, and servicescape resulted in more favourable emotional responses, particularly in terms of pleasure. Pleasure was also found to mediate the effects of these environmental factors on customer behaviour. Arousal was found to consist of two dimensions: one more overt and the other more passive. The banking service environment appears to influence the passive dimension of arousal more so than overt arousal. Some tentative insights were also obtained regarding the potential impact of service customization on these findings. Specifically, it was found that the effect of a good servicescape on customer behaviour was more pronounced when the service offered less customization in the branch bank but not the ATM lobby setting.