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Creating Consumer Attachment to Retail Service Firms

through Sense of Place(E. Deanne Brocato & Julie Baker & Clay M. Voorhees)

Introduction

This research provides an initial investigation into how organizations can better manage the service place and provides a rich framework for future research on managing attachment with service consumers

This research addresses one aspect by examining whether and how atmosphere-dominant service firms can create a sense of place and thus foster customers’ attachment to a specific setting, which in turn may play a critical role in driving relationship-based customer behaviors.

Literatures and Theory

Environmental PsychologyPlace Attachment TheorySocial Identity TheorySocial Exchange Theory

Study 1 and 2

Study 1:Focuses on the conceptual development and testing of

three proposed dimensions of sense of place that influence the strength of place attachment.

Study 2:Expand the focus of the social bonds construct and examine how the sense of place dimensions influence strength of physical- and social-based attachments to place.

Study 1

Study 1

The place attachment based on individuals’ cumulative experiences with both physical and social aspects of an environment that lead to strong emotional bonding with that place (Low and Altman 1992; Relph 1985; Tuan 1974, 1977).

Place identity is defined as the congruency between a person’s self-image and the physical and social aspects of a place (Proshansky 1978).

Place dependence is an individual’s evaluation of the environment in terms of its functionality in satisfying unfulfilled needs (Backlund and Williams 2003).

Social bonding encompasses the meanings that are derived from the bonds that form between people within a specific place.

Discussion

The results of the first study indicate that the sense of place dimensions successfully predict strength of place attachment.

Place identity had the strongest influence on place attachment, closely followed by place dependence.

A social bond with employees, while significant, was the least important driver of place attachment

Service quality was a significant driver of all three sense of place dimensions.

Place attachment emerged as the only significant driver of switching intentions and post hoc tests demonstrated that place attachment’s effects on both positive word of mouth and switching intentions were significantly stronger than the effects of service quality.

Study 2

Antecedents to Sense of Place

Valuation is a normative dimension and includes assessments (ranging from positive to negative) of a place.

Distinction refers to an identifiable, territorial unit. Distinction involves cognitive categorization, a judgment of what kind of place it is.

Continuity is a temporal construct that describes the process by which places become connected to the “life path” of the individual, through important events and rituals.

Discussion

Fostering an emotional attachment with a specific location of a retail service organization is one avenue for firms to develop customer–company bonds.

Sense of place and strength of place attachment appear to play unique and critical roles in customers’ developing emotional attachment to specific service locations.

Place attachment requires a focus on both the physical and social aspects of a place.

Theoretical implications

Three sense of place dimensions— place identity, place dependence, and social bonding—all have consistently strong positive effects on the strength of consumers’ place attachment.

This research clarifies and extends the place attachment construct by treating place identity, place dependence, and social bonding as a meaning system that leads to emotional bonding with place.

Place attachment was shown to be a different construct than brand attachment, which supports its critical role in atmosphere-dominant service firms, even when those firms are regionally or nationally branded.

In firms where a physical place is an important component of the service offering, service quality alone may not be enough to elicit the bond that ties customers to a service location.

Managerial implications

Managers should also focus on the physical environment and social aspects of the customer experience

When managers want to create place attachment, they cannot stop at making improvements to the physical aspects of a location. They must consider the entire “place,” which includes social elements that can enhance the strength of attachment customers feel toward a firm.

Nostalgia is particularly important in creating both a feeling of place identity and social bonds with both employees and other customers.

Managers should actively create experiences and events that will produce in consumers’ feelings of nostalgia, thereby strengthening the connection between the service location and consumers’ life paths.

Future Research

Future research is needed to explore the roles of sense of place and place attachment in different types of service organizations.

A longitudinal investigation into the formation and evolution of place attachment over time could provide much needed insight into how relationships between concepts like nostalgia and place attachment develop over time.

Future research could determine whether consumer demographic or psychographic characteristics influence the relationships in this model.

Is This a Contemporary Journal?

Most of studies focus on examining attachment to physical branded goods rather than retail service firms. As a result, less is known about how attachment functions in atmosphere-dominant services and what the relevant objects of attachment are in this context.

Research streams have emerged in sociology and environmental psychology that attempt to explain the meanings associated with non-commercial places such as homes, cities, and natural landscapes, and the resulting attachment that develops between individuals and those places (e.g., Kyle et al. 2004a).

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