Visual Antecedents of Patronage: Personal and Professional Items in the Servicescape

Abstract

Personal items in the office are reported to convey unprofessionalism. To investigate this, subjects reacted to staged photo stimuli, reporting their perceptions of an unseen tax service provider based on personal items (family photos, sports memorabilia) and professional objects (CPA certificate, IRS publications) in the servicescape. Professional items exhibited favorable main effects for perceived competency, anticipated satisfaction, and patronage intent. Personal items yielded a favorable main effect for likeability of the service provider. Within the limits tested, no significant adverse effects for personal items in the servicescape were found. Beyond improving likeability, personal items may help initiate a provider-client relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• service cues
• service expectations
• artifacts in the office
• relationship marketing

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author gratefully acknowledges the photographic assistance of Ms. Karin Tedesco.

Notes

Note. See text for a description of each construct.

Note. All constructs were measured with multiple 9-point scales and then averaged for each respondent; larger values indicate the more favorable end of the scale. For groups, (+) indicates the associated items were present in the visual stimulus while (−) indicates their absence.

Note. Model R-squared for competency, likeability, satisfaction, and patronage intent is .164, .066, .134, and .126, respectively.