Raising Consumers' Sense of Service in the Hotel Sector: An Interactive Perceptive of Service Tangibility

ABSTRACT

This study empirically tests for the effects of two types of service tangibility, physical and mental, on consumers' sense of service, using the hotel industry as a case example. An experiment was conducted to test the established hypotheses using a between-cases factorial design. Even though the effect of physical tangibility was larger than the effect of mental tangibility, empirical results support the hypothesized relationships; i.e., the interactive effect of physical and mental tangibility performs better than the effect under conditions of mono-tangibility. This study suggests that hotel managers need to identify specific components of services in more detail, which might increase their chances for getting clearer service tangibility perceived by consumers. In particular, the discrepancy between perceptions of tangibility is exactly the issue that may lead hospitality service providers to misunderstand consumers' requirements, which then causes inefficiency in marketing service offerings.

Key words:

• hotel services
• physical tangibility
• mental tangibility
• sense of service tangibility