Creating Consumer Attachment to Retail Service Firms through Sense of Place

1. I P U T U S E P T I A N A D I P R A Y U D A
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Creating Consumer Attachment to
Retail Service Firms
through Sense of Place
(E. Deanne Brocato & Julie Baker & Clay M. Voorhees)

2. 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.

3. Literatures and Theory
 Environmental Psychology
 Place Attachment Theory
 Social Identity Theory
 Social Exchange Theory

4. 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.

5. Study 1

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Study 2

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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).

15. Thank You