The effectiveness of an enriched servicescape framework on value-in-use and behavioural responses: the coworking space context

摘要

Servicescape research has revolutionised the face of service marketing, however, despite expanding the physical design of the model in retail-oriented business, nevertheless, it is not clear whether this relation should be expected to be constant across all service operations or even across all firms within a service industry. Therefore, servicescape studies need to explore specific industry contexts and service-oriented organisations. The importance of industry-specific servicescape stimuli, in studying the effect on consumers’ behavioural responses and value creation, has been emphasised. This study postulates that servicescape dimensions extend beyond the physical design of the business setting and influence consumer experiences and behavioural responses. Consequently, the study aimed to explore and enrich the servicescape framework specific to coworking spaces as service providers. The enriched framework, as an original contribution to existing literature, was then validated for its effectiveness in impacting value-in-use experienced by the consumers of the space as coworking members, and subsequent influence on their behavioural responses; these included loyalty, and a sense of belonging to the coworking space, positive word-of-mouth endorsement and impact on coworking member performance, who were principally entrepreneurs, freelancers, start-ups and knowledge workers. The research adopted a pragmatic mixed-methods approach based on a conceptual model derived from the relevant literature. The sequential mix-methods approach was adopted by conducting exploratory qualitative data collection and followed by a quantitative study from the consumer perspective across Australian coworking spaces.In the qualitative phase the unobtrusive observations, visual documentation and in-depth interviews were conducted to explore and enrich the servicescape framework specific to coworking space context and subsequently exploring the value-in-use experiences of coworking members. The qualitative phase inducted the community engagement and events, social interactions and support, management support services, and collaborative culture, as major elements of the salient servicescape perceived by coworking members; which were added as enrichment to the servicescape framework. The qualitative phase also derived the value-in-use experiences (positive emotional, knowledge sharing, support, networking and functional) were also derived from the qualitative findings.of By incorporating the findings from qualitative phase, a finalised research model, hypotheses and survey instrument were developed to evaluate the relationship between enriched servicescape dimensions, value-in-use, behavioural responses and performance of coworking member. An online survey was conducted among the coworking space users in Australia as quantitative data collection method. The data were then analysed using the Partial Least Square- Structured Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). As postulated, the study found that, while there is a broad understanding of the advantages of physical design of the servicescape, coworking consumers view the servicescape as a more social, community, service and cultural-oriented environment; that social interactions, community engagement and events, and management support services contributed to consumer value-in-use experiences and positively influenced coworker behaviour. It also confirmed management support services and perceived organisational culture, specifically the collaborative culture, impacted individual and business coworking member performances. The findings suggest that coworking space providers and similar businesses invest in designing their social, community and management support services environment to influence and enrich value-in-use experiences for consumers.