Discussion
Results from the analysis of the samples’ data (see Table 5) revealed that therapeutic servicescapes have a negative association with COVID stress; thus, supporting hypothesis 1. This confirms that the more customers spend time in leisure and recreational spots that have a blend of a restorative natural environment and relational resources, the more they are likely to be relieved of COVID stress. This corroborates the findings of Lucia-Palacios et al. (2018), and Purani and Kumar (2018) that relational, natural, and physical elements of places of service delivery can enhance consumers’ wellbeing. Further, in support of the study’s hypothesis 2, the results revealed that therapeutic servicescapes have a positive direct relationship with customers’ revisit intention. Thus, this study shows that customers, considering the therapeutic servicescapes of leisure and recreational spots, would likely return to the leisure and recreational spots. This confirms that based on their experience in the servicescape, customers would respond either with avoidance or approach behaviors (Bitner, 1992). This finding suggests that a blend of a restorative natural environment and relational resources at leisure spots would trigger customer revisit intentions (a form of approach behaviors). Finally, through its negative relationship with COVID stress, this study demonstrates that therapeutic servicescapes of leisure spots would influence customers’ revisit intention, thus supporting hypothesis 3.
These findings reveal that therapeutic servicescapes’ attributes of fascination, cohesion, scope, relational resources, and ‘being away’ at leisure spots are significantly related to customers’ COVID stress and that this relationship is an underlying mechanism through which therapeutic servicescapes could influence customers’ revisit intention. As most countries are opening up after several months of lockdown and restrictions, most hospitality businesses will have to cope with customers’ concerns of being infected at service points (Jiang & Wen, 2020; Shin & Kang, 2020). In addition to what has been suggested in the literature to alleviate the fear of customers in the hospitality business post-lockdown, this study has demonstrated that therapeutic servicescapes could both alleviate COVID stress and foster more re-patronage.
Theoretical Implication
Theoretically, the current study shows that the blend of social and physical settings to form therapeutic servicescapes with restorative potentials occurs in commercial hospitality settings such as relaxation bars, and not only in blue and green settings. It highlights, based on the S-O-R, that the servicescape of hospitality establishments act as stimuli that react with customers’ internal responses to provoke a behavioral response. Further, this study contributes to the scholarly discussion on the quick recovery of the hospitality sector post-pandemic. It highlights the potential operational, strategic, and marketing limitations of AI, social distancing, and hygiene; the three major suggestions in literature so far. In accordance with Bell et al. (2018), this study demonstrated that post-lockdown, therapeutic landscapes’ social and physical settings truly blend in ways that are contributing to human healing from COVID stress and anxiety. This in turn would boost the performance of the sector post-lockdown by fostering customers’ revisit intention, thus providing a marketing advantage. In terms of strategic value, since all businesses post-lockdown will have to obey social distancing protocols and hygiene rules, therapeutic servicescape could serve as a differentiation strategy. Besides, unlike AI, creating a therapeutic servicescape is less capital intensive and requires less technical expertise.
Practical Implication
Practically, the study has marketing, strategic and health implications. This study suggests that managers should seek to blend the restorative potential of the natural environment with relational resources to enhance the therapeutic potential of their place of business. This is because as customers emerge from social isolation experienced during the lockdown, relational resources in hospitality establishments would go a long way in curbing COVID stress. This would not only deliver health-related benefits to customers, but it would also provide marketing and strategic benefits to the establishments as it stimulates revisit intention. For example, leisure and recreational places may integrate natural elements, like water fountains, aquariums, as well as greenery into their physical settings. In addition, managers are encouraged to improve the coherence and scope of hospitality establishments’ servicescape. The involvement and suggestions of customers in the arrangement and organization of the servicescape may be solicited for this. Furthermore, to reduce COVID stress and trigger revisit intentions, fascination and being away should be enhanced. Practically, this could be achieved by giving customers a break from an overload of pandemic news & stories. If COVID health and safety nudges will be provided within the servicescape, they could be more pleasant and perhaps emphasize positives, such as the number of COVID patients recovering and the potency of vaccines. Finally, managers may likewise consider promoting a stronger rapport between their employees and customers, as well as among customers. This might be done by creating an online community, and by supporting a social or environmental cause that might enhance employee-customer socialization.
Limitations and recommendations for future studies
The current study has some limitations that can be explored in future studies. There are still stringent COVID-19 restrictions in some places, and certain services are offered online. Thus, future studies can explore whether social, natural, and physical conditions can be incorporated into cyberscapes or virtual consumption settings such as the higher education sector (Ogunmokun et al., 2021b). Also, there are other conceptualizations of therapeutic servicescapes (Higgins & Hamilton, 2019) that future studies can explore and juxtapose with the one used in this study, to enhance the current understanding and application of the concept in the hospitality industry. Finally, the study’s data is skewed in terms of gender distribution. While this is typical of the study’s patriarchal population and context, our findings might not be generalizable to other contexts.