IMPACT OF SERVICESCAPE ON OVERALL SERVICE QUALITY OF RESTAURANT SERVICES IN INDIA.

Human nature is based on the factors or surroundings in which he lives in like home, office or society. A restaurant is a place where people visit to have food or spend good time with their friends and loved ones or to discuss their daily day to day happenings in their lives. Physical surroundings of the service environment, often referred to as servicescape, was firstly introduced by Bitner in 1992. It highly influenced the consumers’ perceptions towards an organization. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of the various environmental factors at restaurants, and to analyze how the servicescape influences the overall service quality at restaurants. The research approach used was based on surveys (personal interviews and electronic collection) to collect data on facts with regard to the servicescape and overall service quality at restaurants. The collected data was analyzed by means of multiple regression methods in order to obtain factors that can influence overall service quality at restaurants through SPSS. The findings of this paper support Bitner’s (1992) framework of servicescapes. The conducted study indicates that servicescape elements or factors, such as ‘ambient conditions’, ‘staff’, ‘Physical Environment’, and ‘External Environment’, are important in influencing overall service quality in the restaurants. Additionally, especially the ‘Physical Environment’ factor was found to induce the highest level of pleasure and approach behavior. In relation to the restaurants, when customers have favorable emotions, they tend to enjoy the food, spend more money, and probably return to the restaurant the next time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]