An organization, or small business, that provides services must participate in the art of understanding the human psyche. Since services are not tangible items, companies must dive deep into the human brain and understand how a person interprets quality and trust by using only sensory cues. This comes in a plethora of options: An office environment, the music playing overhead, an ambiance that provides comfort, the taste of food, and the feeling of meeting a company representative for a consultation. These are just a few examples that consumers confront while researching a provider of services. In order to produce customers, a service provider must produce forms of advertising. These marketing tactics must entice the consumers’ senses, create strong perceptions of trust, loyalty and quality, and influence their behavior in order to gain a client. “The stimulus-organism-response model (SOR) was developed by environmental psychologists to help explain the effects of the service environment on consumer behavior” (Hoffman & Bateson, 2008). This model consists of several aspects; a set of stimuli, an organism component and a set of responses or outcomes. Stimuli, in this case, is defined by our five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. When all of these senses are combined successfully, a consumer in a pastry shop would conclude that the business is of higher quality, the food is exceptional and worth the extra expense. The organism component describes the individuals that are receiving the stimuli. Finally, responses or outcomes are how the consumer reacts to the stimuli. For example, either approaching or avoiding the service. This is the set up referred to as a servicescape for service providers. As you can see, the SOR is extremely important for producing business and profits.
The first stage of the service scape model is the physical