Question

Your answer should not exceed a maximum of 400 words

10 marks

FRANK is an exclusive, high-end bar which serves premium cocktails in a quiet and intimate setting in Sydney’s CBD. As part of their segmentation and targeting strategy, FRANK targets older, upper-class customers – a strategy which has been very profitable for the organisation for many decades. Lately, management has noticed that an increasing number of university students are frequenting the bar, creating lots of noise and disturbing other patrons. Multiple complaints have been made by the original target market against the newcomers, and management have begun noticing that many of the older clients who spend significantly more money than university students have stopped frequenting the bar completely.

Explain how FRANK could apply the servicescape model to reduce the number of disruptive university students visiting the bar. In your answer, you should consider the effects of customer moderators and customer responses. Your answer should include some specific and actionable recommendations that FRANK could implement to deter university students from frequenting the bar.

Answer 1

Servicescape model is an applied SOR (stimulus, organism and response) model, where in with help of changing the environmental elements and stimulus which act on organism (here the customers and employee in this case) and triggers the behavior according to stimulus. Service escape model helps in understanding and brings in change in following environmental stimulus of setting to get the desired behavioral changes:

Physical environment like ambient condition, spatial layout, sign symbol and after facts.

The holistic environment where the person enters in a service setting get the multiple stimuli simultaneously and creates the overall impression of the place or settings. Role of a customer moderators is to control the flow of activities and incorporation of stimuli to get the desired behavior from customers.

Actions required to solve the problem given in the case. The case is about creating the suitable set of stimuli which brings in favorable behavioral (more time being spent in bar) changes in target set of customer’s (old age customers) and at the same time these environmental elements should bring in favorable (refrain from coming to bar) behaviors in non-target customers (university students). This is being done with the intention that a more profitable customer should stay more and they should not feel any disturbance from the university students.

Actionable recommendations that Frank should consider improving the situation.

1. Creates the ambient lighting which is more liked by old age customers rather than the university student.
2. Play only that low sound music which old age customer would like and at the same like young university students will not like
3. Layout plan: more areas to sit in small groups and individually or couple, less place to stand and gather so that young people will feel this place as less energetic.
4. Change in interiors elements which will be of taste of target customers, like use of more decent and dull colors rather than bright colors.
5. Instead of lean servicescape give more focus on elaborate servicescape.
6. They may also plan to give more customized service to old customers with use of customer moderators.