Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

specific aspects of service environments (including service atmospherics) led to manyimprovements and changes in the service environment. A visit to the supermarket often envelopsthe customers in the smell of baking bread; restaurant operators carefully adjust and tailor theirlighting and music so that the context of the dining setting is congruent to the customers‘expectations (Ezeh and Harris, 2007). Consumer behaviour is thus expected to be altered andinfluenced to the advantages of the retailers. For retail banking the same maybe true. It isanticipated that the bank‘s use of multisensory marketing techniques and tools may yield newinsights for the field of experiential brand marketing in other fields.In a commentary on the improvement and a more robust construction of the servicescapeconstruct we see that ‗atmospherics‘ fall under the Ambient Dimension of the overall perceivedservicescape (Hightower, 2010). When consumers are asked questions regarding the ambientconditions that prevails in a servicescape they are usually able to highlight one or two aspects ofthe servicescape that is directly related to atmospherics. However one of the limitations ofstudying atmospherics to predict consumer behaviour in the servicescape setting is that‗atmospherics‘ is a simple stimulus-response model which assumes that certain target groups willreact the same way to a particular stimulus, and this response is an involuntary response. Owingto this limitation atmospherics does not explain how consumers are able to selectively screen outspecific stimuli and form impression about the service based on few characteristics(Paninchukunnath, 2009).We report the findings of an exploratory study conducted to gather insights into how two groupsof participants – customers as well as bank employees – perceive the atmosphere in the bank as aset of multisensory categories and their views of how the atmosphere at their banks contributes tocorporate identity and image. Employees‘ views were included because they are key stakeholdersfor corporate branding initiatives (Balmer and Gray, 2003; King, 1991). A synthesis of recentliteratures on atmosphere in corporate settings, retail image management, impressionmanagement and corporate brand image and identity is developed in the next section. This isfollowed by a discussion of our research methodology. The findings from our empiricalinvestigation are then reported. We analyse and draw out the implications of these findingsbefore making key managerial as well as theoretical recommendations. Finally, some caveats ofour paper and directions for future research are proposed.Corporate Branding and IdentityCorporate branding and identity are essential components of how institutions present themselvesto a range of stakeholders (Balmer, 1998). This process is deliberate, systematic and carefully-