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

servicescape was one issue that we wanted to learn more. We found the Hightower construct tobe the most prescient construct given the limited items of the servicescape that other modelscover. Thus the modified (by addition of more items to the construct) Hightower constructbecame our framework that guided our interview protocol. This instrument has good reliabilityand validity results across ten industries and Hightower assertions that the researchers andpractitioners may creatively utilize his template and customize it to assess the servicescape of thefirm or industry across different cultures and nations (Hightower and Shariat, 2009 in Hightower,2010) was congruent with our development of the modified framework.One of the interesting aspects of servicescape that came about in our literature review is the verylimited number of work that was undertaken in order to understand the symbolic aspect ofservicescapes: how consumers symbolically interpret various artifacts of the servicescape, itsspatial layout and the culture that they encounter within. Sociosemiotic research undertaken inunderstanding consumer behaviour in the service atmospherics of shopping malls, hypermarkets,company stores and museums offer parallels that maybe applied to banks (Sherry, 1998 inHarmon, 2005). Extant literature reveals that semiotic retail research addresses a) what are thedominant signs selected for acquisition sites and how they are arranged; and b) what influence dosigns have on consumer meanings and behaviour (Harmon, 2005). The most prescient academicwork on Semiotics and consumption experience of consumers in the ‗location of consumption‘(which we took as an apposite surrogate for the term ‗servicescape‘) is the work Umiker-Sebeokhad done on museum visitors using American philosopher C.S. Peirce‘s triadic semiosis (Umiker-Sebeok, 1991; Mick, 1986). Following Peirce‘s model of semiosis it was found that usingPeirce‘s taxonomy of signs the museum visitors went through Peirce‘s stage of interpretants:firstly visitors experienced objects similar to those they have seen before (icons), in the next stagethey reflected on the newness of other exhibits (index) and finally the visitors translated exhibitsas symbols representing ideas based on their own cultural background, experiences and habits(Umiker-Sebeok, 1991; Mick, 1986 and Harmon, 2005). One interesting finding of Umiker-Sebeok‘s (1991) work had been how museum visitors ‗act upon the museum‘ where they‗dynamically build meaningful ―spaces‖ in which they move and maneuver to their ownadvantage‘ (Harmon, 2005).We wanted to incorporate Peirce‘s triadic semiosis model in Hightower‘s ‗InternationalServicescape Construct‘ by positing that the retail bank consumers interpret the elements in theAmbient, Social and Design dimensions of the servicescape in a symbolic manner resemblingC.S. Peirce‘s Icons, Indexes and Symbols (Mick, 1986). Thus the retail baking consumers‘