Consumer response to tobacco smoke in service settings

Abstract

Establishing smoking policies which accommodate customers' smoking preferences is a major problem for restaurants, bars, hotels, and other firms in the service industry. This study is based on the premise that tobacco smoke can be considered a component of both the physical and ambient retail service environment. Because of legal and ethical concerns, the presence or absence of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in two types of eating facilities (bar and fine dining restaurant) was operationalized by the presentation to respondents of photographs which pictured customers in a setting where smoking was either present or absent. The success of this method of manipulation of the treatment variable was assessed with a thought listing procedure. Thought listing responses indicate that both treatments (type of facility and smoking policy) were adequately conveyed by the photographs. Results indicate that cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses were all negatively affected by the presence of tobacco smoke. The conclusion is that managers who permit smoking in their facilities risk losing non-smoking patrons while smokers are little affected by either the presence or absence of smoke. The major contributions of this study include both the exploration of tobacco smoke as part of the retail service environment for eating establishments and the use of thought listings as a manipulation check for variables which were manipulated through use of photographs depicting the treatment conditions.

The effect of cues on service quality expectations and service selection in a restaurant setting

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Addiction or social need: towards a model to predict smoking cessation intentions

“…smoking cessation) with the perceived response costs of such behaviour. Both threat and coping appraisals are known to influence an individual’s attitudes towards smoking cessation intentions based on cognitive processes of perception construal (Kraft and Benet, 2010; McCullock and Perrault, 2020).…”

Browsing behaviour as a mediator: the impact of multi-sensory cues on purchasing

“…Spence et al (2014, p. 472) support this notion and state: “Store atmospherics cannot really be understood on a sense-by- sense basis; environments, and our perception of them are, by nature, multi-sensory”. Although it is convenient to isolate cues and investigate them and their effects on consumers separately (Doucé et al , 2015; Herrmann et al , 2013; Jain et al , 2014; Kraft and Benet, 2010; Parsons, 2009; Vieira, 2010; Quartier et al , 2009), experiments become increasingly difficult to conduct validly, as the number of interactions increase.…”