The impact of hotel servicescape on customer mindfulness and brand experience: The moderating role of length of stay

A hotel's servicescape - its design elements and quality of service - has been shown to predict customers' brand experience. However, the underlying mechanism of this association is unknown. Based on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) paradigm, we developed and tested a conceptual model in which servicescape promotes customers' mindfulness (focused awareness of the present moment), which in turn improves the brand experience. Data were collected from a questionnaire survey of customers in ten 3-5 star hotels in Guangdong Province, China. Structural equation modeling showed that, as hypothesized, customers' mindfulness mediated the relationship between perceived hotel servicescape and brand experience. In addition, hotel customers' length of stay negatively moderated the relationship between mindfulness and brand experience. Our study contributes to the literature by integrating concepts from psychology and marketing and expanded the SOR paradigm by introducing a boundary condition of the effect of mindfulness on brand experience.