Performative Staging of Servicescape: Bringing in the Lefebvrian Triad of Social Space

The paper advances the prior dialectical conceptualization of servicescape and argues that the notion of servicescape and its socio-spatial relations are not yet fully characterized. Drawing on research in marketing and cultural geography, the paper develops a conceptual frame to analyse participation and temporality in servicescapes. Rooted in visual ethnography, the paper traces participation and interaction in artscapes, answering the questions of how temporality manifests itself in socio-spatiality and how servicescape appears as planned, practiced and performed. Drawn both on empirical findings and Lefebvrian social space, the paper extends the socio-spatial marketing view towards a triadic staging of servicescape where role-taking and imagination play a role. The paper contributes to marketing research by highlighting servicescapes as temporal, open-ended and fragmented, rooted in ‘bubbling dynamics of encounters’ with participants tending to take over the empty space.