PSYCHOACTIVE ENVIRONMENT (pSE): A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO IMPROVE SERVICE QUALITY

Abstract

Quality of a service, as perceived by anybody, is hardly possible to measure unless adopting an indirect and subjective measuring tool like a hedonic-scale. ‘Servicing time’ is an exception to postulate as it can be measured in a scientific or tangible manner. Service quality, unlike that of a product is something perceived by customers, unable to explain, challenge, or disallow indisputable quantification or assessment. Nevertheless, in business, people have a strong affinity to do their transactions with certain organizations as opposed to those that have the same facilities or less in comparison – an indication of existence of some quality, which attracts customers. The issue in focus is; given the possibility of achieving tangible expected outcomes of a higher level from certain businesses or organizations, what makes people feel repugnant towards them? The study reveals the presence of an undiscovered phenomenon, which we shall name Psychoactive Environment (pSE), that is bipolar, causes psychical stress and frustration leading to the ‘repulsion’ when its phase is negative. Notwithstanding that we have taken Sri Lankan situations as the basis of the study, and its universality is envisaged. The implications of pSE are numerous. However, in this study we have focused only on its implication on Service Quality in Business Management and an attempt has been made to establish the postulate ‘the service quality of an organization could be improved by creating a positive psychoactive environment’.At the end of the study, a practical approach to bring back negatively polarized pSE to more productive and customer attractive phase of positive pSE has also been suggested in this paper, and has been named as BINA.

Keywords: Affects, Attitudes, Emotions, Schemas, Stimuli

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk