Abstract:

The physical environment of service encounters has special ability to influence on consumer behaviors and to create an image towards service businesses. Even though role of physical evidences of service marketing has been addressed by previous researchers in most common service industries, very few researchers extended their studies towards automobile service providers. Hence, in this study, researchers attempted to investigate on “The impact of physical environment on customer loyalty in automobile workshops in Sri Lanka.” The main objective of the study is to examine the influenced made by physical settings of automobile workshops on customer loyalty. The physical surroundings were operatinalized into three aspects and four hypotheses were formulated to determine the relationship among key constructs in the research model. Survey method was used to gather primary data from 150 randomly selected vehicle users in Colombo metropolitan area. Reliability test was carried out and Cronbach’s Alpha values of each construct was found that a good interring reliability exist with the data. The results indicated that there are positive relationships between all three aspects of physical environment of automobile service encounters. However facility interior become most important dimensions of physical arrangements. The results provide evidence to accept three hypotheses and reject one hypothesis. Finally researchers have emphasized some implications to marketers of automotive service industry to develop their promotion strategies in competitive markets.