The edifying body: the role of embodied practices in the social production of servicescapes Free

Services need their physical space. Notwithstanding the booming research interest in online, technology-mediated services in recent years (e.g. Cardinali et al., 2023; Liu et al., 2023; Qin et al., 2023; Sharma et al., 2023), the overwhelming majority of service transactions and accompanying consumption experiences are still unfolding in physical environments. According to the US Census Bureau, for example, about 85% of total retail sales in 2023 were made in brick-and-mortar store (https://www.census.gov/retail/ecommerce.html). Consider also the increasing popularity of theme parks, museums, heritage sites, national parks and a plethora of other tourism experiences that are inherently grounded in physical places. Yet, the physical environment where service experiences transpire has not received much deserved attention in service scholarship despite the fact that service providers perform an important role in the production and social organization of such places (Davidson et al., 2023; Potdar et al., 2021). The present research aims to address this research oversight.

More than 30 years ago, Bitner (1992) provided the first organizing framework for the conceptual understanding of the physical environment by introducing the concept of servicescapes referring to purposefully built commercial environments where services are assembled and customer-provider interactions transpire. Since then, the concept has been refined and developed (e.g. Rosenbaum and Massiah, 2011; Tombs and McColl-Kennedy, 2003) and has proven useful for the study of services in the context of themed environments (Gottdiener, 1998), retailing (Baker et al., 2020) and leisure settings (Dong and Siu, 2013; Wakefield and Blodgett, 1996). This paper addresses an overlooked dimension on the development of the concept, namely the presence of the body and its kinetic capacities in shaping the social character of servicescapes.

The lack of attention to bodily presence in servicescapes can be traced back to their initial conception as physical environments (Bitner, 1992) and a consequent emphasis on the primacy of design, architecture, store layout, atmospherics, displays and artifacts (Esbjerg and Bech-Larsen, 2009; Kozinets et al., 2002; Peñaloza, 1998; Sherry, 1998; Sherry et al., 2001). In this materialistic view, a servicescape is seen as a prefabricated stage or a container for objects, happenings and experiences. Intended meanings are embedded in advance of the “drama” to be performed on the material stage. Anchored on a stimulus-response model, the thinking is that a carefully designed servicescape will lead customers to certain actions, facilitate experiences, influence perceptions of service quality and result in customer satisfaction and repatronage behavior (Bitner, 1992; Bitner et al., 1994; Bitner and Wang, 2014; Esbjerg and Bech-Larsen, 2009; Johnson and Zinkhan, 1991; Nilsson and Ballantyne, 2014; Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010).

The field was subsequently expanded by the addition of a social dimension (Andrés et al., 2016; Rosenbaum and Massiah, 2011; Tombs and McColl-Kennedy, 2003) and the acknowledgement that service providers can play a strategic role in their social production (Echeverri and Åkesson, 2018; Sahi et al., 2022). A case in point was provided by Arnould et al. (1998) who demonstrated that wilderness becomes a meaningful servicescape through the narrative framing provided by professional guides during river rafting trips. Insightful and groundbreaking as Arnould et al.’s (1998) narrative view is, it does not look beyond service providers’ narrative framing and stops short in addressing the role of the participating body in the social constitution of servicescapes.

To do justice to extant literature though, the body is not completely absent in servicescape research. Sherry (1998) acknowledged customers’ bodily experience at Nike Town and he attributed this to the “sensuocity” and “fetish quality” of the artifacts. In her visual ethnography at Nike Town, Peñaloza (1998) noted that consumers’ gestures and bodily movements result in particular trajectories of visual fields. Echoing Seamon’s (2015) metaphor of “place-ballets,” these management-engineered bodily movements play a key role in the production of cultural meanings. Kozinets et al. (2004) argued that although the staging of ESPN Zone Chicago was focused on the visual element, the kinesthetic experience and the physical nature of consumer participation had a “profoundly embodied” impact. Similarly, Stevens et al. (2019) showed that the body is affected by particular material specificities in a retail context. More recent studies have acknowledged that body language (Kampani and Jhamb, 2021) or even the mere presence of other people (Rosenbaum et al., 2021; Tombs and McColl-Kennedy, 2010) influence customers’ emotions and their spatial positioning in the servicescape. Informative as these studies may be, their interest was not on the productive role of the body in the social makeup of servicescapes.

To this end, the attention of this article is on embodied practices in the service encounter, a neglected aspect in service literature. Drawing on Crouch (1999, 2001, 2002, 2004) and Schatzki (2001), I define embodied practices as sets of actions wherein the human body relates to the surrounding physical world through movements, postures, gestures, facial expressions and other corporal involvements. I focus, in particular, on embodied practices as centrally organized by service providers and how these practices inform the way customers make sense of and endow servicescapes with particular meanings. As human geographer David Crouch (2001) theorized more than 20 years ago, meaningful spaces are developed through practices that are also embodied.

Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to explore and theorize the role of embodied practices – orchestrated by service providers – in the social production of servicescapes. The study addresses three research questions: First, in what ways the participating body contributes to the social production of the servicescape? Second, through what practices service providers engage the body in their effort to construct and instill a particular, nuanced, underlying character to the servicescape? And third, how do embodied practices inform extant knowledge on the production of servicescapes? I pursue these questions in the empirical context of Saint Petersburg (SPb) cityscape, a major tourism destination where I followed the guiding practices of professional tour guides – as an instantiation of service providers – as they lead groups of international tourists.

I ground my work on a growing body of scholarship on the somatic dimensions in social theory where the human body and its kinetic capacities are seen as important agents in grasping, making sense of and engaging with the world (Crouch, 2002; Csordas, 1994; Low, 2003; Merleau-Ponty, 2014). Body and place “belong together,” Casey (1993, p. 45) points out; while for Merleau-Ponty (2014), “there would be for me no such thing as space if I did not have a body” (p. 104). Place-making is, thus, “an embodied phenomenon” (Sen and Silverman, 2014, p. 8). Correspondingly, I advance the notion of the edifying body in order to highlight its informative and constructive contribution in the makeup of servicescapes.

The contribution of this study lies in moving beyond the dominant materialistic view of the servicescape as a prefabricated stage (Bitner, 1992) as well as the narrative view that conceives them as narrative constructions (Arnould et al., 1998). It is argued, instead, that servicescapes are socially produced in situ and they owe much to service providers’ deployment of embodied practices that are carried out in space and have an edifying capacity in their ability to shape the social character of the servicescape. Through these practices, body language functions as a type of communication since physical behaviors (facial expressions, movement, body posture, gestures, eye movement, etc.) are used to express or convey information. In contrast to the notion of the servicescape as a predetermined stage, an embodied servicescape is generative and dynamic. It is socially produced through practice and, as such, it is emerging and always in the making. It should also be noted that neither materialities nor narratives are sidelined in this inquiry. Instead, they are both implicated in a productive relationship with the currently missing idea of an embodied servicescape. Servicescapes, that is, are not only physical and narrative constructions but they are also configured through the body. In this sense, servicescapes are conceived here as dynamic socio-spatial entities emerging from the constant {narrative-material-body} arrangements orchestrated by service providers.

Scholarly interest in the body as an existential ground of culture and as an active agent for engaging with the world has been increasing over the last few decades (Csordas, 1990, 1994; Hamilakis et al., 2002; Malacrida and Low, 2016; Tilley, 1994). Especially prominent is the presence of the body in a corpus of writings collectively known as Practice Theory. Downplaying “ideas” and “values” that work subjectively in the heads of people, the weight is placed on “practices” understood as arrays of human activity that are embodied and materially mediated (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2001; Swidler, 2001). Language, as a form of discursive activity and as something that people do rather than a structure they draw on, can be also seen as a practice phenomenon (Pennycook, 2010; Schatzki, 2001). Yet, practice theory is primarily grounded on the socially informed body (Csordas, 1990). Human activities are embodied (Schatzki, 2001) and practice is the “regular, skillful ‘performance’ of (human) bodies” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 251). For our purpose, the idea of embodied practices can be especially fruitful in regard to its entanglement with space. In fact, the constitution of social space has been linked to practical activities of individuals and groups (Tilley, 1994). Leisure/tourism places, in particular, have been viewed through the lens of embodied practices which play a critical role in grasping and making sense of their social character (Crouch, 1999, 2002).

More specifically, awareness of space is contingent on the body’s capacities and potentialities for movement (Low, 2003; Tilley, 1994). It is only when people enter into and move within a particular place that they capture its meaning and significance (Tilley, 1994). More directly, Pandya (1990) claimed that bodily movement is a key factor in defining a place. Bodily movement and expressivity have been also linked to the transformation of space (Crouch, 1999, 2001). In this sense, the body has enterprising and generative capacities and partakes in refiguring places, endowing them with particular values and making them meaningful (Crouch, 2002, 2004). A strong case for the role of the body in the production of meaningful places has been also made by the preeminent philosopher of place Edward Casey (1993, 1996) who argued that our bodies are the means through which a place is configured, structured and established. For him, there can be no place without the body. And he was very emphatic in claiming that “bodies build places” (1993, p. 116). But how is this accomplished?

A focused reading of extant literature provides insight on three ways in which the body is involved in place-making. First, bodies are integral to the process of spatialization, that is, the meaningful ordering and sense-making of the surrounding space. Distances and spatial divisions, certainly, owe their existence and meaning to the human body (Tuan, 1977). Moreover, due to its inherent dimensionalities of up/down, front/back, right/left, the body functions as a “spatial framework” according to which any given place acquires its primary dimensions of verticality, frontality and horizontality (Casey, 1993). In this capacity, the living body acts as a “locator agent” since particular material entities, such as landmarks, conform with and can be accurately located in space with the employment of the coordinates of the body (Casey, 1993; Tuan, 1977). By virtue of its movement, furthermore, the body links places in a significant propinquity to each other. In this role, then, the body facilitates the employment of disparate materialities and spatializes them into a meaningful social place.

Second, the living-moving body is an essential ingredient in the process of emplacement. It is the vehicle, agent, articulator and witness of “being-in-place” (Casey, 1993, 1996, 2001). Rather than a mere onlooker, the body is surrounded by space and becomes part of it (Crouch, 2004). In Casey’s (1993) words, “we are bound by body to be in place” (p. 104, emphasis in the original). The body, furthermore, moves between places; and directionality of movement – upward/downward, forward/backward, verging to the right/to the left – is a conjoint product of the body and particular place features (e.g. landmarks). In emplacement, the body is a functioning agent through its performative capabilities. To paraphrase Casey (1993) for this project, where else to look for a renewed understanding of servicescapes “than our own bodily enactments?” (p. 46, emphasis added).

Third, bodily engagement with space is socially and spatially regulated (Edensor, 2000; MacCannell, 2013). In consumption contexts, official practices of spatial regulation are essential in choreographing movement, prescribing certain paths, dictating “appropriate” ways of acting and (re)encoding hegemonic meanings while precluding alternatives that do not conform to the sanctioned view (Edensor, 2000). Bodily regulation is prominent in commercial places that are centrally planned and carefully organized (Lefebvre, 1991). In this regard, Edensor (2000) refers to “enclavic” spaces that are strongly circumscribed, constantly monitored, minimize ambiguity and are intended for a single purpose. An exemplary case of enclavic space and bodily regulation can be met in themed places like shopping malls, festival marketplaces and other tourism sites (Gottdiener, 1998).

Grounded in the above literature, the present study seeks to answer the following questions: (1) in what ways the human body is implicated in the social production of the servicescapes? (2) which are the embodied practices that service providers use as they guide customers? (3) in what ways embodied practices inform and complement extant theorizations on the production of servicescapes? These questions are particularly pertinent to servicescapes that are not primarily built for commercial purposes and, thus, their social character is not clearly specified and built-in from their inception. While service businesses can thrive in these environments, they do not have the ability to affect their social character by directly altering their physical composition. I use the term “native servicescapes” to refer to service environments that cannot be altered materially. Examples include cityscapes (e.g. San Francisco, Paris, London), natural wonders (e.g. Grand Canyon, Victoria Falls), state parks (e.g. Yellowstone, Lake District), historical/heritage sites (e.g. Gettysburg, Les Invalides), archaeological sites (e.g. Mount Saint Peter caves in Netherlands, Delos in Greece) and any kind of landscape that, for a variety of reasons, manipulation of its physical make-up by marketers is restricted. Lacking the power to intervene materially, service providers can resort to communicative means in order to shape the character of the servicescape. But while, as I have already mentioned earlier, extant literature has identified the importance of narratives as a staging mechanism (Arnould et al., 1998), the role of the body in this process has not been investigated. As it will be elaborated in the next section, our selected empirical context – SPb – constitutes an exemplary case of a native servicescape since (1) it is a living city with more than 5 million residents who go about their everyday lives, (2) it is registered in UNESCO’s World Heritage list and thus it is not allowed to be altered, and (3) it has a very rich history and, as a result, it offers a multitude of possibilities for customers to experience that are not always compatible. Thus, service providers are called to commercially stage SPb as a particular kind of servicescape.

The exploratory and discovery-oriented task of theorizing the body in the social construction of servicescapes requires the use of a qualitative methodology. Ethnography, in particular, offers the opportunity to observe what people do, what they say, and how they act in situ. Market-oriented ethnography (Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994) was conducted in St. Petersburg (SPb) – the second largest city in Russia – that is rich in cultural attractions for people to visit. It also hosts a plethora of service providers to cater for the visitors.

The ethnographic effort started by familiarizing ourselves with the history, architecture, monuments, famous buildings and the cultural geography of the city; that is, what is worth visiting and where it stands on the cityscape. This knowledge became indispensable at a later stage during guided tours as well as during discussions with managers, guides and tourists. For the purpose of this project, I joined two-day shore excursions with cruise-liner international passengers, conducted by officially licensed guides. I continued participating until the completion of eleven tours, a point I felt that I reached theoretical saturation (Glaser and Strauss, 2017). Each tour would start early in the morning by picking up tourists at the major port where cruise ships docked. All service providers used relatively small vans of seven-to-fifteen passengers. After ten hours of touring, customers were returned back to their ship to spend the night before they were picked up again the next morning. I focused my analytic lens on six major anchoring attractions that are common in all itineraries: Peter & Paul Cathedral, Peterhof Palace, Church on the Spilled Blood, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, Winter Palace and Catherine’s Palace. Participant observation throughout the guided tours provided the main source of empirical data.

Participation in guided tours offered the opportunity to observe the tour itinerary, the attractions visited, the narratives provided and additional information given about the city and its history. I paid attention to guides’ storytelling, body language and gestures, as well as to their discursive employment of the tourists’ moving body and its association with the surrounding space. Overall, I collected more than 120 h of recorded material that provided more than 2,200 pages of text. I also took more than 7,000 photographs where I tried to capture the focal attractions along with the participating bodies of guides and tourists.

Analysis and interpretation followed standard procedures employed in qualitative research (Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994; Lofland and Lofland, 1995; Miles and Huberman, 1994; Spiggle, 1994). Transcribed material was read and re-read in order to gain familiarity with the text (Arnould, 1998). During the stage of “coding,” I teased out the text and coded for (1) narrative themes, literary tropes and rhetorical tactics; (2) references to objects, statues, buildings and other materialities; and (3) efforts to orient, direct and otherwise administer the movement of tour participants. During the stages of categorization, abstraction, comparison and dimensionalization initial codes were modified or broken down into sub-codes and new codes were added in order to provide a more nuanced interpretation of what was said, shown, or done. Final interpretation as a more abstract, synthetic and illuminating process (Spiggle, 1994) was guided by the focal research aim, that is, the social production of SPb as a tourism destination, paying particular attention to bodily postures, orientations and movements as wells as the way these postures, orientations and movements related to the selection of particular materialities, the crafting of narratives and the directions provided by tour guides.

Ethnographic fieldwork takes place in “naturally” occurring environments and the selection of the specific context where the focal phenomenon will be studied is critical. It is essential, therefore to provide a short description of the chosen empirical context, i.e. Saint Petersburg (SPb). The contextual description offered here will help the reader to better follow the ethnographic account provided in the following section. It will also help understanding the importance of selectivity and intentionality in service providers’ practices.

Soon after its founding by Peter the Great in 1703, SPb became the new capital of Russia, a purposeful departure from the old Muscovite traditions and a move towards a social and cultural affinity to the West. It soon became not only the hub of a vast empire but also its most westernized city known as the “Window to the West.” Cultural proximity was also matched by a physical resemblance. It is often described as the “Venice of the North” due to its intricate system of rivers and water corridors imitating the city of Venice in Italy but also the city of Amsterdam, a place that was much liked by Peter the Great.

SPb’s history is rich in political, scientific, artistic and other cultural domains. It is known as the “Cradle of Revolution” or the “City of Three Revolutions,” most famous of which is the October Revolution that led to the transfer of political power to the Soviets and the rise of the Communist Party. Major world-renown figures in science include Dmitri Mendeleev who is credited with the publication of the first periodic table of elements; Ivan Pavlov – an experimental neurologist and physiologist known for his discovery of classical conditioning through his experiments with dogs; and Mikhail Lomonosov – a polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education and science. Its music legacy is associated with acclaimed composers like Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Dmitri Shostakovich and Igor Stravinsky. And we cannot exaggerate the immense cultural contributions of literary giants like Alexandre Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alexander Blok and Anna Akhmatova among others.

Today SPb is a buzzing metropolis of more than 5 million inhabitants. It is the second largest city of the Russian Federation and is often referred as its “Cultural Capital.” It boasts more than 200 museums, 30 palaces, 2,000 libraries, 80 theaters, 100 concert organizations, 40 galleries and exhibition halls, 80 cultural establishments, 100 festivals, various competitions of art, 50 international events and a plethora of Churches, Cathedrals and Monasteries. Among the city’s theatres is the Mariinsky Theatre (formerly known as the Kirov Theatre), home to the Mariinsky Ballet company and leading ballet dancers such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolph Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. A number of iconic historical buildings dot its landscape including Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, the State Hermitage Museum, and numerous former palaces from the Tsarist period. In fact, there are about 8,000 architectural monuments in SPb. It is worth adding that its historical center and related groups of monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It goes without saying, then, that SPb offers an immense array of attractions for someone to visit and explore. For our purpose, SPb provides an ideal example of a “native” servicescape that cannot be altered physically. As a venue for service experience, it is not a particular servicescape a priori. It rather becomes a particular servicescape as a consequence of the unfolding embodied practices during the service provision and customer experiences. It constitutes, therefore, an appropriate servicescape context to study the way in which its character and tourism imaginary is being shaped through the embodied practices deployed by service providers. Especially important for the present research is the fact that more than fifty private companies were offering guided tours in the city during the time of fieldwork.

Guided by the main themes teased out from extant literature, this section is structured around three groups of embodied practices deployed by service providers: spatializing, emplacing and regulating. Due to the theoretical purpose of this project, while references to customers’ behaviors are included, the weight of the data and the analytic focus is placed on service providers. All guides’ names cited are pseudonyms. Each section ends with a summary of its conceptual contribution.

Following Shields (1991), the term “spatialization” refers to the social construction of the spatial through both discursive and non-discursive elements, practices and processes. In our case, a major discursive task of tour guides is to select certain aspects of the cityscape and provide their name. This Labeling practice brings into focus particular buildings (“this is Saint Isaac’s Cathedral” – Dmitry), parts of buildings (“this is the Pavilion Hall” – Yirina), or objects (“The central fountain is called ‘Wheatsheaf’ and was designed by Peter himself, as well” – Polina). Some of the focal objects are accompanied by a brief commentary like the Wheatsheaf above. Others, are given a lengthier description in the form of a micro-narrative as in the “Triton” fountain:

Labeling is frequently synchronized with the stretch of the guide’s hand pointing at the focal sight, specifying in this way its presence at an exact geographical position. By doing this gesture the body functions at the same time as an anchoring point in positioning objects in place. This Locating practice is shown in the above excerpt where the Triton fountain is “straight ahead” or when various objects within Catherine’s Palace are precisely located within its rooms (Plate 2).

The importance of the body in locating sights is exemplified during our short drive on Nevsky Prospekt (a wide historical avenue in the city center):

Furthermore, the surrounding space is also structured by determining the position of sights relative to each other through the practice of Mapping. While at the city center, we are told that “In the center of the [Palace] square, you can see the huge Alexander’s column, which is the highest and the heaviest solid piece of granite.” (Yirina) This relational positioning of sights in space is typified in the following excerpt as we approach the city center from the port:

Not unlike traditional cartography, the mapping practice chooses the objects to be depicted and reduces the complexity of the surrounding space by arranging the selected objects in relational distances to each other. Unlike cartography, though, the mapping practice performed here unfolds in a three-dimensional space and not on a flat surface. It should be also noted that the Mapping practice works in tandem with Labeling and Locating practices.

The Spatializing practices of Labelling, Locating and Mapping have a direct and immediate coordination with customers’ body reactions. Not only their attention is given to the pointed object, but their bodily conduct is also matched with what is being pointed: heads turn, eyes focus, hands move, bodies walk and cameras aim at the same direction.

Section summary: In spatialization, service providers’ narratives constitute a critical instrument for transforming a multi-faceted material environment into a meaningful servicescape. But which materiality matters in a large, diverse, living city like SPb? Overwhelmingly, our data show that almost all of the selected materialities are relevant to the Master Narrative of the Romanov dynasty and their Empire: St. Isaac Cathedral was given its name by Peter the Great after the name of the Saint commemorated on the day of his birthday; the buildings labelled along Nevsky Prospect are either palaces or imperially sanctioned or empire-related like the Church on the Spilled Blood where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated; Alexander’s Column bears the name of a tsar and was raised after the Russian victory in the war with Napoleon’s France; the Admiralty is the former headquarters of the Imperial Russian Navy and continues to be the headquarters of the Russian Navy in the present. Guides always underscore the importance placed on the Navy by Peter the Great and subsequent Tsars; the (Imperial) Academy of Fine Arts was commissioned by Empress Elizabeth and was always under the aegis of the Romanovs.

Importantly, bodily presence and engagement is in sync with and actively participating in the same Imperial narrative. In Labelling, hands point to selected artifacts and buildings while bodies are positioned accordingly in order to take in and experience the sight. In Locating, the body is used as an anchoring point to locate materialities in space. And in Mapping, the body functions as a “spatial framework” (Casey, 1993) in structuring space according to its own coordinates.

Overall, this section shows that narratives of the Empire have their material equivalents in the surrounding material environment where they are found as spatial stories (de Certeau, 1984). It also demonstrates that this spatialization is not possible without the active engagement of the participating body that moves, turns, focuses and orders materialities in space. It is critical to emphasize here that the social character of SPb is not predetermined. As it is described in the methods section, SPb is a living city with more than 5 million residents. For sure, it is a multi-vocal city that offers a plethora of attractions and consumption opportunities for visitors. What we see, instead, is that materialities are purposefully selected, narrative are intentional constructions and bodily practices are strategically orchestrated so that they are all in sync and they actively participate in the social construction of SPb as an Imperial city. Contra to the extant conception of servicescapes as purposefully built commercial environments, SPb is not constructed in advance as a themed servicescape. Instead, it becomes “themed” as it is practiced and experienced.

Guides do not leave customers outside spectators of their spatial construction. Rather, through Emplacing practices, they bring them within the narrativized servicescape. To achieve this, a basic step is to inform their current position: “And here we drive along the buildings of the Hermitage. So, Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, and the New Hermitage.” (Natalya) This practice of Situating is carried out in all major sites visited: “Here we are, in Peterhof” (Yelena); “Now we are in the Winter Palace, the oldest and the biggest building of the Hermitage Museum that was commissioned by Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, in her favorite Baroque style.” (Yirina) When we entered Peter & Paul Cathedral, we were reminded that “we are inside the burial place of all the Russian emperors” (Yirina). Inside the Winter Palace we were told that “we are in Romanov Gallery. There are portraits of first Romanovs who were Tsars.” (Mariya).

Emplacement is strengthened through the Integrating practice wherein guides employ customers’ narrative imagination (Chronis et al., 2012) in order to imaginatively transplant customers back in the time of Peter I. When we found ourselves in a relatively empty and quiet spot at Peterhof (it is usually very crowded during the pick tourist season), the guide – sensing our privileged condition – said that “now we feel like the guests of Peter the Great. Do you feel like the guests of Peter the Great?” (Yelena) A similar situation was witnessed at the Hermitage when we had a special early opening. Noticing this rare experience, the guide exclaimed, “I can’t believe my eyes. It’s empty! We will be all feeling like kings and queens. Like the owners of the Hermitage, like Catherine the Great and her guests.” (Polina).

Going a step further than a mere inclusion within the Imperial narrative, guides make an effort to actively engage customers in Enacting “as if” roles. Such an opportunity arose at Peterhof: “Here you can rent dresses and dress like a person from the 18th century and take a picture.” (Natalya) But even without renting clothes, some customers had their photos taken with park employees dressed up in period costumes (Plate 4).

More active involvement was witnessed when exploring Peter I’s treasured “trick fountains” at Peterhof, when guides ask for volunteers. Explaining the workings of the “Umbrella” fountain, Polina says that “Once you moved in, the Umbrella started producing water, and you couldn’t get out of it because there is water all around you. Does anybody want to get in?” Similarly, Yelena creates a scenario where customers are both integrated within the imaginary narrative and asked to play an active role:

Following the guides’ prompts, some customers were oftentimes jumping in, to willingly get “tricked” by the “trick fountains” (Plate 5).

Embodied enactments present an opportunity for customers to become both performers and spectators of themselves in a historical narrative. Rather than enabling, thus, a mere touristic “escape” in the past, embodied enactments bring the past in the present, solidifying in this way the character of the servicescape not only in narrative and matter, but also in the participating body of the present.

Section summary: In narrative terms, here too, an important achievement of guiding is the link that service providers make with the Master Narrative of the Empire: the Hermitage museum was commissioned by Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great; Peter & Paul Cathedral is the burial place of all the Russian emperors; the Romanov Gallery is named after the portraits of the Romanovs who were Tsars; at Peterhof customers were made to feel like guest of Peter the Great while at the Winter Palace like guests of Catherine the Great; and the roles that customers were prompted to enact were all snippets of the imperial world.

For the Emplacement process to succeed, the body is an essential ingredient. Through Situating and Integrating practices, and in coordination with particular attractions that act as reference points, the body is precisely positioned and becomes part of the Romanov-tinted landscape. On this empire-themed stage, Enacting practices facilitate bodily performances in the unfolding play. In its sensory and motor capabilities, then, the body is a living participant and becomes fully incorporated in the Master Narrative of the Empire not only metaphorically but corporeally too.

Customers at SPb are never left to their own devices but, rather, their experiences and behaviors are spatially and socially coordinated through Regulating practices. Through practices of Focusing, guides do not merely label sights, but they channel attention only to what is worth considering and talking about. Thus, at the Church on the Spilled Blood, attention is focused on “the canopy that marks the spot of the assassination of the Czar, whose name was Alexander II” (Polina) and to “the real cobblestones of the 19th century where the assassination took place” (Yirina) At Peterhof, the fountains were constructed through the personal involvement of Peter the Great and are at center stage in all tours. Most guides will not miss to focus on the central fountain ordered by Empress Anna to Commemorate Peter the Great:

When visiting Peter and Paul Cathedral guides focus at the burial place of the Romanovs: “Here, close to the iconostasis, the most famous Czars and Czarinas are buried … In the first row close to the wall we can see the tomb of Peter the Great” (Yelena). At Catherine’s Palace, attention is focused to “the dressing room of Catherine the Great” and to “the largest hall of the palace, which is striking with its abundance of gold … this room is called the Golden Room … And this huge hall was used for official receptions, masquerades, and balls” (Yirina). At the Hermitage, all groups are taken through the Throne Hall which “is one of the biggest rooms in this palace. It is over 1,100 square meters. It is all faced with Carrara marble, all these walls, columns, this is the most expensive kind of marble, Carrara … The throne belongs to Peter the Great” (Mariya).

Customers’ behaviors are also regulated through practices of Instructing. One way to do this is by indicating what they should do. In multiple occasions, guides concern is to keep the group together and steer it to specific direction: “let’s get closer”; “keep moving, there is a big avalanche behind us. Please keep moving, keep moving”; “get inside and stay close to the windows” “follow me please.” Even the typical tourist activity of taking pictures is frequently regulated: “two minutes photo session and then we’ll continue” (Yelena); “So now ladies and gentlemen we are going to get off the bus; you are going to take photographs” (Yelena); “prepare your cameras and your good mood. Hold on, be patient … Let’s get off the van, let’s go together” (Mariya). Privileged spots for taking good pictures are also suggested: “here you can take truly fantastic pictures. You can take pictures by the canal and of course pictures of the Church … You need to come closer to the second lamppost” (Polina).

Instructions are also given about the proper etiquette that everyone must follow. At Peter and Paul Cathedral “We should remove hats, for gentlemen, when you enter” (Mariya). Instructions are always given about what is allowed and what is not allowed to do within buildings: “Usually, we do not stop in this corridor. Museum workers don’t allow us to do that. So we will walk slowly” (Yirina). In most visited Imperial buildings, “It’s not allowed to carry water” (Polina). Before we enter a building, we are constantly reminded that “It’s allowed to take pictures inside, without flash” (Polina). The only exception to this rule is in the Amber Room at Catherine’s Palace where “you’re not allowed to take photographs.” If someone diverts from the rule, they will be properly admonished: “excuse me, no photographs please. They will confiscate my license for this. Just this room, yea. I just told you. You’re not listening to me [jokingly]” (Yelena).

Even the course along which customers move during the tour is regulated through practices of Pathing. At a large scale, the whole itinerary is briefly provided at the beginning of the day:

A well-planed itinerary aside, it is not always possible to stick to all of its details in practice. Traffic jams, road closures during holidays (e.g. Victory Day on May 9), adverse weather conditions and other contingencies will very often necessitate minor or larger modifications that are decided on the spot by the guide. But even alternative, on-the-spot designed paths are properly controlled: “And now ladies and gentlemen we are taking this way, you like it or not yea?”; “we are turning around, we are going out of this room, and we are going downstairs” (Yelena); “Let’s overtake that crowd and take this corridor … Let’s go straight ahead” (Yirina); “Let’s go on the right. It’s a bit crowded right now” (Natalya).

Section summary: Again, at the narrative level, all regulating practices are related to the Empire of the Romanov dynasty: the assassination of Alexander II at the Church of the Spilled Blood; the fountain of Samson as an allegorical representation of Peter the Great’s dominance over the Swedish king at Peterhof; Peter and Paul Cathedral as the burial place of the Romanovs; the focus on Caterine the Great’s room at Catherine’s Palace and the striking abundance of gold at the Golden Room along with its huge size and its use for official receptions, masquerades and balls; and the splendor of the Throne Hall at the Winter Palace as well as the focus on Peter the Great’s throne.

Here too, the body is a central mechanism and a constructive agent: through Focusing practices, the body is selectively directed to approach and pay attention to particular materialities; through Instructing practices, it is advised what to do, when and where but also what is not allowed to do; it is instructed to remain still, move, stay in the group, step aside, get closer, how to comport, etc.; it is told where it is allowed to enter and where it is prohibited; when, where and how fast to move; what it is allowed to carry and what not; and through Pathing practices, the body plots a course of movement that is in sync with and facilitates the unfolding Master Narrative of the Empire.

This work explores the role of embodied practices – orchestrated by service providers – in the social production of servicescapes. Grounded on practice theory and the generative potentialities of the body, three groups of embodied practices are identified that are discussed next and summarized in Table 1.

First, service providers strategically use Spatializing practices to construct a particular meaningful place by identifying and naming focal objects through Labeling practices, positioning them in space through Locating practices and charting a cartographic plan of the territory through Mapping practices. Second, Emplacement practices aim to make customers part of the unfolding servicescape by positioning them in specific locations through Situating practices; by incorporating them in the evolving servicescape imaginary through Integrating practices; and by directing them to play “as if” roles through Enacting practices. Third, Regulating practices strategically control customers’ presence in space by channeling their attention to selected sights through Focusing practices; by sanctioning certain behaviors while precluding others through Instructing practices; and by choreographing movement through Pathing practices.

Collectively, our findings show that service providers’ staging effort aims to construct SPb as a particular servicescape imaginary steeped in a particular past. This is especially striking in the case of the diverse cultural cityscape of SPb that holds a preeminent role as a metropolis of literary giants, a major hub for music, painting and performing arts, a World Heritage Site with a rich architectural heritage, not to forget its role as a pivotal place for the communist revolution marshaled by Vladimir Lenin. SPb is, thus, a “multiple-choice” city that exemplifies the uneasy relationship among places, their rich histories and their variegated identities. It is the accomplishment of commercial staging, therefore, that none of these cultural potentialities becomes a major part of what the servicescape is. Selectivity here is crucial; and applies equally to narratives, materialities and bodily performances. Narratives, as we know, are based on selective appropriation of past events, characters and plots that are relevant to an end-goal (Ewick and Silbey, 1995; Gergen and Gergen, 1988). In our case, the unambiguously communicated end-goal is to build a Master Narrative of the Empire: SPb as an Imperial capital, steeped in the legacy of the Romanovs, their power, wealth and grandiose achievements.

Selectivity also applies to particular materialities that are being appropriated and infused with the same Imperial master narrative of grandeur. Nowhere is this better exemplified than the formidable fountains of Triton and Samson overtaking their opponents; the grandiose presence of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral with its huge gilded dome; the unsurpassed architecture and mosaics of the Church on the Spilled Blood that was built on the spot where Alexander II was assassinated; the Throne Room at the Hermitage museum that is not only the biggest but it is also faced with Carrara marbles – the most expensive kind of marble; the sumptuousness of Catherine’s Palace (Golder Room, Amber Room, etc.) and its role as a venue for extravagant royal receptions; and even the frontstage location and lavishness of the Romanovs’ tombs inside Peter and Paul’s Cathedral. The constructed narrative of the empire, then, is not only told but it is also sedimented in the selected materialities.

At the same time, and directly linked to our focus on the body, neither narratives nor materialities are detached from the body’s conduct and edifying role in the makeup of the servicescape. In Spatializing practices, the body identifies and names what is relevant; it is used as an anchoring point to locate selected materialities in space; and it functions as a spatial framework in a purposeful structuring of space according to its own coordinates. In Emplacing practices, the body is accurately positioned in a narrativized place; it is surrounded by and assimilated in the narrativized material environment; and becomes a protagonist in the unfolding narrative through its performative capabilities. It is the body, in fact, that both realizes the Imperial stage and becomes, at the same time, fully emplaced into it; both narratively and corporeally. In Regulating practices, the body brings into focus and pays attention to purposefully selected materialities; its comportment is in sync with the narrativized sights and the ways that are deemed proper to behave there; and it moves along specific paths while ignoring others. Body’s mobility, as such, is not a mere movement from point A to Point B but a movement that is value-laden and imbued with meaning (Adey, 2010; Cresswell, 2006). Again, selectivity of movement is essential. It is not accidental that none of the tours included a visit to the stunning Museum of Political History; the House/Museum of Anna Akhmatova – one of the most significant poets of 20th century; any of the heart-rending sites commemorating the suffering and heroic resistance during the 872-day seize of the city during the Second World War; or one of the multiple locations and buildings mentioned in Dostoyevsky’s renowned “Crime and Punishment”. When visiting Catherine’s Palace at the town of Pushkin, there was not any visitation, pointing, bodily orientation, or even glance at any memorial or building associated to Alexander Pushkin – considered by many as the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Neither was there any bodily focus, visit, or other kinetic effort related to any of the numerous grandiose buildings that are striking exemplars of a plethora of architectural styles of the whole European continent. Blocked out of customers’ perceptual field, none of these materialities is implicated in the body’s multiple engagements with the surrounding space; not simply because it was not mentioned by service providers but also – and more importantly – because they were not pointed at, looked at and walked by. Instead, bodily presence and comportment, in our case, is in line with the Master Narrative of the Empire and, at the same time, it effectuates the same narrative on the landscape through movements and performances.

First, this research provides insight on the role of the body in servicescapes and, in this way, enriches the extant servicescape model (Figure 1). In its initial conception, the perceived servicescape and the consequent internal responses were attributed to physical environmental dimension/stimuli. Subsequently, this model was expanded through the addition of a social dimension, including narratives (Arnould et al., 1998), employee-customer relations (Rosenbaum and Massiah, 2011) and the presence of other people (Rosenbaum et al., 2021). The perceived servicescape was, thus, solely formed through physical and social dimensions, overlooking the role of the body. Our contribution lies in viewing body language as a form of communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behaviors include movement, body posture, gestures, facial expressions, eye movement, sensory exposure and use of space. In this capacity, the body plays an active part in the constitution of the perceived servicescape by functioning as an additional environmental dimension. By extension, body language becomes an additional influence on customers cognitive, emotional and physiological responses.

Second, in a more holistic way, this study enriches our theoretical understanding of servicescape production. In their original “materialistic” formulation, servicescapes were conceived as fully predetermined and structured built environments capable to influence subsequent consumer behaviors and experiences in a desired way (e.g. Bitner, 1992; Esbjerg and Bech-Larsen, 2009). A “communicative” view introduced a social dimension and founded the production of servicescapes on the service providers’ scripted narratives while they guide customers (Arnould et al., 1998). Motivated by the need to theorize servicescape production for environments that cannot be altered materially, this study conceives the production of servicescapes as a social enterprise where the service provider plays a preeminent role through the deployment of embodied practices that have generative potentialities in the constitution of the perceived servicescape. Figure 2 depicts the result of their constructive effort as the Socialized Servicescape that is an outcome of a process of Social Spatialization, which, in turn, has its founding at the Service Provider. The process is mediated by both materialities and the body.

In this process, Service Providers act as storytellers who compose their “text” based on selective appropriation of past events and characters. Selectivity is a political act and implies that alternative narrative constructions and historical “facts” are left out or masked. Accordingly, the Narrativizing task consists of discursive enunciations of what the servicescape founding story is – and should be – obviating potential competing narrative articulations. Importantly, Narrativizing becomes the underlying structure that is enmeshed with and organizes every other practice. It constitutes the “founding” that organizes walks and opens up a “theater for practical actions” (de Certeau, 1984). Spatializing practices aim to create and structure the surrounding space and the chosen materialities into a uniquely defined meaningful place that is steeped in the chosen narrative of the past. Emplacing practices envelop and incorporate customers into the narrative imaginary of place, both physically and imaginatively. And Regulating practices aim to control customers’ movement and comportment so that their presence within the servicescape fully matches and conforms to the overarching narrative of the servicescapes.

Within the process of Social Spatialization, materiality plays a mediating role. Previous research views the material environment as a form of “nonverbal communication” (Bitner, 1992) wherein design and displays have “rhetorical qualities” (Peñaloza, 1998), and architecture has a “narrative structure” that tells stories (Kozinets et al., 2002). While I fully subscribe to the narrative structure and communicative potential of the built environment, I also view materiality as mediating the service provider’s effort to discursively construct the servicescape (Plate 2). As this research shows, physical aspects of the built environment are strategically selected by service providers as items partaking in the storytelling process. This selective appropriation of materialities is couched in the principle of “relational materialism” (Gherardi et al., 2017) wherein the servicescape is structured not by “things-in-themselves” that equitably and impartially enter the customers perceptual view but by “things-as-narratives” that play an edifying role. In the absence of a long-lost past, service providers (re)build it – as a servicescape – through narrative substantiation (Chronis, 2015); that is, they (re)construct absent events through the “presentness” of material artifacts that are properly contextualized and become part of the servicescape’s social ontology. In this way, this study also addresses Arnould et al.’s (1998) call to examine the relationship between communicative and material staging of servicescapes. In my view, selected materiality is strategically employed in order to complement, enrich and substantiate the (desired) servicescape imaginary. The imaginary, it is shown, is both told (through stories) and also materialized (in selected objects).

I also shed light on the mediating role of the body in its deployment as a strategic resource that is deployed by service providers in three ways. First, they capitalize on the body’s inherent capacity to function as a “spatial framework” in order to identify and locate objects in space and to map the servicescape according to its narrative correlative (Spatialization). Second, by treating the body as a “principal locator agent,” they emplace customers within the narrativized servicescape and “cast” them as performers in embodied enactments (Emplacement). Third, by regulating movement and other behaviors they achieve a conformity of the body to both narrative and surrounding materiality and, as such, to the unfolding imaginary of the servicescape (Regulation). The very bodies of customers as they move through space, engage with the surrounding materiality and enact narrative plots, become part of the narrativized space, and in this capacity, they are building agents of the emerging servicescape. A Socialized Servicescape, then, is not merely a physical and narrative construction but something that is also configured through the body. The servicescape, it is argued, will remain for the most part inchoate until it is embodied.

The resultant Socialized Servicescape is far from a rigid commercial structure with permanent and fully predetermined material and narrative characteristics but an outcome of a dynamic and contingent process. While a master narrative, bodily language and relevant materialities provide a common underlying framework, they cannot fully predetermine the countless possibilities arising in practice when the story is continually (re)constructed, when bodies move and act in diverse ways, when embodied subjects become part of the narrativized servicescape and when a plethora of conditions (traffic, crowdedness, weather, regulations) can be unpredictable. There is always an improvisational element in embodied practices and a need for situational adjustments. The workings of narratives and embodied practices on the constitution of the perceived servicescape can never be identical. This view, therefore, is against the “freezing” of servicescapes and sees them, instead, as social productions that are always in the making and always emerging through the in situ employment of embodied practices. To this end, the service provider plays a central role in (re)constructing stories, (re)selecting materialities, (re)coordinating bodies and (re)orchestrating itineraries. I theorize servicescapes, then, as dynamic socio-spatial entities emerging from the constant {narrative-material-body} arrangements orchestrated by the service provider.

The third contribution of this research lies in the domain of practice theory and the taken-for-granted idea that practices are un-reflected routinized and habitual acts. As Reckwitz (2002) succinctly put it, “practice is a routinized way in which bodies are moved, objects are handled, subjects are treated, things are described and the world is understood” (p. 250; emphasis added). But as de Certeau (1984) alluded, there can be a dynamic and creative dimension in the practices of everyday life that resists the unidimensional determination of routine actions. de Certeau’s ideas set the stage for conceiving the agentic and dynamic aspects of practices. A dynamic dimension of practices expands their horizon by acknowledging that activities would be unrealistic if they were always stable and regular. Instead, practices can underlie an ongoing “pragmatic engagement” (Thévenot, 2001) of an embodied agent with the material environment. Informed by this background, I argue that practices can be also envisioned on the basis of calculated plans, a thesis that can be properly applied in the context of servicescapes that are conceived as “purposeful environments” (Bitner, 1992, p. 66) that “are designed strategically for commerce” (Sandiksi and Holt, 1998, p. 310). Predicated on the agentic role and intentionality of the service provider, the malleability and adaptive nature of storytelling, the dynamic and bodily engagement with the environment, and the often-unpredictable external contingencies, the embodied practices discussed here are far from routinized, habitual and unreflective actions. The view of the Socialized Servicescape as a dynamic and emergent construction paves the way for theorizing embodied practices as intentional acts that are orchestrated by the service provider and are always contingent, always strategic and always edifying.

Having been restricted to extant scholarship, managerial guidance would be limited to material (Bitner, 1992) and communicative (Arnould et al., 1998) staging of servicescapes. Our study enriches current perspectives by revealing several important practical considerations to benefit service providers; both those on the frontline and those who manage them. All of our managerial suggestions expressed here are couched in the presence and strategic deployment of the body. And they all pertain to the training and conduct of customer-contact personnel.

First, this study provides a number of embodied practices that have been discussed in the beginning of the discussion section and are summarized in Table 2. These practices can be handy guiding tools for contact personnel guiding customers in the servicescape.

The role of the body within all of the practices is paramount. Our results suggest that special attention should be paid to body language as an important dimension in the construction of the perceived servicescape. As I highlighted in this research, body language can be seen as a form of communication that conveys or expresses information. In this respect, contact personnel should be trained in using their own and their customers’ body during the provision of the service. Specific acts include moving toward or relational to particular elements of the intended servicescape (e.g. walking by the statue of Peter the Great at Peterhof); indicating or dictating bodily postures and behaviors of customers (e.g. where to stand, speed of movement, where and when to take pictures); gestures (e.g. pointing at the original stones stained by the blood of Alexander II at the Church on the Spilled Blood); use of facial expressions to convey emotional states like amazement, surprise, admiration, sadness, etc. (e.g. expressing sorrow for the assassination of Alexander II or admiration for the achievements of the Romanovs); and use of space by coordinating movement within the servicescape (e.g. which path to follow within the Hermitage Museum).

Second, due to our particular focus on physical (as opposed to digital/online) servicescapes, employee training should also include the honing of customer-contact employees’ navigational skills in space. This requires familiarity with the topography and its materiality, experience in moving within the servicescape, as well as the ability to deal with unexpected contingencies (e.g. traffic, overcrowding, adverse weather conditions, etc.). Proficiency in navigational skills means that service providers possess not only literal/narrative knowledge but also performative aptitude on the ground where they must be able to shepherd customers under various – even adverse – conditions. As the results of this study suggest, a great tool for the successful navigation and customer guiding within the servicescape is the use of the body as a “spatial framework” and its inherent dimensionalities (up/down; front/back; right/left) in order to direct attention, specify the location of selected objects or buildings, and relationally position all focal materialities on a three-dimensional map that makes sense not only narratively, but also spatially. Service providers should refer and point to particular objects or parts of the servicescape using the body as a reference point (e.g. to your right … In front of us … look to your left … etc.).

Third, the strategic deployment of the body should not neglect or gloss over either narratives or materialities. As I have defined them in this work, servicescapes are {narrative-material-body} arrangements. Embodied practices, therefore, should be consistent and in sync with both desired narratives and materialities. As this research showed, selectivity for both materialities and their accompanying stories is paramount. The practical implication of selectivity is that service providers must be diligent in coordinating bodily movements with the proper focal materialities and their enveloping stories (what objects to point to and talk about). And, at the same time, selectivity necessitates the avoidance or sidestepping of moving, looking, pointing, gesturing, enacting, etc. when these bodily acts are not relevant to with the sanctioned servicescape narrative and materialities. As an example, a guided tour in San Francisco, California, should be given a specific title (e.g. 1906: Earthquake And Fire); the location for walking and moving should be restricted to the downtown area that was mostly affected by the disaster; the buildings and other structured to be shown should be those that where directly affected or those built in their place; and the stories to be told should all relate to the destructive events of 1906 (earthquake and fire). At the same time, the tour should not take place in locations, refer to buildings and provide stories that have to do with San Francisco’s rich history of the labor movement, its Victorian architecture, its strong connection to the Gold Rush, its vibrant gay community, etc. These last ones would be only appropriate for separate tours, different sets of embodied practices, other servicescapes.

This research is directly applicable to cities aspiring to position themselves on the tourist map by highlighting and communicating a particular aspect of their historical, cultural, or material landscape. In addition, these findings are pertinent to other “native” spaces where manipulation of the material “stage” by management is restricted. We can include here natural wonders and other sensational places that can become the venue for specific consumption practices (e.g. Niagara Falls for weddings); historical/heritage sites like battlefields (e.g. Gettysburg), houses (e.g. George Washington’s Mount Vernon) and other buildings (e.g. Les Invalides) that are preserved due to their association with a valued past; archeological sites (e.g. Stonehenge) where the site’s history can be “unearthed” based on an imaginative interpretation of material findings; and state parks (e.g. Yellowstone, Lake District) that can be used in alternative ways. While the theoretical framework emerging from the current research can be applicable to all of these contexts, more research is needed to examine the nuances and workings of each case, to identify additional practices and to provide further theoretical insight.

Our focus in this work was limited on embodied practices orchestrated by service providers. However, servicescapes are social constructions where multiple agents are involved including top management, state authorities, employees and customers (Kalra et al., 2023). Unearthing the role of other parties is not only a more complicated issue but it should also sensitize us to the political processes involved. While it has been claimed, for a good reason, that places are sold after removing all political controversies out of their social “packaging” (Philo and Kearns, 1993), the fact remains that considerations of power, representation and identity are not uncommon in place-making (e.g. Martin, 2003; Pierce et al., 2011) and tourism (e.g. Lew, 2017; Timothy, 2007) scholarship. Further research is needed to investigate the contribution of other parties in the social production of servicescape as well as the overlapping and potentially controversial nature of their involvement. More specifically, who has a saying in the making of various servicescapes and in what ways narratives, materialities and whole itineraries are being impacted by different parties? Importantly, in what ways are other stakeholders involved in the regulation of movement of bodies as well as of what bodies should and should not do?

Furthermore, since service providers are in constant contact with customers during the whole duration of the consumption experience and any “native” servicescape is subject to alternative interpretations, particular emphasis should be placed on the role of customers in their social construction. This is especially critical under the S-D logic where all value is co-created (Ellway and Dean, 2020; Shulga and Busser, 2021; Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008) and servicescapes are co-constructed (Chronis, 2008; Shah et al., 2023). Prior research has shown that customers act as co-producers of servicescapes through their prior knowledge, active engagement with the narrative and creative use of their imagination (Chronis, 2012; Chronis et al., 2012). Future research should explore the role of consumers as they participate in guided tours led by service providers and provide a more inclusive account of embodied servicescape production. How do provider-customer interactions impact the embodied practices used by service providers as well as the emerging imaginary of the servicescape?

A further deduction from the interactive nature of the servicescape experience is that customers’ perceptions and behaviors may not be in accord with the provider’s effort. Thus, an “official” place identity may be far from universally accepted. As a result, servicescapes can be highly contested and service providers may have to deal with potential servicescape discordances (Chronis, 2008, 2019; Curșeu et al., 2022). How do service providers react and cope with customer dissents to various parts of their service delivery (choice of narrative, objects to focus, sites to visit, etc.)? In what ways can they adjust their embodied practices identified here? Are there any additional practices that can be used to cope with dissonant and conflicting situations? How can they shape the servicescape’s “kinaesthetic field” (Parviainen, 2010) and manage body movements in the presence of reactionary customers?

I am grateful to the management and guides of Saint Petersburg tour companies who gave me access to their tours and provided insight especially during a busy summer season. I also extend my appreciation to Dean MacCannell and Lee McGinnis for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this work.