Looking behind the curtain: How transparent design shapes consumer imagination and enhances purchase intentions

Transparent design, which provides customers visual access to back-of-the-house operations, is becoming an increasingly common element of the service environment as firms strive to differentiate their offerings in the market. These investments aim to give consumers a fresh view of the firm and potentially mitigate some of the intangibility challenges associated with service delivery. This research seeks to provide new insight into how transparent design can serve as a visual cue during the consumer decision-making process and help service firms increase approach intentions. Through four studies, including one field experiment, the authors find that utilizing transparent design increases consumer purchase intentions toward service products (Studies 1 and 2). This effect is due to increases in consumers’ tendency to imagine themselves experiencing the service, improving consumers’ expected service quality, which ultimately enhances purchase intentions (Study 2). The research further finds that the effect of transparent design on consumer imagination is attenuated when the service environment is crowded with other consumers (Study 3) or when the service environment is bright (Study 4). The current work contributes to the literature streams on the effect of store environment cues on customer behaviors and transparency. It also provides managerial implications for service providers.