When Alicia and Jordan dined at Formia Ristorante, a contemporary Italian restaurant in New Jersey, they both enjoyed Formia's coy, smart and embracing atmosphere. Formia creates this atmosphere with a single large dining room that measures 20 by 60 feet and contains 14 roomy tables. Ceiling fans slowly swirl as candlelight dances across the tables that are attentively cared for by servers. Vertical pink and white florid patterns emerge from old wainscoting. Finally, Formia's two-page menu offers guests a range of pasta, chicken, veal, and seafood entrees, in addition to nightly specials that are handwritten and presented on large index cards. Alicia and Jordan experienced the ________ element of Formia Ristorante's services marketing mix.

The service environment and other elements of physical evidence essentially involve the service and transmit an external image to the consumers of those inside.

The service environment is the external appearance of the organization and therefore can be critical to form first impressions or set customer expectations.

Employees and customers respond to the dimensions of their physical, cognitive, emotional and physiologically physical surroundings, and those responses are what influence behaviors in the environment.

Austeros: Simple environments with few elements, few spaces and few pieces of equipment.
Elaborated: Very complicated service environments, with many elements and many forms.

In the frame of reference the multidimensional environment is the stimulus, consumers and employees are the organisms that respond to the stimulus, and the behaviors directed to the environment are the answers.

According to the above, a differentiating element of the Formis Ristorante is evidenced, because a service is offered with a level of adequacy that allows diners to feel comfortable from the moment they step on the place, and the experience is improving even until the moment they leave the place.