Project Brief 3: Immersion Audit – Crown Casino

 

 

Introduction / Thesis

Immersion means the certain stimulus takes over all your attention, and you enjoy doing that for a long time, in other words, you are having complete attention on somethings which can be an object, an environment, or an activity. “The experience of being transported to an elaborately simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy content” ( Murray 1997). The formula of immersion can be plenty, it could be sound, color, shape, smell, or temperature, and any of these might make people feel attracted.  A place contains these formula can be called as an immersive place, such as museum, gallery, theme park and etc.

Crown Melbourne is Australia’s premier integrated resort, one of the most popular tourist attractions, with a wide variety of facilities. It operates 2,628 gaming slot machines, and is licensed to offer 540 table games including Blackjack, Poker, Roulette ,etc (Crown Resorts 2015 ) . Crown Melbourne provides a high class environment and variety games to attract millions of visitors to stay, explore and be entertained. According to Crown Resorts Annual Report (2015), it attracted approximately 20 million visits from local and international in 2014.

Why so many people enjoying visiting and staying in casino? and What makes it so immersive? The essay is going to discuss the way casino applies servicescape and varieties of games to immerse customers to visit and stay for a long time. Servicescapes are particularly important in leisure service settings. The servicescape is known as the physical environment of the facility, which is basically a build environment that constitutes a natural or social environment of man-made, physical surroundings rather than facilities. According to Bitner(1992), servicescape can be divided into two areas : spatial layout and functionality, and also aesthetic appeal. Casino provides plenties of games including : slot machines, Blackjack, Poker, Craps, Pai Gow, Baccarat and Roulette.The rules of slot machines are clear, the interface is simple, no special difficulties, so target audience are generally older woman who need to kill time, and occasional players. (The South Australian Centre for Economic Studies 2015 ) Table games requires more skills, its target audience are most young and mid-aged male and female , they have curiosity to try their luck and skills with strategies.  Furthermore, it will also explore its falling and how to get improved. 

Outlook and Construction

The Crown is located on South Bank of the Yara River, with the most beautiful night views and the unique Crown Brigade fire show, which makes it a most attractive place in city at night. The outlook of Crown is very attractive especially at night, the large sign of ‘CROWN’ with bright lighting would catch you eyes even from miles away. Crown has many entrances which allow costumers to enter easily. The main entrance of the crown is located on west side of Crown. When you go inside, you would see a high ceiling with a large luxury crystal chandeliers, and a large fountain in the lobby. This kind of grand design provides an immersive visual impact to costumers.

Ambience

Ambience means the surrounding area of environmental conditions, including temperature, lighting, noise, music and smell.( Lucas 2003). Environmental conditions are important factors that affect the individual’s response to the environment because of their impact on human senses. A positive ambience can make costumers enjoy in the service environment, resulting in higher emotional satisfaction. The temperature in Crown Casino is just perfect, it is not too cold or hot, it makes customers feel warm and comfortable inside. The ceiling lights are not too bright, so the flashing lights from slot machines will catch customers’ attention in the first sight. The flashing lights and up beats noise from the slot machine attracts the players, raising their own feelings, making them feel excited and hoping that they can win. All these slot machines, no matter you are playing or not , they are alive all the time, the sounds and lights that attract you and encourage you to continue betting. Furthermore, the music soundtrack is none stop, upbeats, optimistic and stimulating to keep people excited and awake.

It is not hard to find that the Crown Casino uses lot of red and gold color on many things, for example, most of chairs in the casino are in red color, ceiling lights also contains red color, and some game table are also in red. According to Griffiths and Swift (1992), red has been found more powerful impact than blue, more exciting, more compelling. In order to try to evoke the consumer, use the “warm” color. Stark et al. (1982) explores the impact of colored light on gambling behavior, their study found that gambling under the red light (compared to blue light) leads to more risk, higher bets and more frequent bets. Moreover, color gold are used everywhere in the casino, such as the most ceiling lights, wallpaper, and some decoration, especially there are a few huge columns which are full of one dollar golden coins inside. According to Przybyla ( 2017), color gold stands for achievement and victory. It is connected with wealth and success, luxury and quality.  Our brain considers gold as wealth and indulgence. Therefore, when customers are surrounded by color gold, they will feel like being surrounded by money, and makes them to do more bets. Crown Casino successfully apply the psychology of using color  to create a more immersive environment, to attract customers to stay.

Navigation

Navigation is related to the spatial layout and functionality of the servicescape  (Bitner 1992), which refers to the way how physical objects are arranged, and the relationship with environment.  Spatial layout and functionality also has impact on  the density of consumers because they influence the customer’s traffic flow. The Crown Casino has hundreds of slot machines arranged in particular oder, generally 10 same slot machines would be arranged side by side, it allows customers to play with others to make the game more competitive.   Moreover, the slot machines occupied large space, and only left customers small space to walk through. However, crowding in the casino could increase excitement of customers and make them to find their favorite game. The  Crown Casino is like a labyrinth, it is really hard to find a way out when you walking through the fascinating slot machine and the labyrinth of the game table, only you would find yourself are more encountered by more slot machines and other games. There are few landmarks in the casino that make people easy to get lost. In addition to the fascinating game, this immersive environment is difficult to leave. 

Seating Comfort

Seating Comfort is another element which could affect the servicescape. Seat comfort is an important issue for customers who sit on facilities for a long time. The design of the seat cushion and backrest, the material used for the seat fabric will affect the user’s comfort. (Branton and Grayson 1967) . Every seat in Crown Casino is with soft cushion and soft padding backrest, so customers  would like to spent many hours sitting in such comfortable seat. Some seat are designed for two people, they could sit together and enjoy the game. According to Lucas (2003) the seat comfort in casino has a positive impact on the rating of servicescape and customers’ satisfaction.Seat comfort could represents a form of nonverbal communication between the servicescape . Customers will consider the seat comfort as a part of evaluation the service of the casino, so the better service  increase their satisfaction in the physical environment.

Slot machines and Table game

The game itself is an immersive object that attract people to spend whole day playing without notice the time or anything else. When you playing the game, you will have fully attention on the game, and you hardly notice the surrounding.  Slot machines are the easiest game to play, and it only requires less money to start playing , so many people come for just kill time or having fun, especially older people. Table games requires more skills such as :math, problem solving, analytical , flexibility, self-awareness, so people are ambitious to to try their skills, and enjoy it.

The Psychology of Gambling

Customers will have illusion of controlling, they believe they could control over the games and the result. When people believe that they have a certain impact on the results, people have shown more gambling.The core of the slot machine is a computer device that give rewards in a random order.  Customers are attracted by such mysteries and randomness, and they believe in luck and chance. Sometimes, when people have won many times, they believe that they have ‘a hot hand’  which means they have higher chances of winning ongoing bets.Therefore, they do more bet. Moreover, some people believe in “gambler’s fallacy”, which means when people have lost many times, and they are more likely to believe their luck would come back in the next bet, which lead them to do more bet.

Fallings

The Crown Casino is pretty much a perfect place that provide immersive experience to customers. However, there are still some fallings need to be addressed and improved. Firstly, in order to make the slot machines more attractive, they make the ceiling lights not too bright to disturb. However , I felt that the ceiling lights are a little bit dark, which makes me a little bit uncomfortable when I first enter.  In contrast, the flashing machines are very attractive, however the flashing lighting are too colorful which makes me feel dizzy. They should find a better way to balance the ceiling lights and machines lights. For example, using two colors as main colors of the machines lights such as red and gold. Adjust the ceiling lights to a comfortable level. Anther thing is the their customer service, I found that most of their dealer are lacking of communication with customers, it seem like the only thing they do is collect your money. The customer service is an important part, it could influence the satisfaction of customer experience and the chances people revisit.

Audit List

 

 

 

 

Reference

Bitner, M J  1992 , Servicescapes: the impact of physical surroundings on consumers and employees. Journal of Marketing , vol .56 , pp .57–71.

Branton, P, Grayson, G 1967, An evaluation of train seats by an observation of sitting behavior. Ergonomics , vol. 10, pp. 35–41.

Crown Resorts 2015 , Crown Resorts Annual Report , viewed 1st September, <http://www.crownresorts.com.au/CrownResorts/files/c5/c5b9b374-3ab2-410a-8735-9a3266f461fa.pdf>. 

Griffiths, M D , & Swift, G 1992,  The use of light and colour in gambling arcades: A pilot study, Society for the Study of Gambling Newsletter, vol. 21, pp .16–22.

Lucas, A F  2003,  The determinants and effects of slot servicescape satisfaction in a Las Vegas hotel casino. UNLV Gaming Research and Review Journal ,  pp.1–19.

Murray, J 1997, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace The MIT Press, vol. 2, pp. 98–99.

Przybyla D 2017, Gold Color Psychology and Meaning, Colorpsychology, viewed 1st September, <https://www.colorpsychology.org/cite-reference/>

Stark, G M , Saunders, D M , & Wookey, P E  1982,  Differential effects of red and blue colored lighting on gambling behaviour., Current Psychological Research, pp 95–99.

The South Australian Centre for Economic Studies 2015, Responsible Gambling and Casinos , final report, viewed 1st September.

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