Physical Surroundings have been identified by a number of researchers as a powerful tool that can manipulate people's mood and cognition. A number of marketing practitioners have accepted this notion, given that physical surroundings are increasingly used as atmospheric stimuli in various retail environment as well as in restaurant. Yet there have not been practical reviews on consumer responses in restaurant setting/environment. By means of a literature review, this study examines how physical surroundings in restaurant settings function on displaying dinning atmosphere. It includes the conceptual definition and classifications of physical surroundings, effect of physical surroundings on customers' internal responses and behaviors, and testable research propositions and directions for future researches. This study is expected to make a substantial contribution to the understanding of restaurant manager and dinning atmosphere displayer about function of physical surroundings in dinning context.

This research examines how various dimensions of physical environments influence patrons' psychological responses(especially emotional responses) in the restaurant service setting, and how these emotional responses, in turn, influence patrons' attitude formation. The result of empirical research indicates that restaurant physical environments have a significant effect patrons' emotional responses, and that these psychological experiences serve as critical mediators in the restaurant physical environments-store attitudes relationship. However, the effects of restaurant physical environments on patrons' psychological responses varied with the dimensions of physical environments. First, the effect of cleanliness on emotional responses was most significant, especially on negative emotion, out of 4 dimension of restaurant physical environment. Second, ambient conditions are the most important predictor on customers' positive emotion, and in turn, positive emotion has the most significant effects on customers' attitude formation of restaurant. Therefore, the result suggests that restaurants should manage(or, improve) their ambient conditions(e.g. background music, scents, ventilation, noise etc.) for efficiently maximizing customers' positive attitude. The implications of this study are discussed, and ideas for future work suggested.