Amir Zakaria Consulting Group | Customer Experience
marketing, consumer behavior, decision-maker, Experience Economy, value creation, CE, stimulated motivation, amir zakaria, nazli monajemzadeh, امير ذكريا، نازلي منجم زاده
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Customer Experience

Customer Experience

Notion of experience included in the marketing and consumption is firstly revealed by Holbrook & Hirshman (1982). In the consumer behavior literature, the consumer is regarded as rational decision-maker in the information process perspective. The conventional research ignores consumption experience as an important aspect. Holbrook & Hirshman (1982) say that elements of pleasure, beauty, symbolic meaning, creativity and emotion can enrich and broaden the understanding of consumer behavior. Twenty years later, the concept of customer experience becomes a major element in understanding consumer behavior. One of the important aspects emphasized here is the role of the emotion in consumer behavior, purchasing and use of goods and selection of brands (Addis & Holbrook, 2001 adapted in Caru and Cova, 2003).

Concept of customer experience is more relevant in the book “Experience Economy” by Pine & Gilmore (1999). The author presents the experience as an offer in new economy, which emerges after the commodities, goods and services. Experience is called as the development of economic value. In this case, there is ‘remembered’ perspective in every stage of the event. The company does not sell the experience (Pine & Gilmore, 1999), but the company provides tangible facilities and a favorable context of experience so that consumers can do well in making the experience unique.

In the following year, Caru & Cova (2003); Schmitt (1999); Schmitt (2003) and Shaw and Ivens (2002) make different contribution focused on the concept of the customer experience emphasizing the aspects of value creation of the company and the customer. Furthermore, there is concept of consumption which is a form of holistic experience for consumers. Consumer is not only seen as a person who interacts with the company or a company offer but also viewed as people who use and consume products (LaSalle & Britton, 2003 in Gentile et al., 2007).

Undoubtedly, customer experience (CE) plays a significant role in determining the success of a company’s offering (Gentile et al., 2007; Yakhlef, 2015). Organisations have used both tangible products and intangible services to generate unforgettable events for consumers (Chen & Lin, 2015; Tsaur, Chiu, & Wang, 2007; Pine & Gilmore, 1998). According to Schmitt (1999), customer experience is defined as the perception or acknowledgment that follows from the stimulated motivation of a consumer who observes or participates in an event which can enrich the value of services and products (Foroudi et al, 2017).

Customer experience includes every point of contact at which the customer interacts with the business, product, or service (Andajani, 2015).

The theoretical foundation of the customer experience is based on the concept that a customer’s experience is the combination of all cues and touch-points a customer has with an organisation, which in turn creates an overall experience (Homburg, Danijel, & Kuehnl, 2015; Mclean & Wilson, 2016; Payne, Storbacka, & Frow, 2008). Meyer and Schwager (2007, p.18) define the customer experience as, ‘the internal and subjective response that customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company’. However, more recently, Homburg et al. (2015, p.8) follow on from Verhoef et al. (2009) and suggest that ‘the customer experience is the evolvement of a person’s sensorial, affective, cognitive, relational and behavioural responses to a brand by living through a journey of touchpoints along pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase and continually judging this journey against response thresholds of co-occurring experiences’. As a result, the customer experience can be seen as a holistic process and combination of both cognitive and affective, components leading to take away impressions (Edvardsson, 2005; McLean & Osei-Frimpong, 2017; Schembri, 2006; Verhoef et al., 2009). A key distinction between the customer experience and service quality is the acknowledgement of customer emotions within the experience (Edvardsson, 2005; Schembri, 2006; McLean et al, 2018).

Reference

  • Andajani, E. (2015). “Understanding Customer Experience Management in Retailing”. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 211, 25 November 2015, Pages 629-633.
  • Caru` , A. & Cova, B. (2003). “Revisiting consumptionexperience: A more humble but complete view of the concept”. Marketing Theory 3(2), p.267–286.
  • Chen, S.C. Lin, C.P. (2015). “The impact of customer experience and perceived value on sustainable social relationship in blogs: An empirical study”. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 96, pp. 40-50.
  • Edvardsson, B. (2005). “Service quality: Beyond congnitve assessment”. Managing Service Quality, 15(2), 127–131.
  • Foroudi, P., Gupta, S., Sivarajah, U., Broderick, A. (2017). “Investigating the effects of smart technology on customer dynamics and customer experience”. Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 80, March 2018, Pages 271-282.
  • Gentile, C. Nicola, S. Giulano, N. (2007). “How to sustain the customer Experience: An overview of experience components that cocreate value with the customer”. European Management Journal, 25 (5), pp. 395-410.
  • Holbrook, M.B. & Hirschman, E.C. (1982). “The experiential aspects of consumption: Consumer fantasy, feelings and fun”. Journal of Consumer Research 9(2), p.132–140.
  • Homburg, C., Danijel, J., & Kuehnl, C. (2015). “Customer experience management: Toward implementing an evolving marketing concept”. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43, 1–25.
  • Mclean, G., & Wilson, A. (2016). “Evolving the online customer experience … is there a role for online customer support?” Computers in Human Behavior, 60, 602–610.
  • McLean, G., Al-Nabhani, KH., Wilson, A. (2018). “Developing a Mobile Applications Customer Experience Model (MACE)-Implications for Retailers”. Journal of Business Research 85 (2018) 325–336.
  • McLean, G., & Osei-Frimpong, K. (2017). “Examining satisfaction with the experience during a live chat service encounter-implications for website providers”. Computers in Human Behavior, 76, 494–508.
  • Meyer, C., & Schwager, A. (2007). “Understanding customer experience”. Harvard Business Review, 85(2), 116–126.
  • Pine, B.J., Gilmore, J.H. (1998). “Welcome to the experience economy”. Harvard Business Review, 76, pp. 97-105.
  • Pine, J. & Gilmore, J.H. (1999). “The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage”. Harvard Business School Press, Boston.
  • Payne, A., Storbacka, K., & Frow, P. (2008). “Managing the co-creation of value”. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36, 83–96.
  • Schembri, S. (2006). “Rationalizing service logic, or understanding services as experience?” Marketing Theory, 6(3), 381–392.
  • Schmitt, B.H. (1999). “Experiential marketing: How to get customers to sense, feel, think, act and relate to your company and brand”. New York.
  • Schmitt, B.H. (2003). “Customer Experience Management: A evolutionary Approach to Connecting with Your Customer”. Wiley and Sons, New Jersey.
  • Tsaur, S.H., Chiu, Y.T., Wang, C.H. (2007). “The visitors behavioral consequences of experiential marketing: An empirical study on taipei zoo”. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 21, pp. 47-64.
  • Verhoef, P., Lemon, K., Parasuraman, A., Roggeveen, A., Schlesinger, L., & Tsiros, M. (2009).” Customer experience: Determinants, dynamics and management strategies.”Journal of Retailing, 85(1), 31–41.
  • Yakhlef. A. (2015). “Customer experience within retail environments an embodied, spatial approach”. Marketing Theory, 15 (4), pp. 545-564.

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