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Introduction
There has been an increased focus on exploring customer journeys (Steward et al., 2019), and in contemporary marketing where digital and social media have changed how consumers behave (Alves et al., 2016); it is said to be one of the most recent and influential topics (Herhausen et al., 2019). However, whilst this appears to be a widely used term, there is a lack of common understanding regarding what is meant by a customer journey (Folstad and Kvale, 2018; Kuehnl et al., 2019). The customer journey has been defined as “the process a customer goes through, across all stages and touch points, that makes up the customer experience” (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016, p. 71). Rudkowski et al. (2020) suggested that while there is a long history of research relating to customer experience, the related area of customer journey research is relatively limited. Developments in customer experience research since the 1960s onwards have involved a number of areas: customer buying behaviour process models (1960–1970s); customer satisfaction and loyalty (1970s); service quality (1980s); relationship marketing (1990s); customer relationship management (2000s); customer centricity and customer focus (2000–2010s) and customer engagement (2010s) (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). Furthermore, early consumer decision-making process models in particular provide a foundation for customer journey models (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Rudkowski et al., 2020).
Within the field of marketing, consumer decision-making process models explore how consumers make purchase decisions (Folstad and Kvale, 2018; Towers and Towers, 2020). With customer journey analysis, the focus is more on customer interactions with various touch points in order to improve the customer experience (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Baxendale et al., 2015). Touch points are defined as “an episode of direct or indirect contact with the brand” (Baxendale et al., 2015, p. 236) and “encompass all types of one-way or two-way interactions between customers and firms that involve any transactional or informational exchange, including customer-to-customer interactions” (Herhausen et al., 2019, p. 11). These touch points become part of the overall customer experience, from pre-purchase to post-purchase (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). Furthermore, most of the existing research has a focus on specific parts of the customer journey, rather than providing a more holistic view of all touch points in the whole customer...