Content area
Full text
1. Introduction
Since Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) first recognized the experiential dimension of customer behavior, numerous studies have stressed need for in-depth study of the role of customer experience (CX) in marketing, particularly in services (Edvardsson et al., 2005; Jaakkola et al., 2015). Marketing academics and practitioners agree that a largely positive CX will create a unique, sustainable advantage over time for any firm. CX is thus a cornerstone of marketing (De Keyser et al., 2015), and the theoretical knowledge established to date provides a foundation from which to develop fuller understanding of the concept.
A wide range of studies in the service literature show CX to be a complex, multi-layered concept (Berry et al., 2002; Gentile et al., 2007; Helkkula, 2011; Lipkin, 2016; Meyer and Schwager, 2007; Pine and Gilmore, 1998; Schmitt, 1999a). Helkkula (2011) identifies three layers of CX – phenomenological or sense-based (a holistic phenomenon specific to each customer and context), process-based (stages of learning over time that result in a memory), and outcome-based (an immediate result, modeled as a variable dependent on measurable attributes). In an in-depth review of CX in the service landscape, Lipkin (2016) classifies the different theoretical approaches according to two main characteristics of CX stressed in most studies: first, the subjective, personal, and at least partly internal character of CX, which can be studied in three different ways – based on stimulus, interaction, and sensemaking; and second, the event-specific, contextual character, which can be studied from three different perspectives – dyadic, service-ecosystem, and customer-ecosystem.
Within approaches that focus on the subjective, personal, and partly internal character of CX, the stimulus perspective views CX as a subjective experience created by the service provider through external stimuli that influence a customer’s perception of an experience. The interaction perspective incorporates social interactions and individual processes as part of CX, that is, the customer is an active contributor to his/her social reality, not only perceiving but also interpreting service stimuli. The sensemaking approach extends CX beyond this interpretation to the customer’s lifeworld. Within the event-specific and contextual approach, the dyadic perspective posits that CX is created (Berry et al., 2006) or co-created (Payne et al., 2009) through multiple customer-firm touch points. The service-ecosystem view...