The interplay of customer experience and commitment STRUCTURED ABSTRACT Purpose -This research examines the customer experience through the lens of customer commitment and provides a framework for future research into the intersection of these emerging streams of research. Design/methodology/approach -This research contributes to theoretical and practical perspectives on the customer experience (CE) and its measurement by integrating extant literature with customer commitment and customer satisfaction literature. Findings -The breadth of the domains that encompass the customer experiencecognitive, emotional, physical, sensorial, and social-makes simplistic metrics impossible for gauging the entirety of customers' experiences. These findings provide strong support of the need for new research into CE and customer commitment. Practical implications -Given the complexity of the CE concept, managers are unlikely to track and manage all relevant elements of CE. This research provides a framework identifying empirically the most salient attributes of the CE with particular emphasis on those elements that enhance commitment to the firm or brand. This should offer insight into service design to correspond with specific commitment and experience dimensions. Originality/value -This research is the first to examine the customer experience through the lens of customer commitment-a key factor in customer loyalty, positive word of mouth and other desired outcomes for managers and marketers. We provide a framework for future research into this emerging topic. The interplay of customer experience and commitmentCustomer Experience Management (CEM) is being hailed as the next competitive battleground for firms to grow market share. In fact, research by Gartner finds that by 2017, 89%of companies plan to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience (CE) (Gartner, 2016). Moreover, a new industry of CEM professionals has recently emerged to address the rapidly growing demand by businesses for expertise in the field.Despite this emphasis, however, there is no general consensus among managers or academics regarding what comprises the CE. As a result, it is difficult to ascertain its boundaries (e.g., how it differs from customer engagement, customer value, etc.). Consequently, there exists no consensus regarding the aspects of the CE that require assessment and metrics.This article addresses these issues by investigating the experience construct. We do this by building on the definition of CE of De Keyser et al. (2015): "Customer experience is comprised of the cognitive, emotional, physical, sensorial, and social elements that mark the customer's direct or indirect interaction with a [set of] market actor[s]" (p. 1). Specifically, we focus on customer assessment in the cognitive, emotional, physical, sensorial, and social domains as they relate to CE and, where possible, describe metrics designed to measure these assessments.Since the overriding goal of companies' efforts to enhance the CE is to engender commitment ...
IntroductionMarketing in general and services in particular have been blamed for damaging, disregarding, and maltreating consumer's well-being in a multitude of ways; either by having a patronizing style of service delivery, or by underserving groups in needs (Fisk, 2009). As a result, the Transformative Service Research (TSR) movement began. Emerging at the intersection of transformative consumer research and service research (Anderson et al., 2013), TSR is defined as "service research that centers on creating uplifting changes and improvements in the well-being of individuals (consumers and employees), families, social networks, communities, cities, nations, collectives, and ecosystems" (Ostrom et al., 2010, p. 6). Due to the direct and dialogic interaction between the service company and the customer, this dynamic nature of services presents substantial transformative potential (Anderson et al., 2010). Anderson et al. (2013) present a framework illustrating how interaction between service entities and consumer entities influences the wellbeing of both. Service entities include employees, processes, offerings, organizations, and service sectors, while consumer entities comprise individuals, collectives, and the ecosystem (Anderson et al., 2013). Therefore, when any consumer entity interacts with any service entity, during a value-creation process, potential well-being outcomes are generated for both parties such as access, health, life satisfaction, harmony, power, respect, support, and happiness (Anderson et al., 2013).In light of the above, we propose that customer feedback generated during a value creation process, can have potential well-being outcomes on service and consumer entities. According to Lusch and Vargo (2006), "conversation and dialogue" (p. 413) is one of the four building blocks of a company's strategic marketing direction. Customer feedback, a particular type of "conversation and dialogue", allows companies to listen to customers to understand what it is that they value in the company (Vargo and Lusch, 2008). Previous research has proposed various important outcomes of customer feedback management, such as: assistance in performance assessment, facilitation of organizational learning (Babbar and Koufteros, 2008), improvement of overall service quality , better decision making (Bitner et al., 1994) and generation of competitive advantage (Lusch et al., 2007). However, the impact of customer feedback on the service entities' well-being remains an overlooked area.Adopting a TSR approach, this study aims to address this gap by exploring the impact of customer feedback on the well-being of service entities. Moreover, inspired by the objectives of TSR to "create uplifting changes and improvements in the well-being" (Ostrom et al., 2010, p. 6), the importance of positive customer feedback is stressed. Positive customer feedback is a highly under-researched topic. Most previous research has approached customer feedback from a negative lens, focusing on the impact of 3 customer complaints, dysfunctio...
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