Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review customer experience formation (CXF) by first locating and analyzing how researchers approach CXF in the service literature and the theoretical underpinnings of these approaches, and then assessing which approaches are best suited for understanding, facilitating, and examining CXF in today’s service landscape. Design/methodology/approach This study systematically reviews 163 articles published between 1998 and 2015 in the service field. Findings This study illustrates how researchers approach CXF on the individual level by applying stimulus- interaction- or sense-making-based perspectives. These reflect researchers’ theoretical underpinnings for how individuals realize the customer experience within environmental, social, and temporal contexts through intermediation. Researchers further apply contextual lenses, including the dyadic and service- or customer-ecosystem lenses, which reflect their theoretical underpinnings for explaining how various actor constellations and contextual boundaries frame individual-level CXF. Finally, this study shows why the sense-making-based perspective, together with a service- or customer-ecosystem lens, is particularly suitable for approaching complex CXF in today’s service settings. Research limitations/implications To advance theory, researchers should choose the approaches resonant with their research problem and worldview but also consider that today’s complex service landscape favors holistic and systemic approaches over atomistic and dyadic ones. Practical implications This study provides managers with recommendations for understanding, facilitating, and evaluating contemporary CXF. Originality/value This study advances the understanding of CXF by systematically reviewing its multiple layers, approaches, and dimensions and the opportunities and challenges of each approach.
Purpose This study aims to introduce and characterize a specific form of self-service technology (SST), customer self-service devices (SSDs), as well as propose and apply a classification scheme of SSDs to encourage future research on such SSTs. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on conceptual development of customer SSDs and exploratory qualitative insight from representatives of companies offering various types of SSDs. Findings This paper introduces SSDs as customer-possessed and controlled smart service devices aiming to solve problems from the customer’s perspective, often within completely new, customer-defined service processes and ecosystems. SSDs are not confined to the company-controlled service environment, and customers may thus use them wherever and whenever they so wish. The study characterizes SSDs based on service and customer use features, as well as on the subject of the service act (self/other vs belongings) and nature of service act (monitoring vs acting). Research limitations/implications This study is limited to conceptual exploration with qualitative insights from six companies. Future research is needed to empirically study different SSDs by using both qualitative and quantitative approaches in various settings. Originality/value The paper conceptualizes SSDs as an extension to the traditional SST framework. It contributes to the understanding of how personal handheld devices can contribute to customer experiences. It provides research directions to stimulate further research in SSTs.
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine reactions when customers in service encounters receive preferential treatment (i.e. something extra in relation to other customers). The examination is conducted in a social context that allows the customer to compare what he or she receives with what other customers receive. The main effect variables are perceived justice and customer satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – An experimental method is employed to examine the effects of providing customers with preferential treatment. The study involves four treatment groups with various combinations of receiving or not receiving preferential treatment. Findings – Customers perceived preferential treatment as relatively unjust. This was true for customers who received the preferential treatment and for those who did not. However, customer satisfaction among those receiving preferential treatment was enhanced, thus signaling that preferential treatment affects perceived justice and satisfaction differently. In addition, different contexts for receiving preferential treatment (i.e. receiving it alone or sharing it with another customer) produced different levels of customer satisfaction. Originality/value – The extant research on preferential treatment has failed to acknowledge that this treatment often occurs in the presence of several customers, which is likely to evoke perceptions of justice. At the same time, extant research on perceived justice in service situations has mainly focussed on service failures as antecedents of justice perceptions. This study attempts to extend theory on both preferential treatment and perceived justice in service-encounter settings.
Purpose This study aims to characterize how ecosystem actors shape customer experience (CX). The study also proposes implications for managers and research regarding the customer ecosystem, its actors and actor constellations in the context of CXs. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative study is conducted among activity tracker users to identify how actors within their ecosystems shape CXs. Data include 28 in-depth interviews and ten self-reported diaries. Findings This study delineates six actor categories in the customer ecosystem shaping CX within and beyond the service. The number of actors and their importance to the focal customer in various actor constellations form individual-, brand- and socially driven ecosystems. These customer ecosystem types show how actors combine to drive CXs. Research limitations/implications Researchers should shift their attention to experiences emerging in the customer’s lifeworld. A customer ecosystem highlights the customer-centered actor configuration emergent within the customer’s lifeworld. It is self-constructed based on the customer’s reference point. Practical implications Managers should aim to locate, monitor and join the customer’s lifeworld to gain more insight into how CXs emerge in the customer ecosystem based on customer logic. Social implications Customers are not isolated actors simply experiencing service; rather, they construct idiosyncratic actor constellations that include various providers, social groups and peers. Originality/value This paper extends the theory on CXs by illustrating how the various actors and actor constellations forming the customer ecosystem shape CXs.
Although businesses strive to create extraordinary customer experiences, it is the ordinary experiences that form the backbone of customers' lives and hold the greatest potential for creating meaning and relevance. This conceptual study aims to shed light on the sources, characteristics, and mechanisms of the ordinary customer experience by conducting a scoping review of literature from various fields, including sociology, philosophy, consumer behavior, psychology, marketing, and management. The findings demonstrate that researchers characterize the ordinary customer experience as familiar, simple, and mundane-and thus often taken for granted-and as formed through customers' daily routines. This study defines the ordinary experience as the accumulation of a customer's perceptions, feelings, and sensemaking of customer-specific, contextual, and offeringrelated stimuli that are meaningfully and purposefully present in the customer's daily life.The ordinary experience representing a lived and reflective phenomenon is characterized as peripheral, predictable, neutral, acceptable, longitudinal, and convenient. Despite its seemingly mundane nature, the ordinary customer experience provides valuable insights into customers' sensemaking of experiences. By reconciling and bridging understandings from various fields, this study presents a comprehensive view of the ordinary customer experience and contributes to a more granular and holistic understanding of the ordinary in the marketing domain. It offers an alternative perspective on customer experience that extends beyond the conventional ordinary-extraordinary continuum.
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