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1. Introduction
Customer experience has emerged as an important marketing concept aimed at creating a unique, pleasurable and memorable experience. It is a relatively new concept, in both theory and practice, which has gained larger attention in the recent past, particularly in the last three decades. Scholars and marketers describe it as a strategic process for creating holistic customer value, achieving differentiation and sustainable competitive advantage (Carbone and Haeckel, 1994; Pine and Gilmore, 1998; Shaw and Ivens, 2002; Gentile et al., 2007; Verhoef et al., 2009).
There is a gradual shift from consumption of commodities to goods, services and experiences. The fourth wave in the economic progression has been described as “experiences” and the emergence of new economy as the “experience economy” by Pine and Gilmore (1998, 1999). Traditional product/service value proposition is no longer adequate for reaching customers or creating differentiation, and businesses need to focus on the customers’ experience, similar to the importance given to products and services, for creating a seamless total experience (Carbone and Haeckel, 1994). Gronroos (2006) maintains that “customer value is not created by one element alone, but by the total experience of all elements”. Organizations are redefining their offerings in terms of “personalized co-created experiences” (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004b). This shift represents managing business with experiential perspective. It calls for the need to develop new competencies in creating and managing great customer experiences that provide pleasurable experiential memories to customers. Managing each customer’s experience is perhaps the most important ingredient in building customer loyalty (Crosby and Johnson, 2007).
A number of efforts have been made to define and conceptualize customer experience and understand its relationships with a wide range of variables, yet there is no consensus about the construct and definitions. Theoretical frameworks are yet to be developed and validated. Most of the researches have emerged from industry, and scholarly researches are few. The present study aims at developing a meaningful understanding of the emergence, growth, theorization and management of customer experience by doing a thorough review of literature on customer experience spanning 25 years and developing a research agenda for future researches. The paper has attempted to address following research questions:
How has the concept of customer experience emerged, developed and theorized in the...