Is Consumer Experience the Next Best Thing? Reflections from a systematic review and research agenda proposition

Abstract

Literature recognizes consumer experience as an important construct to understand consumer behavior as well as the dominant basis for market differentiation. There is a growing body of knowledge on consumer experience, but little is known about the characteristics of its scientific production. Considering this, we performed a systematic review in order to provide an overview on consumer experience developments. We selected 414 articles for the final analysis and categorized them according to demographic, institutional and methodological criteria. Results indicated the predominance of empirical work, quantitative methods and organizational perspective. We concluded consumption experience is at the top of marketing agenda on research and practice, but it is still an incipient construct, lacking theoretical discussions, especially concerning its conceptualization, and the development of consumer perspective, which will lead consumer experience to the comprehension of consumption phenomena on its totality and complexity.