Components of Customer Experience and their Impact on Co-created Value: An Abstract

Abstract

The present research aims to develop a context-independent customer experience quality scale. The scales that have been proposed thus far are developed focusing on either a specific context or a type of experience, presenting adaptability issues as contexts give rise to varying experience requirements of customers. Context-independence will be achieved through employing a grounded theory approach, whereby underlying similarities in customer experience requirements will be developed into a more consistent dimensionality of the concept. In the initial stage of the grounded theory process, interviews were conducted iteratively with 21 participants who were required to relate a good and a bad experience. The narratives collected in this manner represent a wide variety of contexts. The analysis of the emergent categories in the coding, comparison and memo-writing processes reveal that customers evaluate their experiences under three dimensions. (1) Interaction experience involves five sub-dimensions and covers customers’ functional (access, information quality and feedback) as well as emotional (tone and caring) experience requirements during their interactions with service providers across various channels. (2) Process experience covers customers’ evaluations of the customer journey through two sub-dimensions, convenience and customer-centric processes. Finally (3) cost experience involves customer assessments of the costs (monetary as well as time and effort) during their interactions. Further theoretical sampling will be employed to better delineate the properties and interrelationships of the categories developed thus far. Once the dimensionality is established, the research will ensue with item generation, purification and validation following established scale development procedures. Furthermore, the development of the suggested scale will enable the researcher to evaluate the differential effects of customer experience quality on value dimensions perceived by the customer and their effects on customer-based performance metrics. The successful operationalization of the customer experience quality construct will enable managers to track and evaluate strategic marketing investments towards managing customer experiences and aid resource allocation decisions. Furthermore, as the link between customer experience and marketing outcomes is based on mainly qualitative studies and at times anecdotal evidence, an improved understanding of the differential effects of customer experience quality dimensions on customer perceived value and in turn their effects on customer-based performance metrics will contribute to marketing literature.