Understanding customer experience and the customer journey over time is critical for firms. Customers now interact with firms through myriad touch points in multiple channels and media, and customer experiences are more social in nature. These changes require firms to integrate multiple business functions, and even external partners, in creating and delivering positive customer experiences. In this article, the authors aim to develop a stronger understanding of customer experience and the customer journey in this era of increasingly complex customer behavior. To achieve this goal, they examine existing definitions and conceptualizations of customer experience as a construct and provide a historical perspective of the roots of customer experience within marketing. Next, they attempt to bring together what is currently known about customer experience, customer journeys, and customer experience management. Finally, they identify critical areas for future research on this important topic.

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Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey

In today’s highly dynamic and interactive business environment, the role of “customer engagement” (CE) in cocreating customer experience and value is receiving increasing attention from business practitioners and academics alike. Despite this interest, systematic scholarly inquiry into the concept and its conceptual distinctiveness from other, associated relational concepts has been limited to date. This article explores the theoretical foundations of CE by drawing on relationship marketing theory and the service-dominant (S-D) logic. The analysis also examines the use of the term “engagement” in the social science, management, and marketing academic literatures, as well as in specific business practice applications. Five fundamental propositions (FPs) derived from this analysis are used to develop a general definition of CE, and distinguish the concept from other relational concepts, including “participation” and “involvement.” The five propositions are used in the development of a framework for future r...

http://www.artexperience.it/uploads/9/2/9/2/9292963/brodie_et_alt__customer_engagement.pdf

Customer Engagement Conceptual Domain, Fundamental Propositions, and Implications for Research

Consumer engagement in a virtual brand community: An exploratory analysis

Consumer Brand Engagement in Social Media: Conceptualization, Scale Development and Validation

This paper integrates and synthesizes the findings of published research on organic food consumption. We identify several themes that reflect the various rationales used by consumers when deciding to purchase organic food. The literature clearly indicates that the word "organic" has many meanings, that consumers of organic foods are not homogeneous in demographics or in beliefs, and that further research could help better describe the various constituencies that are often lumped together as "organic food consumers". The organic and broader food industries must better understand the variety of motivations, perceptions, and attitudes consumers hold regarding organic foods and their consumption if their own long-term interests, as well as those of other stakeholders of food marketing, are to be best served. We conclude with implications and suggestions for further research.

Who are organic food consumers? A compilation and review of why people purchase organic food

This paper presents a cross‐cultural study of organic food consumption. Relationships between health and diet concern, environmental concern, confidence in the conventional food industry, demographic characteristics, and intensity of organic food consumption of consumers from Denmark (mature organic industry) and New Zealand (novice organic food industry) are investigated. The authors evaluate the adequacy of deficit value and market development conceptual frameworks to predict priority of these concerns related to the level of organic market development.

Level of market development and intensity of organic food consumption: cross‐cultural study of Danish and New Zealand consumers

Purpose




Despite Schau et al.’s (2009) pioneering research addressing consumers’ community engagement practices, scholarly understanding of the nature and dynamics characterizing consumers’ engagement practices in virtual (online) brand communities, and their inter-relationships, is limited to date. Building on these authors’ study, this paper aims to develop a refined typology and process model of virtual brand community engagement practices (VBCEPs).




Design/methodology/approach




Using the netnographic methodology, the authors analyze 20 luxury handbag community members’ entries posted on the brand’s particular section of The Purse Forum.




Findings




The authors develop an eight-component VBCEP typology that refines Schau et al.’s (2009) four-component model of brand community engagement practices. The model comprises “greeting”, “regulating”, “assisting”, “celebrating”, “appreciating”, “empathizing”, “mingling” and “ranking”. These practices contribute to and maintain the community’s vision and identity, and strengthen shared community consciousness.




Research limitations/implications




A key limitation of this research lies in its findings being generated from a single, luxury virtual brand community. Future research may thus wish to validate the VBCEP typology and model across different contexts.




Practical implications




The authors provide strategic managerial recommendations designed to leverage virtual brand community performance, which center predominantly on the social (altruistic) and achievement-based VBCEP sub-processes.




Originality/value




The eight-component VBCEP typology refines Schau et al.’s four-component model of brand community engagement practices with particular applicability to virtual brand communities.

Virtual brand community engagement practices: a refined typology and model

The majority of previous studies on ecotourism have used a behavioral approach to the identification of ecotourists. While these studies provide a number of useful ecotourist profiles, they do not provide a general scale useful in identifying ecotourists across a wide array of contexts. Therefore, this exploratory study develops an Ecotourism Interest scale and tests the value of the scale in predicting travelers’ participation in selected tourist activities. Logistic regression models are used to test hypotheses regarding the influence of Ecotourism Interest on choice of vacation activity. Empirical results show that the Ecotourism Interest scale is useful in identifying if tourists will select eco-friendly activities (e.g., walking in the bush, tramping, and whale watching). Also, different additional factors such as age, travel party, and travel mode were found to influence tourists’ decisions to participate in any one particular activity.

Biljana Juric

Papers

Customer Engagement Conceptual Domain, Fundamental Propositions, and Implications for Research

Consumer engagement in a virtual brand community: An exploratory analysis

Level of market development and intensity of organic food consumption: cross‐cultural study of Danish and New Zealand consumers

Virtual brand community engagement practices: a refined typology and model

Exploring the Usefulness of an Ecotourism Interest Scale