Towards a better measure of customer experience
Summary (2 min read)
The background
- In their article asking if market researchers were using the right measures to help their firms improve customer experience, the authors established that customer experience was conceptually different from service quality and hence requires a new corresponding measurement (Klaus & Maklan, 2007).
- This definition is highly consistent with conceptualisations offered by other researchers (e.g. Lemke et al. 2010, Verhoef et al. 2009).
- Experience is assessed against service encounters across all channels.
- The authors presented EXQ, a scale measure of customer that explains important marketing outcomes (Maklan & Klaus 2011).
Hypotheses development
- This paper focuses on the impact of customer experience on important marketing outcomes, namely customer satisfaction, loyalty and word-of-mouth behaviour.
- Customer experience has a significant positive impact on loyalty intentions1, also known as Hypothesis 2.
- The authors validated a customer experience quality scale (EXQ) that can be readily adapted by different types of service providers.
- It has been suggested that a Chi-square value two or three times as large as the degrees of freedom is acceptable (Carmines & McIver 1981), but the fit is considered better the closer the Chi-square value (CMIN) is to the degrees of freedom (df) for a model (Thacker et al. 1989).
- After establishing the strength and psychometric properties of the scales underpinning the model, the authors examined the structure of the model.
Results of hypothesis testing
- Model fit and structural parameters for the service experience, satisfaction, loyalty and word-of-mouth paths are illustrated in Table 5.
- When considering the direct and indirect effects in the model, customer experience was found to have a greater total effect on loyalty intentions and a significantly higher positive impact on word-of-mouth behaviour than customer satisfaction.
- All their hypotheses are, therefore, confirmed (see Table 6).
- In fact, moments-of-truth and peace-of-mind have the greatest effect on customer satisfaction, loyalty and word-ofmouth behaviour.
- Moments-of-truth demonstrates the highest effect of all dimensions on loyalty intentions (0.37).
Discussion
- The authors undertook a large study across four service settings to gain a better understanding of the construct of customer experience and its influence on important marketing outcomes.
- Customers’ perceptions of their experience are generally associated with the question of how service is delivered rather than exploring what is delivered (Goldstein et al. 2002), and how the customer experience relates to important marketing outcomes (Klaus & Maklan 2012).
- EXQ allows managers to monitor the dimensions and attributes of the customer experience that link to customers’ assessment of satisfaction, loyalty and positive word-of-mouth behaviour.
- 8 Word-of-mouth is considered an important consumer behaviour for several reasons (Day 1980).
Measurement CR AVE
- I feel satisfied that XYZ produce the best results that can be achieved for me.
- Word-of-mouth behaviour (Brown et al. 2005) WOM1 Mentioned to others that you do business with XYZ.
Peace of mind
- PEA3 XYZ will look after me for a long time.
- PEA4 I stay with XYZ because of my past dealings with XYZ.
- PEA5 I have dealt with XYZ before so getting what I needed was really easy.
Moments-of-truth
- MOM1 XYZ was flexible in dealing with me and looked out for my needs.
- MOM3 XYZ is a safe and reputable company.
- The people at XYZ have good people skills.
- MOM5 XYZ deal(t) with me correctly when things go (went) wrong.
Outcome focus
- OUT1 Staying with XYZ makes the process much easier.
- OUT3 I prefer XYZ over an alternative provider.
Product experience
- PRO2 I need to receive offers from more than just XYZ.
- PRO3 I need to compare different options from XYZ.
- I feel satisfied that XYZ produce the best results that can be achieved for me.
- The items below were grouped as outlined below on the survey.
- WOM1 Mentioned to others that you do business with XYZ.
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Citations
2,514 citations
976 citations
Cites background from "Towards a better measure of custome..."
...Other scales measuring experience are Olson et al. (1995); Froehle and Roth (2004); Klaus and Maklan (2011)....
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202 citations
Cites background from "Towards a better measure of custome..."
...…positive outcomes (e.g. higher customer satisfaction, more frequent shopping visits, larger wallet shares and higher profits) Grewal et al. (2009), Klaus and Maklan (2013), Sharma and Chaubey (2014) Marketing (retailing) Customer experience is an improved service quality measure Klaus and Maklan…...
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...Marketing scholars study the positive implications of creating superior CE and advocate for the importance of this concept (Grewal et al., 2009; Klaus and Maklan, 2013)....
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...According to Maklan and Klaus (2011) and Klaus and Maklan (2013), CEM should include product experience, outcome focus, moments of truth and peace of mind (emotional factors)....
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183 citations
158 citations
Cites background from "Towards a better measure of custome..."
...There is a positive relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty in Greek banks (Keisidou et al., 2013) and in other banking studies (Fathollahzadeh et al., 2011; Klaus and Maklan, 2013)....
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...Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty and Experience: Different definitions of customer experience have been given by Klaus and Maklan (2013) and Verhoef et al. (2009), while Liang et al. (2009) suggest that customer satisfaction is overall customer experience....
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...2013) and in other banking studies (Fathollahzadeh et al., 2011; Klaus and Maklan, 2013)....
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...and customers’ purchasing behaviour (Klaus and Maklan, 2013)....
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...…and loyalty (Jun and Palacios, 2016; Amin, 2016), financial performance of banks (Keisidou et al., 2013; Liang et al., 2009), and mainly customer experience (Klaus and Maklan, 2013; Garg et al., 2014), giving limited attention to the effect of customer experience on financial performance....
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References
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19,893 citations
"Towards a better measure of custome..." refers background in this paper
...These values indicate metric invariance, which implies that the three samples represent the same general population (Hair et al. 1998) ....
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11,245 citations
10,574 citations
"Towards a better measure of custome..." refers background or methods in this paper
...H2: Customer experience has a significant positive impact on loyalty intentions .1 1 As defined and measured by Zeithaml et al. (1996) ....
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...…to the EXQ scale, the questionnaire included a five-item behavioural loyalty scale (Parasuraman et al. 2005) based on a 13-item battery developed by Zeithaml et al. (1996); adapted a 2 We modelled customer experience as suggested by researchers as a formative construct in which the dimensions of…...
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...…of customer experience quality and its impact on important marketing outcomes, namely customer satisfaction, loyalty and word-of-mouth behaviour, as suggested and defined by Brown et al. (2005), Dagger et al. (2007), Parasuraman et al. (2005), Walsh and Beatty (2007) and Zeithaml et al. (1996) ....
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Frequently Asked Questions (11)
Q2. What are the future works mentioned in the paper "Towards a better measure of customer experience" ?
Limitations and directions for future research Scholars suggest that customer experience affects business performance, and future research should determine how customer experience explains and influences important marketing outcomes such as market share, share of wallet and ultimately profitability.
Q3. Why is customer experience a growing priority for market research?
Defining and improving customer experience is a growing priority for market research because experience is replacing quality as the competitive battleground for marketing.
Q4. What can be used to determine which strategies and practices will have the positive influence on customers’?
EXQ can be used by managers to determine which strategies and practices will have the most positive influence on customers’ perceptions and behaviour.
Q5. What are the main objectives of this paper?
This paper focuses on the impact of customer experience on important marketing outcomes, namely customer satisfaction, loyalty and word-of-mouth behaviour.
Q6. What are the main reasons why the study advocates customer experience?
customer experience measures (e.g. EXQ) should be considered alongside more traditional means of assessing strategy - customer satisfaction and Net Promotor Score - as they may be better and more direct predictors of consumer behaviour.
Q7. What is the definition of service quality?
Service quality, the authors argue, is an outgrowth of the Total Quality Management movement of the 1980s and suffers from that movement’s focus on the provider rather than the value derived by customers.
Q8. What are the structural parameters for the customer experience?
Examination of the structural parameters indicates that product experience, outcome focus, momentsof-truth and peace-of-mind have a significant and positive impact on customer satisfaction, loyalty and word-of-mouth behaviour.
Q9. What were the dimensions of the EXQ scale used in the CFAs?
In addition, the authors conducted second-order CFAs in which the dimensions of EXQ (e.g. peace-of-mind) were specified as reflective indicators of a second-order overall customer experience (EXQ) construct.
Q10. Why did the authors choose the latter service?
The latter service was chosen to ensure further cross-validation (Cronin et al. 2000), so that samples varied on the degree to which the service could be characterised as hedonic (lifestyle luxury goods) versus utilitarian (fuel and service station).
Q11. What is the effect of customer experience on word-of-mouth behaviour?
Customer experience also displays a positive and considerable influence on word-of-mouth behaviour (0.63), supporting Hypothesis 3.