Prelims

Half Title Page

Contemporary Approaches Studying Customer Experience in Tourism Research

Editorial Review Board

Amir Zaib Abbasi, SZABIST, Karachi, Pakistan

Dhouha Jaziri, University of Sousse, Tunisia

Jamid UI Islam, Prince Sultan University, Riadh University, KSA

Jusuf Zeqiri, South East European University, Tetovo, Macedonia

Kashif Hussain, Taylor's University, Malaysia

Lakhvinder Singh, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, India

Muhammad Shujahat, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, China

Raouf Ahmad Rather, Independent Scientific Researcher, Jammu and Kashmir, India

Seden Dôgan, Ondokuz Mayis Universitesi, Faculty of Tourism, Turkey

Seyed Asaad Hosseini, Faculty of Tourism, University of Malaga, Spain

Title Page

Contemporary Approaches Studying Customer Experience in Tourism Research

Edited by

Dhouha Jaziri

University of Sousse, Tunisia

And

Raouf Ahmad Rather

Independent Scientific Researcher, Jammu and Kashmir, India

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Editorial matter and selection © 2022 Dhouha Jaziri and Raouf Ahmad Rather.

Individual chapters © 2022 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80117-633-0 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80117-632-3 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80117-634-7 (Epub)

Dedication

In memory of Mama Zohra

Often times, I imagined you opening the door, as you often did, with your beautiful smile and a lovely shine upon your beautiful green eyes as you proudly see me holding my second book in hand. However, death took you away and usurped me of my dream. I dedicate this book to your soul… RIP

To our 20 years of common life, to you Mejdi, thanks for being by my side

To my parents and my children with all my love

–Dhouha Jaziri

I wish to express my sincere thanks for the support and encouragement offered by my beloved family members, parents, sisters, brother, my wife, my friends, and colleagues

–Raouf Ahmad Rather

List of Abbreviations

AI

Artificial Intelligence

AR

Augmented Reality

AVE

Average Variance Extracted

ÇAYKUR

General Directorate of the Businesses

CC

Customer Co-creation

CCX

Cyber Customer Experience

CDRA

Customer-driven restaurant analysis

CE

Customer Engagement

CEK

Customer Experiential Knowledge

CEKM

Customer Experiential Knowledge Management

CEKMC

Customer Experiential Knowledge Management Competence

CEK-PC

Customer Experiential Knowledge-Process Competence

CI

Customer Introspection

CJM

Customer Journey Mapping

CRA

Constructive Research Approach

CRM

Customer Relationship Management

CV

Consumer Value

CX

Customer Experience

DV

Discriminant Validity

DVD

Digital Video Disc

EA (chapter 13)

Emotional Attachment

EA (chapter7)

Experience Accounting

EEG

Electroencephalography

EMG

Electromyography

ET

Eye-tracking

eWoM

Electronic Word of Mouth

FAO

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

GIS

Geographic Information System

GPS

Global Positioning System

GSR

Galvanic Skin Response

GWR

Geographically Weighted Regression

HMD

Head-Mounted Device

HVM

Hierarchical Value Map

IJCHM

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

IJHM

International Journal of Hospitality Management

IoT

Internet of Things

M-DL

Memory-Dominant Logic

MDTE

Memorable Digital Tourism Experience

MR

Mixed Reality

MTE

Memorable Tourism Experience

OLS

Ordinary Least Squares

PLS-SEM

Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling

RBV

Resource-based view

RQ

Research Question

S-D Logic/S-DL

Service Dominant Logic

SoLoMo

Social, Local, Mobile

SPI

Subjective Personal Introspection

SRMR

Standardized Root Mean Squared Residual

TK

Tacit Knowledge

UGC

User-Generated Content

UNWTO

United Nations World Tourism Organization

USAR

Uniform system of accounts for restaurants

VCM

Value creation model

VOSviewer

‘Visualization of Similarities' viewer software

VR

Virtual Reality

WEF

World Economic Forum

WHO

World Health Organization

WoS

Web of Science

Z-Met

Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique

About the Editors

Dhouha Jaziri is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sousse, FsegSo, Tunisia. She holds a PhD in Marketing from ISG Tunis (2015). Her research concerns mainly customer experience, tourism management, customer knowledge management, innovation, digital marketing, and customer brand engagement. She is a member of the editorial Advisory Board in several handbooks and journals. Her work to date is published in high-ranked journals, including the Journal of Product and Brand Management and Journal of Business Research. Moreover, she has edited mainly the Handbook of Research on Tacit Knowledge Management (2017) by IGI-Global.

Raouf Ahmad Rather, PhD, is listed on Stanford University's Top 2% of Scientists (2021), global scientific-researcher and research/guest faculty at University of Kashmir, South Campus, Jammu and Kashmir, India. His research interests center on co-creation, customer engagement, customer experience, service innovation, customer loyalty, and tourism crises/pandemic. His work to date has been published in top-tier journals, including the Journal of Travel Research; European Journal of Marketing; Journal of Retailing & Consumer Services; Current Issues in Tourism; Journal of Travel & Tourism marketing, and many others. He is the Editor of the forthcoming book Brand Co-Creation Tourism Research: Contemporary Issues and Challenge, by Apple Academic Press and CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.

About the Contributors

Michela Addis is Professor of Marketing at the Università di Roma Tre. She holds a PhD in Business Economics and Management from Bocconi University (2001). She was faculty member of the SDA Bocconi School of Management, Marketing Department, where she taught Marketing in Executive Education programs (1999–2017). Her research interests include experiential marketing, customer relationship management, hedonic consumption, arts, and cultural marketing. Some of her publications appeared in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Cultural Economics, Psychology & Marketing, and European Journal of Marketing. Her last book Engaging Brands: A Customer-Centric Approach for Superior Experiences has been published by Routledge in 2020; she also coedited the book Managing the Cultural Businesses: Avoiding Mistakes, Finding Success with A. Rurale (Routledge, 2020).

Suat Akyürek works as an Assistant Professor Dr in the Department of Hotel, Restaurant and Catering Services, Gümüşhane University, Turkey. He holds a PhD in Tourism. He is the author of more than 20 research papers of national and international interests. His areas of interest include gastronomy, gastronomy tourism, and gastronomic experience.

Narjess Aloui, PhD in Marketing, is an Assistant Professor at Carthage Business School in Tunisia. She is an active member of the Tunisian Marketing Association (ATM). Her current research areas emphasize Market Orientation Strategies, Customer Behavior, Marketing Research, Netnography, and Digital Marketing.

Antonella Capriello, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Eastern Piedmont in Italy. The research activities include studies on event management, networking processes in tourist destinations, social entrepreneurship, and franchising. She published more than 70 research papers, including articles in the Journal of Business Research, Tourism Management, and International Journal of Consumer Studies.

Mats Carlbäck is currently Assistant Professor at the School of Hospitality, Culinary Arts and Meal Science, Örebro University, Sweden, and Associate Professor of Applied Sciences at Wittenborg University of Applied Science, Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. With a long practical experience from the hospitality industry, both in Sweden and on the international arena, Mats' research focus is on strategical advancements for the companies in the industry. With a background as entrepreneur, issues relating to entrepreneurship are also high on the agenda. In addition to the teaching and research activities Mats is running a company developing applicable solutions for the industry.

Maksim Godovykh is a Research Associate and Doctoral Candidate in the Rosen College of Hospitality Management at UCF, University of Central Florida, USA. He researches the quality of life, health, and well-being impacts of tourism. His research results were published in premium scientific journals including Tourism Management, Current Issues in Tourism, Tourism Economics, Tourism Review, Tourism Management Perspectives, the Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, Tourism and Hospitality Research, etc., as well as disseminated in book chapters, encyclopedias, industry magazines, and news media. He has developed several governmental programs and organized more than a 100 conferences, forums, collaborative events, and workshops.

Jörg Henseler is a Professor and holds the Chair of Product–Market Relations at the Department of Design, Production, and Management at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. He is also a Visiting Professor at Nova Information Management School, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. His research bridges behavioral and design science and focuses on the management of products, services, and brands. Web of Science/Clarivate has repeatedly distinguished him as a highly cited researcher.

Maria Illescas-Manzano, PhD, is currently Assistant Professor at the marketing department of the University of Almería. She obtained her Master’s Degree of Finance and Accounting and her degree in Business Administration from the University of Almería. Her current research focuses on econometric methods to pricing in hospitality firms. Her works have been published in journals such as the International Journal of Hospitality Management and International Journal of Computer Mathematics.

Dhouha Jaziri is a Senior Lecturer at University of Sousse, FsegSo, Tunisia. She holds a PhD in Marketing from ISG Tunis (2015). Her research concerns mainly customer experience, tourism management, customer knowledge management, innovation, digital marketing, and customer brand engagement. She is a member of the editorial Advisory Board in several handbooks and journals. Her work to date is published in high-ranked journals, including the Journal of Product and Brand Management and Journal of Business Research. Moreover, she has edited mainly the Handbook of Research on Tacit Knowledge Management (2017) by IGI-Global.

Mari Juntunen is an Associate Professor/Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Marketing, Management and International Business at Oulu Business School, University of Oulu, Finland. Her research interests include social media, corporate branding, imaginary aspects, and organizational change, which she has studied in different contexts, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), B2B, software, logistics, and military forces. Her work appears in outlets such as the Journal of Business Ethics, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Consumer Behavior, and Journal of Services Marketing, among others.

Raymond Loohuis, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Business Service Innovation and Service Strategies at the Entrepreneurship & Technology Management research group at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Furthermore, he is appointed as senior fellow learning and teaching with a focus on educational innovation and challenge-based learning. His research focuses on customer service experience, business development, and service strategies.

Sergio Martínez-Puertas, PhD, is currently Associate Professor at Math department of University of Almería. His current research focuses on parameter estimation in finite population by calibration techniques. Recently, he has written several articles related to the analysis of large volumes of data through mixed structures of neural networks and articles related to econometric methods to pricing in hospitality firms. His works have been published in journals such as Sociological Methods & Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Applied Soft Computing, and Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics.

Eeva-Liisa Oikarinen is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Marketing, Management, and International Business at Oulu Business School, University of Oulu, Finland. Her current research interest is human-to-human marketing and transformative implications of human capabilities (humor, humanness, and emotions) in digitalized business interactions (recruitment advertising, service encounters, and innovation management). She has published in the European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, and Corporate Reputation Review, among others.

Omid Oshriyeh is a PhD student in Hospitality Management at the University of South Carolina in the United States. He received his BS in Tourism Management from Payame Noor University and his MS in Tourism Management (Tourism Marketing) from the University of Tehran. His research interests include film tourism, sustainable tourism, consumer behavior, and risk and crisis management in the tourism industry.

Özcan Özdemir, PhD, works as a Lecturer at the University of Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy, at the Department of Tourist Guidance, Turkey. At the same time, he is a doctoral student at the University of Muğla Sıtkı Koçman, MUĞLA, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Tourism Management. He is writing a doctoral thesis by combining gastronomy tourism and tourist guidance. His fields of interest are Tourist Guidance, Cultural Heritage, Gastro-guidance, Gastro-culture, and Job Satisfaction-Motivation. He has published many articles in different subjects and two printed book chapters: The Effect of Staff Empowerment Application on Job Satisfaction in Tourist Guides and The Role of Tourist Guides in Promoting Intangible Cultural Heritage. Moreover, he is a professional tourist guide affiliated with the Association of Turkish Tourist Guides.

Elena Proietti is the COO and Marketing Specialist at Radio Radio, a broadcaster multimedia channel operating in Rome. She holds a Master's Degree in Economics & Management from Università di Roma Tre. She is an expert on the subject for Marketing Research at Università di Roma Tre, and she supported the teaching of the Cultural Marketing Laboratory course at the Università di Roma Tre.

Raouf Ahmad Rather, PhD, is listed on Stanford University's Top 2% of Scientists (2021), global scientific-researcher and research/guest faculty at University of Kashmir, South Campus, Jammu and Kashmir, India. His research interests center on co-creation, customer engagement, customer experience, service innovation, customer loyalty, and tourism crises/pandemic. His work to date has been published in top-tier journals, including the Journal of Travel Research; European Journal of Marketing; Journal of Retailing & Consumer Services; Current Issues in Tourism; Journal of Travel & Tourism marketing; and many others. He is the Editor of the forthcoming book Brand Co-Creation Tourism Research: Contemporary Issues and Challenge, by Apple Academic Press and CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.

Mohsin Abdur Rehman is a Doctoral Student at University of Oulu, Finland. He has received his Master’s Degree with distinction from the University of Bolton, United Kingdom. His research interests revolve around customer experience and service interactions in the digital era. He has published in peer-reviewed and intentionally acclaimed journals, including the International Journal of Bank Marketing, Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, and Journal of Financial Services Marketing.

Yasin Sahhar is a PhD Researcher with the Entrepreneurship & Technology Management research group at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. His research interest lies in value experience and value creation throughout the customer journey. In his explorative and theory-building research, he deploys an interpretive/phenomenological lens and trusts on qualitative research methods such as ethnography.

Manuel Sánchez-Pérez, PhD, is Professor of Marketing at the University of Almeria. His fields of research are marketing strategy and consumer behavior, with particular focus on the food, tourism, and hospitality industries. He has participated in several research projects on tourism. His works have been published in journals such as the European Journal of Marketing, Information & Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management, International Journal of Market Research, International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, Internet Research, Managing Service Quality, Review of Managerial Science, Supply Chain Management, Service Industries Journal, and Technovation, among others.

Halim Budi Santoso is a Doctoral Student at the Institute of Service Science, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. He is also a faculty member in the Information System Department, Duta Wacana Christian University, Indonesia. Halim is currently researching digital transformation, multisensory technology in online retailing and tourism, and technology-enabled services. His dissertation is on the intersection between emotion, technology, and tourism.

Imen Sdiri, PhD in Marketing, is an Assistant Professor at Carthage University, Higher Institute of Management of Bizerte, Tunisia. She is a member of the URCC research laboratory and active member of the Tunisian Maghrebin Association “AMM.” Her current research areas emphasize consumer attitudes, marketing for seniors, and innovation.

Jyun-Cheng Wang is a full-time Professor at the Institute of Service Science, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. He obtained his PhD from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA. At the Institute of Service Science, he teaches some subjects, such as Social Network Analysis and Management, Digital Innovation and e-Commerce, and Social Entrepreneurship. His research interest is in the field of Social Networks, Community and e-Commerce, and Patent Analysis.

Nila Armelia Windasari is a Faculty Member at the School of Business and Management – Bandung Institute of Technology (SBM-ITB). She received her PhD in Service Science from the Institute of Service Science, National Tsing Hua University – Taiwan, in 2018. Nila has been awarded a Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society Award and the Best PhD Dissertation by Service Science Society (s3tw) Academic Research Award in 2018. Her research interests lie in the broad areas of technology-enabled service and the customer experience in various service domains.

Preface

The experience, such a polysemous concept, has been considered for several decades an attractive concept that has been studied through the lens of research fields ranging from the philosophy, anthropology, to marketing and consumer research. Rooted in the depths of consumer research, this book stands out by shedding the light on the needed methodological approaches to study the experience, be it customer, consumer, and tourist experience while highlighting the consideration of a dynamic, processing, and systemic nature of the lived experience in the tourism field.

Unlike other sectors, tourism provides an intensive experience based on a set of complex interactions between tourists and service providers (Rather, 2020; Yachin, 2018). The experience concept takes a fresh impetus by considering the customer journey as a basis, which will take fully the experience concept in its complexity. It is a plethora of encounters involving the preexperience, an active tourism experience, and a reflective posttourism experience (Yachin, 2018). In this regard, close interactions with tourists present a rich source of experiential knowledge important to shed light on it, as the different parts of customer journey will enable tourism companies to learn from customers on the first level and to develop and readjust their marketing on the second level. To benefit from the experience as a source of knowledge (Jaziri, 2019a), marketing researchers should rethink the use of traditional studying methods/approaches of the customer experience (CX) in tourism sector (as customer survey) and to migrate to an innovative approaches and new related methods or through techniques' combination (example: the use of interpretive approach), that will grasp the complexity of CX and can paint the customer’ latent desires.

In this regard, this book aims at presenting the contemporary approaches and related methods to study and explore the customer/tourist experience along the three main stages of the customer journey. These different methods have been discussed and applied to understand and to evaluate the CX before, during, and after the experience.

Recently, CX has garnered increasing scholastic and practitioner importance (Jaziri, 2019a; Lemon & Verhoef, 2016; Rather & Hollebeek, 2020, 2021), as reflected by its insertion in the Marketing Science Institute's Research Priorities since 2010–2020 (e.g., MSI, 2020). Further, in line with McColl-Kennedy et al. (2015) and Rather, Hollebeek, and Rasoolimanesh (2021) there is a tenuous empirical support of understanding the CX as a process involving various channels and touch points (see also Rather, Najar, & Jaziri, 2020).

Viewed in this way, the book highlights not only an interpretive view of the customer/tourist experience in tourism research, but it also considers it along an organizational view and in terms of a sequential process related to a set of tourism stakeholders.

Treating the experience concept through different conceptualizations has led to limit the capturing of the CX itself; in fact, this problem resulted from the limitation of the chosen methodologies. Generally, the tourism field investigates the CX by focusing on the self-reported of past experience, forgetting the essence of the experience and the delusive nature of CX changing at touch points with the implied stakeholders, and changing equally along the different series of experiences lived with the company and forming the consumption's lifetime. Hence, the CX needs to be measured moment by moment, to grasp its depths by trying to connect to its essence as well as to capture the totality of tourism experience at previsit, on-site, and postvisit stages.

Acknowledgments

We are deeply grateful to Professor Morris B. Holbrook for his encouragement, valuable comments, and constructive suggestions in structuring the first chapter on customer experience and consumer value. Thanks for sharing your incredibly enormous experience with us, and acting as our mentor during this exciting journey and beyond. Dear Professor Morris, on the 40th anniversary of your seminal article coauthored with Professor Elizabeth Hirschman on the experiential aspects of consumption, this book is our way to tell you thank you for changing our vision of the consumption and giving us the intellectual freedom to develop, explore, and establish our own paths into academia.

We are deeply indebted to the editorial team of Emerald for their patience, consistent encouragement, invaluable support, and guidance for accepting this manuscript for publication. We would like to thank all of our contributing authors for making this book possible. Finally, we are grateful to reviewers who invest their valuable time into improving the submissions and the overall quality of the book.

Editors: Dhouha Jaziri and Raouf Ahmad Rather