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Ranging from the romanticism era to the postmodern paradigm and the experiential approach, this chapter reexamines the fundamental roots of the consumption experience concept while addressing the conceptualizations and nature of customer experience. In this context, the concept of customer experience in the tourism field is outlined. We set out to readdress the essence of the customer experience in the light of the consumer value (CV) as a relevant empirical ground to study it. Hence, this chapter revisits the intricate epistemological and methodological connection of the customer experience to CV. This leads to a rediscussion of the key role of customer introspection approach while outlining the narration side in studying this intimate connection of both concepts in the tourism field.

This study aims to explore the phenomenon of visceral food pleasure, described as a unitary experience that, after an initial sense of pleasure and relief generated by the satisfaction of eating impulses, is followed by negative feelings – such as guilt and worry – linked to the consumption of hedonic or unhealthy foods.

An exploratory approach has been adopted. In particular, the critical incident technique among 87 individuals has been used to extract insights about visceral food pleasure.

Contrary to previous research results, this study shows that viscearl food pleasure is not a unitary phenomenon, identifying four types of different facets, two of which have a negative valence in terms of felt emotions post-consumption and psychological well-being (i.e. the “greedy” and the “maladaptive” experiences). More importantly, the other two facets are associated with positive consequences in terms of emotions felt post-consumption and perceived psychological well-being (i.e. the “social” and the “fair sin” experiences).

Companies that provide food experiences can prime meanings that influence consumers’ perceptions of the episode to elicit positive emotions post-consumption and psychological well-being.

Promoting a more holistic view of food consumption and psychological well-being can free consumers from negative emotions during food consumption episodes. Priming a particular meaning can be a way to do that. However, as visceral experience can still lead to health issues, this must be combined with an education process that makes consumers aware of their food habits.

This research challenges the idea that visceral food experiences are always negative. Indeed, when associated with particular meanings (i.e. social and reward), they have a positive valence post-consumption.

This study aims to examine how the temporal aspect of service consumption impacts the emotions that are created within consumers during service encounters.

The authors adopted mobile phone or ‘SMS’ diaries to capture the emotions that participants experienced at the very moment they were being felt or ‘in-vivo’. The study included thirteen different services including both ‘brief’ and ‘extended service transactions’.

The study suggests that the temporal perspective is a dominant cause of consumption emotions in services, influencing consumers’ emotions from before the service encounter commences to its conclusion and, in some cases, beyond the conclusion of the service event. Other antecedents of consumption emotions such as interactions with staff and the servicescape are influenced by and interwoven with this temporal aspect. By capturing emotions as they were experienced, recall difficulties that might have been encountered had the emotions been measured retrospectively were eliminated, allowing the researchers to construct a comprehensive account of the chronology and contiguity of the emotions created within consumers during service encounters.

Although certain aspects of time such as the consequences of queuing and waiting have been addressed in the services marketing literature, a detailed understanding of how time impacts consumption emotions in services from the start to the conclusion of service encounters has not been undertaken to date. This research addresses that gap by examining how the temporal perspective influences not only consumption emotions in customers per se but how it also influences other causes of consumption emotions that customers encounter during service transactions.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the impact of the different aspects of consumption experience on various post-consumption variables (i.e. satisfaction, nostalgia intensity, word-of-mouth (WOM) communication and behavioural intentions).

A quantitative study using a self-administered questionnaire was conducted. The sample comprised of 645 respondents and the snowball sampling technique was used. Consumption experience was measured using a seven-dimensional scale (dimensions: hedonic, flow, escapism, socialisation, personal challenge, learning and communitas).

Not all experience dimensions affect consumers equally in the post-consumption stage. Hedonism was an important experiential dimension affecting positively most of the post-consumption variables. Other boosters of consumers’ nostalgia, WOM communication and behavioural intentions were the feelings of escapism, knowledge and communitas. On the contrary, flow and personal challenge were negative predictors of consumers’ evaluations.

Marketers should co-create the experience with consumers by carefully managing their experiential offering. Companies should focus on designing pleasurable, social, educational and fantasy experiences while minimizing the feelings of immersion and risk that arise from intense activities.

A holistic conceptual model on the consequences of the different consumption experience dimensions is tested. Until now, most of the relevant studies on experiences have treated experience as a higher order construct without taking into consideration the different effects of the various experience dimensions. Hence, the present study contributes to research by identifying the most pertinent experience dimensions on post-consumption evaluations, behaviour and intentions of consumers.

The purpose of this study is to interpret consumers' emotion in their consumption experience in the context of mobile commerce from an experiential view. The study seeks to address concerns about the experiential aspects of mobile commerce regardless of the consumption type. For the purpose, the authors aims to propose a stimulus‐organism‐response (S‐O‐R) based model that incorporates both utilitarian and hedonic factors of consumers.

A survey study was conducted to collect data from 293 mobile phone users. The questionnaire was administered in study classrooms, a library, or via e‐mail. The measurement model and structural model were examined using LISREL 8.7.

The results of this research implied that emotion played a significant role in the mobile consumption experience; hedonic factors had a positive effect on the consumption experience, while utilitarian factors had a negative effect on the consumption experience of consumers. The empirical findings also indicated that media richness was as important as subjective norms, and more important than convenience and self‐efficacy.

Few m‐commerce studies have focused directly on the experiential aspects of consumption, including the hedonic experience and positive emotions among mobile device users. Applying the stimulus‐organism‐response (S‐O‐R) framework from the perspective of the experiential view, the current research model is developed to examine several utilitarian and hedonic factors in the context of the consumption experience, and indicates a comparison between the information processing (utilitarian) view and the experiential (hedonic) view of consumer behavior. It illustrates the relationships among six variables (i.e. convenience, media richness, subjective norms, self‐efficacy, emotion, and consumption experience) in a mobile commerce context.

The consumer acculturation literature argues that reconstituting familiar embodied practices from the culture of origin leads to a comforting sense of home for consumers who move from one cultural context to another. This paper aims to extend this thesis by examining further dimensions in migrant consumers’ experiences of home culture consumption.

This paper analyses data gathered through multi-modal depth interviews with Southeast Asian skilled migrants in New Zealand through the conceptual lens of embodiment.

Building on Dion et al.’s (2011) framework of ethnic embodiment, the analysis uncovers home culture consumption as multi-layered experiences of anchoring, de-stabilisation and estrangement, characterised by convergence and divergence between the embodied dimensions of being-in-the-world, being-in-the-world with others and remembering being-in-the-world.

This paper underscores home culture consumption in migration as an ambivalent embodied experience. Further research should investigate how other types of acculturating consumers experience and negotiate the changing meanings of home.

Marketers in migrant-receiving and migrant-sending cultural contexts should be sensitised to disjunctures in migrants’ embodied experience of consuming home and their role in heightening or mitigating these disjunctures.

This paper helps contribute to consumer acculturation theory in two ways. First, the authors show how migrants experience not only comfort and connection but also displacement, in practices of home culture consumption. Second, the authors show how migrant communities do not only encourage cultural maintenance and gatekeeping but also contribute to cultural identity de-stabilisation.

The purpose of this paper is to propose both a retrospective and a prospective look at one of the most powerful concepts in marketing research: consumption experience.

A historical review of the development of the concept of consumption experience is conducted from its introduction 35 years ago by Holbrook and Hirschman’s (1982) seminal paper to the most recent advances, including the articles selected for this special issue.

First, the authors show that the introduction of the concept of consumer experience was a major (r)evolution on the theoretical, methodological and managerial levels. Second, the authors examine the theoretical risks associated with a biased conceptualization of the consumption experience. Third, the authors highlight future avenues for research on the consumption experience from both macro- (“zoom-out”) and micro-analytic (“zoom-in”) perspectives.

This paper offers a comprehensive view on one of the most disruptive concepts in marketing theory.

This paper aims to develop a theoretical framework for the conceptualization of customer experiential knowledge (CEK) by logically combining its different dimensions into one coherent explanatory concept. Drawing on the integration of the literature on customer experience, customer knowledge management and customer insights acquisition, supported by adequate empirical evidence, the framework provides a systematic, comprehensive and accurate understanding of CEK which, could contribute to the identification of relevant customer experience insights useful for customer knowledge management.

The analysis follows an inductive/deductive interpretative approach and it is based on a netnography of specialty coffee bloggers’ narratives in relation to their sustainability practices.

The paper identifies the following six types of CEK: normative, subcultural, epicurean, transcendental, subcultural and symbolic. Accordingly, CEK is defined as the knowledge tacitly possessed by customers in relation to how they live their consumption experiences according to a body of heterogeneous socio-cultural contextual factors (ethos, norms and symbols) and subjective influences (emotions, ingenuity, instincts and senses) deeply embedded into the narrative of a consumption experience.

While CEK has been largely observed and acknowledged, it has not been yet adequately addressed by existing research. The provision of a conceptual definition of CEK which emphasizes its different dimensions will be of use to both academics and practitioners to better identify and categorize the different manifestations of CEK when undertaking empirical observations or managerial decisions.

Purpose – The first purpose of this chapter is to better understand, and to propose a means to understand the ways selves are constructed in daily contingencies during consumption experiences. To do so, the second purpose, which aims to bring an additional contribution, is to investigate the materiality of consumer experiences in a technological context.

Methodology/approach – We have investigated materiality (as conceptualized by Miller) of experiences in online discussion forums in a community of video games enthusiasts. Grounded theory is elaborated from an ethnography mixing interviews and nonparticipative online observation. The focus is on consumers' perceptions of their constructions as subjects in relationship to the various objects and practices they face.

Findings – The process through which subjects are contingently constructed follows three intertwined logics. Each of these logics, namely (1) finding a position, (2) building “appropriation logics” and accomplishing practices, and (3) enacting meaning empowerments, is detailed in its specific contingencies and modalities.

Research limitations/implications – Contribution of this research relies mostly on findings from one online community.

Practical implications – This research opens new ways to understand technological consumption experiences as they are lived by consumers, and it allows for an understanding of structuration in experiences characterized beforehand by their indeterminacy.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter belongs to the few ones that propose a methodological approach to tackle with the construction of the self in daily contingencies and with dynamic materiality. It also opens new ways to de-essentialize ordinary consumption activities.

The purpose of this study is to explore consumer anticipation processes that occur after commitment to a purchase has been made, but before consumption occurs. The authors add to the knowledge and theory building about anticipation that occurs in this liminal phase by investigating the cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes that interact to influence post-consumption evaluations.

An abductive research approach used a phase-based research design using semi-structured interviews. The authors identify interactions between cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes that occur during anticipation and associate these with post-consumption outcomes.

Anticipation of a consumption experience, enacted through thoughts, emotions and actions, and undertaken with peers, is an experience per se, independent from and interdependent with the substantive experience, and contributes to performance of the substantive experience. The authors propose a framework in which anticipation – as a performative phenomenon – influences the overall evaluations of the substantive consumption experience in contexts of delayed consumption. The theoretical grounding of performativity makes a useful contribution through its linkage of thought processes to outcomes. The authors further locate their findings within the literature on attribution theory. By engaging in anticipation, informants perceived the locus of causality to be internal, and expressed pride in having anticipated if the subsequent experience was successful. By anticipating, informants perceived an ability to exert control over future events and felt ashamed of not having adequately anticipated if an experience was subsequently unsuccessful.

The theoretical grounding of performativity makes a useful contribution through its linkage of thought processes to outcomes. The authors further locate their findings within the literature on attribution theory. By engaging in anticipation, informants perceived the locus of causality to be internal and expressed pride in having anticipated if the subsequent experience was successful. By anticipating, informants perceived an ability to exert control over future events and felt ashamed of not having adequately anticipated if an experience was subsequently unsuccessful.

The authors discuss the trade-off service providers face between encouraging anticipation, which raises expectations that might not be met, and facilitating anticipatory preparations, which may reduce the risk of service failure.

The authors provide a new lens by conceptualising anticipation as a performative process and identifying mechanisms by which anticipation is embedded in total consumption experience. This study has important generalisable implications for contexts where mechanisms of performative anticipation may be a means for ameliorating uncertainty about future consumption experiences.