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The purpose of this paper is to analyse and evaluate the effect of customer experience management (virtual interaction, physical interaction and service interaction) on customer loyalty in the banking industry.

The study followed an explanatory research design to sample 384 respondents. Stepwise regression analysis was used to validate the relevance of the study model.

The results indicated that there is a positive association between customer experience management and customer loyalty. The dimensions of customer experience management, namely virtual interaction, physical interaction and service interaction, were also found to be statistically significant in explaining customer loyalty behaviour.

The study practically influences the way banks and other financial institutions gain competitive advantage through managing the experiences of customers in a volatile business environment. At a time when banks are no longer the only providers of financial services, the study offers a road map to reduce portfolio purchasing and switching behaviour through enhanced experience management at all customer touch points.

The study presents an augmented model of customer experience management which is linked to consumer loyalty.

The study aims to provide an exploratory investigation of the magnitude of the customer-centric approach in the specific area of healthcare as a contribution to the scarce and preliminary literature on this topic. In particular, it explores the role of sharing economy-based (SE-based) platforms as an experiential touchpoint to co-create value within different levels. Specifically, the purpose of the study is threefold. First, it aims to address the service experience innovation in healthcare with a customer-centric approach. Second, it seeks to define the role of the SE-based platform as a touchpoint to redefine business processes, and third, it measures the co-created value within the network when redesigning the service experience.

To address the research question, the authors proposed an analysis of service innovation and customer centricity in healthcare networks by using the case study of Saluber, an SE-based platform that offers logistics services for non-emergency medical transportation in the Campania region (south of Italy). By using a qualitative approach, the authors analysed primary and secondary data from multiple sources of evidence.

The results show that a customer-centric approach based on the SE-based platform can improve the customer experience and help to redesign and expand the business processes of healthcare organisations. A multilevel model demonstrates the possible service innovations that use SE principles that can co-create value for the customer (micro level), for the healthcare network (meso level) and for the community (macro-level).

This study provides managerial implications for the players who intend to take advantage of the possibilities offered by service innovations developed by the health and social organisations in the network. The SE-based platform helps redefine business processes to improve clinical and financial outcomes and improves the overall customer experience within this network.

This study allows new and important reflections from ethical, social and managerial points of view and underlines how digital platforms act as a support for healthcare services, not as a substitute.

The purpose of this study is to address two issues relevant to those managing product returns: (1) how customers perceive the returning process and assessing the extent that these perceptions have on satisfaction with the organization, loyalty and word-of-mouth (WOM) and (2) are these outcomes moderated by whether customer returns were planned or unplanned?

The data consisted of 21 semi-structured interviews (pilot study) and a quantitative survey (n = 384; main study) targeted at consumers who had bought fashion items online.

Qualitative insights revealed that perceptions of the returning experience are driven by monetary costs, convenience, stress and guilt. Quantitative findings showed that the returning experience explains return satisfaction for both planned and unplanned returners, and returning satisfaction explains overall satisfaction and WOM. The noteworthy difference concerns loyalty: although customers that planned to return items are more loyal to the organization, it is the unplanned returners whose loyalty can be significantly increased by better managing the returning process.

Returning products online is increasingly common and thus forms an important part of the customer's overall experience with an organization. Returns management can therefore drive key customer outcomes. Understanding the dynamics between the product return experience, return satisfaction and customer outcomes will help practitioners design and implement more informed returns management strategies. Measures are also presented that assess the cognitive and emotional aspects associated with returning products.

Returning products is an increasingly important challenge for online retailers. Understanding what kinds of returning behaviors occur allows companies to design and execute better informed decisions to manage this phenomenon, not only for the sake of firm performance but also for societal and environmental benefits – the triple bottom line.

While scholars have investigated the relationship between return policies (e.g. free vs fee) and profitability, no prior literature has examined the returning experience: how consumers perceive the returning process; motivations for their returns (whether returns were planned or not) and subsequent customer outcomes.

Effective customer journey design (ECJD) is considered a key variable in customer experience management and an essential source of brand meaning and pro-brand behavior. Although previous research has confirmed its importance for driving brand attitudes and loyalty, the role of consumer-brand identification as a social identity-based influence in this relationship has not yet been discussed. Drawing on construal level and social identity theories, this paper aims to investigate whether effective journeys and the resulting overall journey experience are equally powerful in driving brand loyalty among customers with different levels of consumer-brand identification.

The present article develops and tests a research model using data from the European and US service sectors (N = 1,454) to investigate how and when ECJD affects service brand loyalty.

Across two cultural contexts, four service industries and 33 service brands, the results reveal that ECJD is a crucial driver of service brand loyalty for customers with low consumer-brand identification. Moreover, the findings show that different aspects of journey effectiveness positively impact the valence of customers’ experience related to those journeys – a process that is ultimately decisive for their brand loyalty.

This study is unique because it generates theoretical and practical knowledge by combining the literature streams of customer journey design, customer experience and branding. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that consumer-brand identification is a critical boundary condition to be considered in the relationship between ECJD and brand loyalty in services.

Customer experience has become a vital premise in service theory and practice. Despite researchers' and managers' growing interest, the customer experience remains a complex and multidimensional concept that is challenging for service providers to understand. This study aims to graph the experience in its multidimensionality by categorizing and proposing matching practices for service marketing managers to channel and foster customer experiences in customer journeys.

To support the predominantly conceptual nature of the study, an abductive approach underpinned by the authors' vast experience in academia and practice, real-life autohermeneutic phenomenological experience tales and theory on customer experience and its management by providers is deployed to craft a model that addresses and highlights the multidimensionality of experience.

This study introduces the “GraphEx” (Graph Experience) hip-pocket model, which expresses customer experience in a simple yet multidimensional fashion and offers managerial practices to foster the customer's experience. The model contains three dimensions (valence, type of experience and visceral intensity) and five managerial practices (urgent patchwork, restoring, activating and stimulating desire, bolstering and safeguarding appreciation).

This study contributes to the service literature by creating granularity in the multidimensionality of customer experience. This study advances customer experience management in practice by providing service managers with novel possibilities for understanding and managing customer experiences intelligently. This can help service providers streamline and innovate customer experience strategies during customer journeys and foster customer loyalty.

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.

The purpose of this study is to identify the practices used by service providers to manage the customer service experience (CSE) across multiple phases of the customer journey in a business-to-business (B2B) setting.

This study comprises an ethnography that investigates in real time, from a dyadic perspective, and the CSE management practices at two service providers operating in knowledge-intensive service industries over a period of eight months. Analytically, the study concentrates on critical events that occurred in phases of the customer journey that in some way alter CSE, thus making it necessary for service providers to act to keep their customers satisfied.

The study uncovers four types of service provider practices that vary based on the mode of organization (ad hoc or regular) and the mode of engagement (reactive or proactive) and based on whether they restore or bolster CSE, including the recurrence of these practices in the customer journey. These practices are conveniently presented in a circumplex typology of CSE management across five phases in the customer journey.

This paper advances the research in CSE management throughout the customer journey in the B2B context by showing that CSE management is dynamic, recurrent and multifaceted in the sense that it requires different modes of organization and engagement, notably during interaction with customers, in different phases of the customer journey.

The circumplex typology acts as a tool for service providers, helping them to redesign their CSE management practices in ongoing service and dialogical processes to keep their customers more engaged and satisfied.

This paper is the first to infuse a dyadic stance into the ongoing discussion of CSE management practices in B2B, in which studies to date have deployed only provider or customer perspectives. In proposing a microlevel view, the study identifies service providers' CSE management practices in multiple customer journey phases, especially when the situation becomes critical.

Recent literature within public service logic has called for more explicit conceptualisation of customer value in public services. This study aims to fill this gap by examining how the customer value approach can be applied in the management of public health care services.

This study is a qualitative case study of management of public health care services in Finland. The authors interviewed 17 regional health care service developers and analyzed the interview data using thematic analysis.

The study suggests five propositions for applying customer value approach from the marketing literature in public health care service management. The study enables a deeper understanding of customer value creation in this context and improvement of public health care services.

This study contributes to the public management research in general and public service logic research in particular by suggesting what constitutes customer value in public health care services.

The aim of this work is to provide a theoretical model that can help companies to develop a unique approach to achieve both corporate environmental sustainability (CES) and successful customer experience management (CEM).

A two-phase study achieved the research aim. The first phase consisted of the analysis of contemporary theoretical contributions with a focus on CES and CEM. In the second phase, taking a qualitative approach, the key dimensions identified in the initial analysis were investigated to explore the dominant perceptions of practitioners and to hone the theoretical categories.

Five innovative pathways emerged from the study to inform decision-making while maintaining the dual objectives of CES and successful CEM. These pathways are combined to offer a strategic tool for managers and for research advances. This original integrated model also offers six novel theoretical propositions that describe how to shape corporate decisions to achieve environmental sustainability in CEM.

Firms can benefit from an approach that integrates CES and CEM to develop a new mindset for an innovative and valuable decision-making process and to design more captivating experiences for customers. Nevertheless, the efficacy and generalizability of the theoretical framework and propositions require empirical testing.

This paper makes an original contribution to the environmental sustainability and marketing literature by bringing together all elements in these fields of research in a conceptual model. Moreover, this paper proposes theoretical propositions that advance knowledge of the subject and offer ideas for future research and managers.

The quality of the customer journey has become a critical determinant of successful service delivery in contemporary business. Extant journey research focuses on the customer path to purchase, but pays less attention to the touchpoints related to service delivery and consumption that are key for understanding customer experiences in service-intensive contexts. The purpose of this study is to conceptualize service journey quality (SJQ), develop measures for the construct and study its key outcomes.

The study uses a discovery-oriented research approach to conceptualize SJQ by synthesizing theory and field-based insights from customer focus group discussions. Next, using consumer survey data (N = 278) from the financial services context, the authors develop measures for the SJQ. Finally, based on an additional survey dataset (N = 239), the authors test the nomological validity and predictive relevance of the SJQ.

SJQ comprises of three dimensions: (1) journey seamlessness, (2) journey personalization and (3) journey coherence. This study demonstrates that SJQ is a critical driver of service quality and customer loyalty in contemporary business. This study finds that the loyalty link is partially mediated through service quality, indicating that SJQ explains loyalty above and beyond service quality.

Since service quality only partially mediates the link between service journey quality and customer loyalty, future studies should examine alternative mediators, such as customer experience, for a more comprehensive understanding of the performance effects.

The study offers concrete tools for service managers who wish to understand and develop the quality of service journeys.

This study advances the service journey concept, demonstrates that the quality of the service journey is a critical driver of customer performance and provides rigorous journey constructs for future service research.