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Customer journeys have become an increasingly important topic in service management and design. The purpose of this paper is to review customer journey terminology and approaches within the research literature prior to 2013, mainly from the fields of design, management, and marketing.

The study was conducted as a systematic literature review. Searches in Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, ACM Digital Library, and ScienceDirect identified 45 papers for the analysis. The papers were analyzed with respect to customer journey terminology and approaches, the relation to customer experience, the referenced background, and the use of visualizations.

Across the reviewed literature, customer journeys are described not only as a means to take the viewpoint of the customer, but also to reach insight into their experiences. A rich and at times incoherent customer journey terminology is analyzed and discussed, as are two emerging customer journey approaches: customer journey mapping (analysis of a service process “as is”) and customer journey proposition (generative activities leading toward a possible service “to be”).

The review is limited to analyzing and making claims on research papers that explicitly apply the term customer journey. In most of the reviewed papers, customer journeys are not the main object of interest but are discussed as one of several topics.

A nuanced discussion of customer journey terminology and approaches is provided, supporting the practical application of a customer journey perspective.

The review contributes a needed common basis for future customer journey research and practice.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) proposes to take into account the “voice of the customer,” through a list of customer needs, which are (qualitatively) mapped to technical requirements in House One. But customers do not perceive products in this space, nor do they not make purchase decisions in this space. Marketing specialists use statistical models to map between a simpler space of customer perceptions and the long and detailed list of needs. For automobiles, for example, the main axes in perceptual space might be categories such as luxury, performance, sport, and utility. A product’s position on these few axes determines the detailed customer requirements consistent with the automobiles’ position such as interior volume, gauges and accessories, seating type, fuel economy, door height, horsepower, interior noise level, seating capacity, paint colors, trim, and so forth. Statistical models such as factor analysis and principal components analysis are used to describe the mapping between these spaces, which we call House Zero.

This paper focus on House One. Two important steps of the product development process using House One are: (1) setting technical targets; (2) identifying the inherent tradeoffs in a design including a position of merit. Utility functions are used to determine feature preferences for a product. Conjoint analysis is used to capture the product preference and potential market share. Linear interpolation and the slope point formula are used to determine other points of customer needs. This research draws from the formal mapping concepts developed by Nam Suh and the qualitative maps of quality function deployment, to present unified information and mapping paradigm for concurrent product/process design. This approach is the virtual integrated design method that is tested upon data from a business design problem.

This paper aims to extend the customer complaint behaviour (CCB) knowledge by introducing a visual technique called customer complaint journey mapping as a means of capturing and understanding multi-faceted service failures involving multiple actors.

Research participants were trained to record contemporaneous accounts of future dissatisfactory dining experiences. Minimising issues of memory recall whilst faithfully capturing complainants' raw emotions. These recordings formed the basis for follow up interviews, based on the critical incident technique.

The central finding of this paper was how other actors outside of the traditional service dyad played a dynamic role in co-creating a complainants' emotions and subsequent behaviours.

The resulting customer complaint maps give deep insights into the complex social dynamics involved in CCB, providing a powerful tool for both researchers and staff responsible for recovery strategies.

The mapping framework provides an innovative means of capturing the actual complaint experiences of customers and the role of other actors, utilising a multi-method approach designed to address various limitations of existing CCB research.

Understanding the customer has been the focus of attention of businesses and academia for many decades. Starting in 1960s, complex buyer behavior models developed by Nicosia, by Howard and Sheth (1969), were followed by Engel, Blackwell and Miniard in 1978 (Engel, Blackwell, & Miniard, 1990) to understand the buying process, shaping the thoughts today about consumers’ experiences in an omnichannel world. Interest in customer perceptions and expectations (Parasuraman, Berry, & Zeithaml, 1991), SERVQUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Leonard, 1985) and SERVPERV (Cronin & Taylor, 1994) moved the academia to discuss the relationship marketing (Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Parvatiyar & Sheth, 1999; Peterson, 1995; Sheth & Parvatiyar, 1995). Wilson’s model (1995) of buyer–seller relationships extended the former models with additional concepts like social bonds, comparison level of alternatives, power roles, technology, structural bonds and cooperation as influencers on relationship development stages. His emphasis reflects a high relevancy in the omnichannel world of customers’ interactions today. Winer (2001), a pioneer to discuss the customer relationship management focused on a database to know about customers’ purchase history and interests. The millennium look at customer lifetime value is again relationship focused. For Fader, Hardie, and Lee (2005) rather the long-term focus of the consumer value and actions are important to understand the loyalty and nonlinear nature of relations. While Reinartz and Kumar (2003) focused on profitable customer lifetime and customer heterogeneity, Verhoef (2003) analyzed the impact of customers’ relationship perceptions and relationship marketing instruments on both customer retention and customer share development. The customer-centric thinking was first discussed by Grönroos (2006) within a new definition of marketing. The service dominant logic (Vargo & Lusch, 2008) resulted in the next highlight, the co-creation of value with customer involvement and customer advisory (Güngör, 2012; Güngör & Bilgin, 2011; Messner, 2007) empowering the customers and giving them the control over the supplier networks. Different factors will be influential at different stages of the buying process of customer clusters. The Web- and non-Web-based customer-centric measures can be multifold. Andersson, Movin, Mähring, Teigland, and Wennberg (2018) and Bank (2018) emphasize the importance of technology readiness focus throughout the customer–supplier journey. The question to be answered is, to which extent the empowered customers and the suppliers of this age are ready to adopt, embrace and finally use new technologies in the omnichannel world of holistic interactions that form new visions, expectations, values and desires in a tremendous speed. Ideas and experiences are shared and exchanged in online communities without the need of the involvement of the suppliers. This “holistic view” challenges firms further through the seamlessness it requires to create unity. Customer-centric research needs a new push for the development of instruments and measures to cope with the consumer decision process challenges. Process thinking is needed to capture the purchasing habits in an omnichannel world and to build a new thought for customer journey experience with the aim to understand technology-linked value propositions of customer clusters to optimize channel interactions. Customer journeys have to focus and describe the online/offline experiences at the hybrid shopping mile, trace the behavioral influential factors of the customers’ and sellers’ world in a technological environment. This chapter will discuss “Technology based Orbit Interactions” for “The Hybrid Shopping Mile and its Customer Journey Mapping” with a “Customer Intelligence Framework.” The outcome of the hybrid customer journey mapping gives orientation for customer-management decisions in developing new approaches.

A customer's journey of searching for a product or service, evaluating it, purchasing it, using it, recommending it, rebuying it or rejecting it is unique in itself. Organisations always have dreamt of getting inside the customers' minds and trying to understand what's happening inside at each of these steps. This chapter explains the customer journey concept and the analysis of the various components of the customer journey. We highlight that the firms need to understand the customer journeys and the multiple touchpoints they interact with to create a worthwhile customer experience. The chapter lists out the various touchpoints, including social/external touchpoints, customer-owned touchpoints, partner-owned touchpoints and brand-owned touchpoints. We discuss three frameworks that can be used by a firm to understand design a customer journey. These frameworks include AIDA (awareness, interest, desire and action), MAI (measure, analyse and improve) and journey maps. The chapter recommends the various steps which a firm can use to create a journey map. In the end, we create a linkage between the customer journey and business transformation. The chapter builds a case for the application of customer journey management by pointing out that it is a complex phenomenon, and the firms should use a structured approach to design and manage the customer journey.

The purpose of this paper is to test a journey mapping approach as a first step to systematically prepare organizations for the many critical moments in B2B relationships.

By applying a case study of a shopping mall operator, experts on both sides of the B2B relationship (operator (n = 12) and retailer (n = 14)) were interviewed to develop and test the effectiveness of customer journey mapping. The information from these interviews was used to formulate several practical recommendations.

Using the journey mapping to differentiate, change from a touchpoint to a journey orientation, and shift towards cross-functional methods, all help develop a customer journey perspective and frame a culture that supports organizational development.

The discussion of the various benefits of journey mapping can improve organizational learning and provides practitioners with insights into effectively differentiating through a customer-centric orientation.

Managing service brands entails managing a portfolio of brand relationships with customers and non-customers. The paper develops a framework for diagnosing the strength of a service brand colored by a customer-dominant business logic perspective. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Combining insights from the literature on branding, service, and relationship management, the paper develops a customer-dominant conceptual and methodological approach. Brand strength captures customers' attachment to a brand in terms of their thoughts, feelings, and actions toward the brand. Since brand strength is the configuration of customers' and non-customers' brand relationships, the paper divides the brand relationship into two components – brand connection and purchase status – to compose a brand strength map.

Grounded in customers' accumulated positive and negative experiences, the framework creates a diagnostic picture of the strength of the brand, and an illustrative empirical study demonstrates the mapping procedure's applicability to service brands.

The approach is an alternative to a traditional measurement scale development approach. Future studies should explore the framework's adaptability to different contexts, stakeholders, and industries.

The distinctive model comprehensively captures the aggregate picture of customers' brand relationships, and the managerially parsimonious framework can be adapted to different service settings.

The framework represents a novel diagnostic tool for service companies to explore their brand's strength. The approach is unique because it adopts a customer-dominant perspective. Furthermore, it includes behavior with a relational perspective and negative responses, which reduce overall brand strength.

Small business capabilities and customer interactions are particularly susceptible to market disruptions. Small businesses must pivot quickly to build or grow their capabilities and manage diverse strategies to deal with crises. This ability to quickly adapt and formulate strategies is necessary to help small businesses maintain sales and continue to engage with their clients, especially in light of disruption and crises. This work uses design thinking strategies to provide insight into how businesses can navigate such disruptions.

This research investigates how design thinking can help small businesses address crises. The focus is on leveraging design thinking strategies such as empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing (EDIPT), divergence/convergence and customer journey mapping design thinking tools.

The authors provide propositions and strategies to help firms adapt their strategies to the demands of clients during crises.

This piece provides an accessible introduction to three design thinking strategies (general EDIPT model, convergence/divergence and consumer journey mapping). The authors present this in the context of disruption, especially the recent pandemic, specifically focusing on small businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the usability of different design methods in understanding the customer experience from a contextual and systemic standpoint.

Three design methods (i.e. personas, observations and collaborative service mapping) were applied to analyze customer experiences in two service settings. These methods’ usability was compared across the two settings.

Personas, as informed by phenomenological interviews, provide insights into the customer’s broader lifeworld context. These insights assist in connecting with and understanding the customer experience from a dyadic customer-firm perspective. The involvement of the customer in service mapping activities supports the validation of findings and gives access to experience dimensions beyond the immediate service setting.

The analysis is limited to three design methods and is based on small samples. Future research should systematically review design methods to provide a basis for a more comprehensive evaluation.

To successfully capture the contextual and systemic nature of the customer experience, managers should apply interpretive approaches and actively involve selected customers as “experts of their experiences”. The study provides guidelines on how design methods can be combined and applied to a more holistic customer experience analysis.

The paper shows that design methods, when applied in a combined form, can support an analysis that captures both in-depth insights into the customer’s lifeworld and the complexity of value constellations.