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Marketing flounders at many companies today, as people have become relatively immune to messages broadcast at them. The way to reach customers is to create an experience they can participate in and enjoy, the new offering frontier. To be clear, this article is not about “experiential marketing” – that is, giving marketing promotions more sensory appeal by adding imagery, tactile materials, motion, scents, sounds, or other sensations. Rather, as a key part of their marketing programs companies should create experience places – absorbing, entertaining real or virtual locations – where customers can try out offerings as they immerse themselves in the experience. Companies should not stop at creating just one experience place; marketers should investigate the location hierarchy model to learn how to design a series of related experiences that flow one from another, creating demand up and down at every level. These various real and virtual experiences generate new forms of revenue and drive sales of whatever the company currently offers. When experience places are done well, potential customers can’t help but pay attention – and the leading companies find that customers are willing to pay for the experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the prospect of using neurophenomenology to understand, design and test phygital consumer experiences. It aims to clarify interpretivist approaches to consumer neuroscience, wherein theoretical models of individual phenomenology can be combined with modern neuroimaging techniques to detect and interpret the first-person accounts of phygital experiences.

The argument is conceptual in nature, building its position through synthesizing insights from phenomenology, phygital marketing, theoretical neuroscience and other related fields.

Ultimately, the paper presents the argument that interpretivist neuroscience in general, and neurophenomenology specifically, provides a valuable new perspective on phygital marketing experiences. In particular, we argue that the approach to studying first-personal experiences within the phygital domain can be significantly refined by adopting this perspective.

One of the primary goals of this paper is to stimulate a novel approach to interpretivist phygital research, and in doing so, provide a foundation by which the impact of phygital interventions can be empirically tested through neuroscience, and through which future research into this topic can be developed. As such, the success of such an approach is yet untested.

Phygital marketing is distinguished by its focus on the quality of subjective first-personal consumer experiences, but few papers to date have explored how neuroscience can be used as a tool for exploring these inner landscapes. This paper addresses this lacuna by providing a novel perspective on “interpretivist neuroscience” and proposes ways that current neuroscientific models can be used as a practical methodology for addressing these questions.

Purpose – This chapter provides a critical review of the emerging field of consumer experience and experiential marketing.Design/methodology/approach – We review definitions, perspectives, and key research areas on the topics of consumer experience, product and service experiences, off-line and online experiences, as well as consumption and brand experiences. We report empirical findings, seminal studies, and insight into the experience process (e.g., how consumers process experiential attributes, how they process experiences over time, and whether positive and negative experiences can co-occur). We present research on experiential dimensions, experiential themes, and the nature of extraordinary experiences.Value/originality – The chapter provides value by discussing the key measurement and marketing management issues of experiential marketing and discusses the original issue whether it is rational for consumers to include experiences in their decision making.

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.

Many destinations are keen to be a part of the increasing and lucrative luxury tourism market. Before targeting luxury tourists in the marketing efforts, is it essential to understand the meaning of ‘luxury’ and what is considered exclusive? As an emerging luxury destination, Norway certainly offers many attributes that can satisfy the needs of luxury tourists. Marketing luxury provides, nevertheless, challenges for Norway as its main attraction is nature, which is fundamentally free and accessible to anyone. Thus, it is necessary to tailor-make unique nature experiences with luxurious products, resulting in exclusivity and once-in-a-lifetime experiences beyond the masses. Luxury tourists have also been advocated as more sustainable than mass tourists as addition to the issue of carrying capacity; many are also concerned with responsible tourism. Specialist travel agents play an important role in the marketing process as they have first-hand knowledge of luxury tourists as well as acting as guardians of information communicated in marketing. In addition to mainland Norway, the Svalbard islands in the Arctic region may be considered as truly unique and exclusive destinations. While sustainable development is a major concern in Norwegian tourism in general, it is even more vital in the Arctic regions. Therefore, marketing needs to provide a balanced picture of the attractions and attributes in order to become a luxury destination that is sustainable in the long run.

Based on a “Fill-the-Bottle” (FTB) challenge, this research explores how experiential design can help cause-related marketing. This study aims to show that experiences designed as anti-structural and anti-functional can raise awareness through action.

The authors study a corpus of 52 introspective journals and 60 pictures about the challenge, which entails filling empty bottles with cigarette butts from the streets as quickly as possible, then sharing pictures of the bottles on social media.

The anti-structural design of the experience activates the participants’ experiential system, and the social interactions between the participants and pedestrians construct meaning for the experience. The results further indicate that as follows: individuals’ frames of reference can explain whether they perceive the experience as liberatory or stochastic; anti-structural design can serve cause-related marketing by focusing on three stages: doing, showing and sharing; and experiential marketing can serve societal and social causes.

This research involved a single field. Further research with more heterogeneous participants would be insightful. The power of experiential marketing to serve meaningful and collective causes should be encouraged. Further research should be conducted to understand and conceptualize these collective attempts to fight the dark sides of consumption.

In line with Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) advice to stage memorable experiences by working cautiously on cues, the FTB challenge analysis indicates that by focusing on material evidence and staging a specific sequence of doing something about it, showing everyone what is being done and expanding visibility by sharing artifacts of the action on social media, one can actually make people think about and remember the action.

The “do-show-share” design that the FTB challenge uses can be relevant for many cause-related marketing efforts because it operates on both individual and collective levels.

This research offers a new perspective on experiential marketing by studying how experiences designed to be anti-structural can renew social, cause-related marketing tools.

This paper aims to analyse the movement in the focus on customers within service management and marketing theories and service research that has taken place during the past three decades. The paper addresses the question: How did we, in service research, change from emphasizing quality to emphasizing experience?

The paper analyses developments in service and experience theories. Experience has come onto the theoretical agenda, both in its own right and as a concept within service marketing and management theory.

Experience has increasingly been a concept that has replaced quality in service marketing theories. However, an independent experience economy paradigm has also emerged. Recently, the societal emphasis on productivity may lead back to functional quality re-emerges in theories; however, it will most likely be in a new version.

This analysis is a profound theory-critical analysis of the actually very widely used concept experience in service theories. The analysis present an understanding of what experience means in these theories and how it relates to the quality concept. This is an original contribution to a deeper understanding of service marketing and service quality theories.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of perceived social media marketing activities on consumer-based brand equity, mainly predicated on the S-O-R model. Furthermore, brand experience is tested as a mediator of the relationship between perceived social media marketing activities and consumer-based brand equity, whereas co-creation behaviour is also examined as a moderator on the relationship between perceived social media marketing activities and brand experience.

A structured survey questionnaire was developed and distributed to social media users from a large private university in Malaysia. A total of 253 valid responses were obtained. Hypotheses were tested employing partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The results indicated that perceived social media marketing activities have a significant positive influence on consumer-based brand equity. In addition, brand experience mediates the relationship between perceived social media marketing activities and consumer-based brand equity. Surprisingly, co-creation behaviour was found to have no moderating effect on the relationship between perceived social media marketing activities and brand experience. Furthermore, using the PROCESS macro, we found that the indirect effect of perceived social media marketing activities on consumer-based brand equity through brand experience is not moderated by co-creation behaviour.

This research further extended the current knowledge by demonstrating that the influence of perceived social media marketing activities on consumer-based brand equity is mediated by brand experience. Also, this research utilised the strength of PLS–SEM in dealing with higher-order constructs, allowing us to develop and test a parsimonious model that is useful for practitioners.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of virtual reality experiences (VREs) and emotions on holiday destination visit intentions by applying the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework. It also examined the role of amateur photography as a moderator in the relationship between VREs, emotions and visit intentions.

Primary data were collected through a structured survey questionnaire administered in India, and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to examine relationships among variables. The formal survey was preceded by a pilot study. The partial least squares-SEM product indicator technique was applied to measure the moderation effect of amateur photography.

When people have high levels of positive emotions in the pre-travel stage with VRE participation, their intentions to visit destinations are stronger. Amateur photography moderated the relationships between user interactivity, memorable experiences, mental imagery and visit intentions. No significant moderating effect was found between emotional experiences and visit intentions.

The results indicate that creators of virtual reality (VR) communications should concentrate on producing interactive and visually striking VR content, as the research found that VR experiences with tourism-related activities have a significant impact on potential visitor emotions. Therefore, VR producers should incorporate authentic and distinctive elements into contents, giving viewers realistic and trustworthy VR tourism experiences. Destination marketers should evoke emotions in people to increase motivations to visit the VR-presented places. Destination marketers should create VR content with hedonic elements, fostering a connection and desire to visit the destination presented in the VR. For example, destination marketers can enhance the sensory aspects of VR content with audio, video, haptics and artificial intelligence, encouraging people to be emotionally captivated and fully immersed. The findings indicate that amateur photography has a significant moderating effect on prospective tourists’ intentions to visit a place presented in VR. Thus, destination marketers are advised to provide photogenic and relevant content to users. By using amateur photography, destinations can market their attractions to potential visitors in a more interactive and relatable manner. Showcasing images taken by amateur photographers presents a genuine perspective of the offerings, thereby increasing visit intentions among prospective visitors. Additionally, amateur photography helps promote the destination in a positive light, emphasizing the attractions and other offerings, and this encourages potential visitors to consider the destination as a travel option, thereby increasing visit intentions. Encouraging amateur photographers to take and share images also increases their engagement with the destination, creating a sense of community and connection and ultimately driving visit intentions. Destination marketers should embrace VR tourism content as a means of promoting their destinations to potential customers by considering the three crucial elements of memorable experiences, emotional experiences and mental imagery. In essence, destination management organizations and other decision makers should develop complete VR communication plans that incorporate interactive and visually striking activities. This can be done by creating VR experiences for prospective tourists, which will enable them to pick their preferred destinations at the pre-travel stage. Through this approach, an effective destination marketing strategy can be established.

This research has value in making several potential contributions to the tourism applications of VR. It is the first study to use and test the S-O-R framework to analyse tourist behaviour from the perspective of emotions generated by VR applications. The analysis focuses on India’s tourism market, which has not been explored much in the context of VR and from the perspective of a developing country. The research emphasizes the use of VR as a tool to understand tourist behaviour rather than just focusing on visit intentions. The findings provide valuable insights into the importance of VR in tourism. The knowledge generated will contribute to the understanding of the impact of VR experiences on emotions and visit intentions and the moderating effect of amateur photography. It has practical implications for destination marketers in developing effective marketing strategies that enhance tourists’ emotions and motivate visit intentions.

本研究运用刺激-机体-反应(S-O-R)框架, 探讨虚拟现实体验（VREs）和情绪对度假目的地旅游意向的影响。还研究了业余摄影在VREs、情感和访问意图之间的关系中的调节作用。

通过在印度进行的结构化调查问卷收集原始数据, 并使用结构方程模型(SEM)来检查变量之间的关系。在正式调查之前进行了一项试点研究。采用PLS-SEM结果指标方法测量业余摄影的调节效果。

当人们在旅行前的VRE参与阶段拥有高水平的积极情绪时, 他们访问目的地的意愿会更强。业余摄影调节了用户交互性、纪念体验、心理意象和访问意图之间的关系。情绪体验与访问意向之间无显著调节作用。

本研究对虚拟现实的旅游应用有几个可能的贡献。这是第一个使用并测试刺激-生物-反应(S-O-R)框架的研究, 从VR应用产生的情感角度分析游客行为。分析集中于印度的旅游市场, 而在VR的背景下和从一个发展中国家的角度来看, 印度的旅游市场还没有得到太多的探索。该研究强调将VR作为一种了解游客行为的工具, 而不仅仅是关注游客的意图。这些发现为VR在旅游业中的重要性提供了有价值的见解。所产生的知识将有助于理解VR体验对情绪和访问意图的影响以及业余摄影的调节作用。这对目的地营销人员制定有效的营销策略, 增强游客的情绪和激发旅游意图具有实际启示。

Esta investigación analizó los efectos de las experiencias de realidad virtual (VREs) y las emociones en las intenciones de visita a destinos vacacionales aplicando el modelo estímulo-organismo-respuesta (S-O-R). También examinó el papel de la fotografía amateur como moderador en la relación entre las VREs, las emociones y las intenciones de visita.

Los datos primarios se recogieron mediante una encuesta con cuestionario estructurado administrado en la India, y se utilizó la modelización de ecuaciones estructurales (SEM) para examinar las relaciones entre las variables. La encuesta principal fue precedida de un estudio piloto. Se aplicó la técnica PLS-SEM para medir el efecto moderador de la fotografía amateur.

Cuando las personas poseen un alto nivel de emociones positivas en la etapa previa al viaje con participación en VRE, sus intenciones de visitar destinos son más fuertes. La fotografía amateur moderó las relaciones entre la interactividad del usuario, las experiencias memorables, las imágenes mentales y las intenciones de visita. No se encontró ningún efecto moderador significativo entre las experiencias emocionales y las intenciones de visita.

Esta investigación tiene el valor de hacer varias contribuciones potenciales a las aplicaciones turísticas de la realidad virtual. Es el primer estudio que utiliza y pone a prueba el marco estímulo-organismo-respuesta (S-O-R) para analizar el comportamiento de los turistas desde la perspectiva de las emociones generadas por las aplicaciones de RV. El análisis se centra en el mercado turístico de la India, poco explorado en el contexto de la RV y desde la perspectiva de un país en desarrollo. La investigación hace hincapié en el uso de la RV como herramienta para comprender el comportamiento de los turistas, en lugar de centrarse únicamente en las intenciones de visita. Las conclusiones aportan valiosas ideas sobre la importancia de la RV en el turismo. Los conocimientos generados contribuirán a comprender el impacto de las experiencias de RV en las emociones y las intenciones de visita, así como el efecto moderador de la fotografía amateur. Se presentan implicaciones prácticas para los responsables de marketing de los destinos turísticos a la hora de desarrollar estrategias de marketing eficaces que potencien las emociones de los turistas y motiven las intenciones de visita.

One of the channels a brand can use to create experiences is events. The brand promoting the event and its sponsors can obtain various benefits in the form of brand image, personality and notoriety. The main aim of this research is to evaluate the effects that experiencing an event has on experience with the promoting brand.

The study analysed the musical event MTV Winter Festival 2010, considering the opinion of 127 attendees to discover the impact of experiencing the MTV entertainment television channel event in three areas: improved brand experience, improved brand personality and increased brand reputation. EQS was used to test the proposed model.

Regarding event experience antecedents, “immersion” has been identified as the most important one and brand experience as an important effect. Also, brand experience has been found to have a positive impact on exciting brand personality and exciting brand personality in turn on brand reputation.

Although two of the hypotheses on the antecedents of emotional event experience (“surprise” and “participation”) were not confirmed, it can be said that progress has been made on the benefits of marketing experiences since this is the first empirical investigation to deal with the connection of event‐brand experiences in the area of the arts.