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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.

The purpose of this research is to conduct a literature review on the evolution, antecedents, and outcomes of luxury consumption (LC). To accomplish our goal, we used a combination of bibliometrics and systematic approaches to review 165 articles published between 1998 and 2019. The investigation revealed that the evolution of LC is mostly driven by consumer motivation and is influenced by cultural and psychological variables. Furthermore, we explored the aforementioned antecedents of LC along four major axes. Antecedents related to (1) individual characteristics, (2) brand components, (3) cultural and social values, and (4) organizational strategies. Furthermore, based on the outcomes of LC, we found two categories (individual traits and social values). The chapter concludes by proposing a broader research agenda for the future.

This study focuses on the relationship between innovation and customer equity drivers and the moderating effect of advertising appeals on this relationship. First, the authors divided innovation into incremental innovation and radical innovation, and explained the influences of each type of innovation on drivers of customer equity based on literature review. Second, the authors tested the conceptual model using structural equation modeling find out the effects of innovation. Third, the authors also tested the effect of advertising appeal using moderating regression. The results indicate that both incremental innovation and radical innovation can positively influence value equity, relationship equity, and brand equity. Functional advertising appeal is more useful than emotional advertising appeal for radical innovation. On the contrary, emotional advertising appeal is more useful than functional advertising appeal for incremental innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to re-evaluate the sustainable attitude-behavior gap by reconsidering the cognitive-rational aspects of consumer purchase behavior. We aim to show how companies can benefit from focusing on hedonic aspects of consumption in their marketing of sustainable products. We claim that consumer culture research needs to examine the link between hedonic, aesthetic, and cognitive-rational aspects of sustainable consumption.

We use the electric vehicle marketing strategy in the United States as an example of an approach to bridge the attitude-behavior gap. More specifically, we focus on the car manufacturer Tesla as an example of marketing a sustainable product.

We find that Tesla’s marketing strategy focuses on aesthetics and hedonics-ludic performance. Similarly to other luxury cars, Tesla markets itself with a full compliment of consumer benefits. Compared to economical electric vehicles, sustainability is not the primary focus of Tesla’s marketing communication strategy.

Sustainable consumption theory benefits from examining the interlinking of hedonic, aesthetic and cognitive-rational aspects product purchasing and use. Future research in the development of sustainable consumption theory in additional complex product categories is needed.

Greater regard for consumer experience in sustainable consumption offers the potential for additional strategies to bridge the attitude-behavior gap and marketing of sustainable goods.

We move beyond the attitude-behavior gap by not only focusing on expressed attitudes of sustainability, but also focusing on the hedonic aspects at play in sustainable consumption.

This chapter sheds light on the ‘country of origin’ concept. The author contends that this concept is composed of micro- and macro-components. He argues that the tourists’ hedonic and monetary gratifications are derived from the travel experiences. Therefore, the country-of-origin image (COI) can have an impact on the destination’s brand extension. In this light, this contribution examines the relationship among COI, overall brand equity and brand extension. The author implies that the hedonic and monetary values can have a moderating effect on the impact of COI and on destination brand extension.

This research aims to explore the impact of augmented reality (AR), the digital technology that superimposes virtual elements in a real environment, on consumers in the context of experiential marketing. Specifically, this study proposes a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response model, which considers AR media characteristics as external stimuli, consumers’ value perceptions as the organisms, and purchase intentions as the responses. The research model was tested with 248 consumers using structural equation modelling. The results show that informativeness, ease of use, and telepresence have positive effects on consumers’ utilitarian value perception and that telepresence and interactivity have positive effects on hedonic value perception. Overall, this study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on AR and provides actionable insights for managers implementing digital transformation strategies and AR applications in marketing practices.

The objective of this research is to explore the relationship between brand experience and customer equity (value equity, brand equity, and relationship equity). We examine the impacts of different contact points’ experiences (media contact, physical environment contact, people contact, and product usage contact) and different dimensions of brand experience on customer equity. Further we investigate the possible moderating effects of different brand positioning and strategies – hedonic and utilitarian, on this relationship. The data which are collected via online survey includes 410 observations with brand experience and 83 without brand experience, 493 valid samples in total. We found that positive and strong brand experience is the key factor for building strong customer equity. Although the impacts of all four contact points’ brand experiences are significant, product usage contact has the most powerful influence on customer equity and its individual drivers. The results also indicate that the different brand positioning strategies do have moderating effects. For utilitarian brand, only brand experience at product usage contact point has significant impact on customer equity and its three drivers. For hedonic brand, all four contact points’ experiences have significant relationships with customer equity. Finally, the four experience dimensions (sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral) have different impacts on customer equity and its three drivers at different experience contact points.

Independent travelers are those vacationers who have booked only a minimum of their transportation and accommodation arrangements prior to departure on the vacation. Independent travel is an important and growing sector of worldwide tourism. Choice of vacation itinerary for the independent vacation represents a complex series of decisions regarding purchase of multiple leisure and tourism services. This chapter builds and tests a model of independent traveler decision-making for choice of vacation itinerary. The research undertaken employs a two-phase, inductive–deductive case study design. In the deductive phase, the researcher interviewed 20 travel parties vacationing in New Zealand for the first time. The researcher interviewed respondents at both the beginning and the end of their New Zealand vacations. The study compares pre-vacation research and plans, and actual vacation behaviors, on a case-by-case basis. The study examines case study narratives and quantitative measures of crucial variables. The study tests two competing models of independent traveler decision-making, using a pattern-matching procedure. This embedded research design results in high multi-source, multi-method validity for the supported model. The model of the Independent Vacation as Evolving Itinerary suggests that much of the vacation itinerary experienced in independent travel is indeed unplanned, and that a desire to experience the unplanned is a key hedonic motive for independent travel. Rather than following a fixed itinerary, the itinerary of an independent vacation evolves as the vacation proceeds. The independent traveler takes advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.