Despite interests from many researchers, the conceptualization and measurement of customer‐to‐customer encounter quality (CCEQ) have mostly remained untapped. The present study aims to develop a ...conceptual framework to manage the impact of other customers on the focal customers’ service experience based on the perceived service quality framework. In Study 1, the authors employed critical incident technique to establish a multilayered factor structure of CCEQ consisted of three primary categories: customer‐to‐customer hedonic quality, customer‐to‐customer utilitarian quality, and customer‐to‐customer normative quality. In Study 2, the authors examined reliability and validity of the CCEQ model by using comprehensive confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling. The results support the conceptualization of CCEQ proposed in Study 1. As an initial work as to the conceptualization and measurement of CCEQ model, this study provides theoretical and managerial insights into other customers’ influence on focal customers’ overall evaluation of service experiences.
Creating Enduring Customer Value Kumar, V.; Reinartz, Werner
Journal of marketing,
11/2016, Volume:
80, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
One of the most important tasks in marketing is to create and communicate value to customers to drive their satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability. In this study, the authors assume that customer ...value is a dual concept. First, in order to be successful, firms (and the marketing function) have to create perceived value for customers. Toward that end, marketers have to measure customer perceived value and have to provide customer perceptions of value through marketing-mix elements. Second, customers in return give value through multiple forms of engagement (customer lifetime value, in the widest sense) for the organization. Therefore, marketers need to measure and manage this value of the customer(s) to the firm and have to incorporate this aspect into real-time marketing decisions. The authors integrate and synthesize existing findings, show the best practices of implementation, and highlight future research avenues.
Understanding customer experience and the customer journey over time is critical for firms. Customers now interact with firms through myriad touch points in multiple channels and media, and customer ...experiences are more social in nature. These changes require firms to integrate multiple business functions, and even external partners, in creating and delivering positive customer experiences. In this article, the authors aim to develop a stronger understanding of customer experience and the customer journey in this era of increasingly complex customer behavior. To achieve this goal, they examine existing definitions and conceptualizations of customer experience as a construct and provide a historical perspective of the roots of customer experience within marketing. Next, they attempt to bring together what is currently known about customer experience, customer journeys, and customer experience management. Finally, they identify critical areas for future research on this important topic.
Customers can interact with and create value for firms in a variety of ways. This article proposes that assessing the value of customers based solely upon their transactions with a firm may not be ...sufficient, and valuing this engagement correctly is crucial in avoiding undervaluation and overvaluation of customers. We propose four components of a customer’s engagement value (CEV) with a firm. The first component is customer lifetime value (the customer’s purchase behavior), the second is customer referral value (as it relates to incentivized referral of new customers), the third is customer influencer value (which includes the customer’s behavior to influence other customers, that is increasing acquisition, retention, and share of wallet through word of mouth of existing customers as well as prospects), and the fourth is customer knowledge value (the value added to the firm by feedback from the customer). CEV provides a comprehensive framework that can ultimately lead to more efficient marketing strategies that enable higher long-term contribution from the customer. Metrics to measure CEV, future research propositions regarding relationships between the four components of CEV are proposed and marketing strategies that can leverage these relationships suggested.
A powerful call to action, Customer Centricity
upends some of our most fundamental beliefs about customer service,
customer relationship management, and customer lifetime
value . Despite what the old ...adage says, the
customer is not always right. Even companies that can seemingly do
no wrong-like the coffeehouse giant Starbucks-have only recently
started to figure this out . Starbucks is one of many companies
that has successfully executed a pivot that puts the company in a
customer-centric mindset, an approach that Wharton professor Peter
Fader describes in Customer Centricity .
Fader advocates that in the world of customer centricity, there are
good customers … and then there is pretty much everybody else. In a
new preface and afterword to Customer Centricity, Fader reflects on
how the landscape has changed over nearly a decade since he first
proposed that businesses radically rethink how they relate to
customers. Using examples from Starbucks ,
Nordstrom , and more, Fader provides insights to
help you understand: Why customer centricity is the new model for
success in today's data-driven environment. How the ideas of brand
equity and customer asset value help us understand what kinds of
companies naturally lend themselves to the customer-centric model
and which ones don't; Why the traditional models for determining
the value of individual customers are flawed; How executives can
use customer lifetime value (CLV) and other
customer-centric data to make smarter decisions about their
companies; How the well-intended idea of customer
relationship management (CRM) lost its way-and how your
company can properly put CRM to use; How customer centricity will
help you realign your performance metrics, product development,
customer relationship management and organization to make sure you
focus directly on the needs of your most valuable customers and
increase profits for the long term. ALSO AVAILABLE: Once
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In this study, we highlight the need and develop a framework for customer engagement (CE) by reviewing the marketing literature and analyzing popular press articles. By understanding the evolution of ...customer management, we develop the theory of engagement, arguing that when a relationship is satisfying and has emotional connectedness, the partners become engaged in their concern for each other. As a result, the components of customer engagement include both the direct and the indirect contributions of CE. Based on the theoretical support, our proposed framework elaborates on the components of CE as well as the antecedents (satisfaction and emotion) and consequences (tangible and intangible outcomes) of CE. We also discuss how convenience, nature of the firm (B2B vs. B2C), type of industry (service vs. product), value of the brand (high vs. low), and level of involvement (high vs. low) moderate the link between satisfaction and direct contribution, and between emotions and indirect contribution of CE, respectively. Further, we show how customer engagement can be gained and how firm performance can be maximized by discussing relevant strategies.
Managerial responses to online customer reviews not only affect customers who receive the responses but may also influence subsequent customers who observe the responses. This externality arises ...because of the public nature of online interactions. However, prior studies were mainly in offline settings where such externality rarely exists. In this study, we assess the magnitude of such externality. Using a difference-in-difference-in-differences framework and matched hotels across two large travel agencies, we find that managerial responses indeed have a significant and positive impact on the
volume
of subsequent customer reviews. The impact on the review
valence
is not evident, which can be attributed to the unique design of identity disclosure in our research context. Furthermore, our results suggest nuances that were not known in the prior literature. For example, responding to positive and negative reviews may have different effects on future reviews, and managers should provide detailed responses to negative reviews but brief ones to positive reviews. Our results offer managerial implications to service providers on how to improve customer engagement in the interconnected online environment.
The online appendix is available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2018.0781
.
The nature of marketing science is changing in a systematic, predictable, and irrevocable way. As information technology enables ubiquitous customer communication and big customer data, the ...fundamental nature of the firm's connection to the customer changes: better, more personalized service can be offered, from which service relationships are deepened, and consequently, more profitable customers grow the influence of service within the goods sector and expand the service sector in the economy. Marketing is becoming more personalized, and marketing science techniques that exploit customer heterogeneity are becoming more important. Information technology improvements also guarantee the increasing importance and usage of computationally intensive data processing and "big data." Most importantly, these trends have already lasted for more than a century, and they will become even more pronounced in the coming years as a result of the monotonic nature of technology improvement. These changes imply a transformation of marketing science in both the topics to be emphasized and the methods to be employed. Increasingly, and inevitably, all of marketing will come to resemble to a greater degree the formerly specialized area of service marketing, only with an increased emphasis on marketing analytics.
•We identify five robust customer journey segments and their covariates.•Each segment represents a unique combination of different touchpoints.•We confirm these segments over time even though mobile ...usage increased.•Our findings reveal different sources of customer loyalty for different segments.
The proliferation of new touchpoints empowers today’s customers to design their own journey from search to purchase. To address this new complexity, we segment customers by their use of specific touchpoints in the customer journey, investigate the association of several covariates with segment membership, consider the rise of mobile devices as potential “game changers” of existing segments, and explore how the relationships among product satisfaction, journey satisfaction, customer inspiration, and customer loyalty differ across segments. Based on anticipated utility theory and using latent class analyses on large-scale data from two samples of 2,443 and 2,649 journeys, we identify five time-consistent segments―store-focused shoppers, pragmatic online shoppers, extensive online shoppers, multiple touchpoint shoppers, and online-to-offline shoppers―that differ considerably in their touchpoint and mobile device usage, their segment-specific covariates, and their search and purchase patterns. The five segments remain unchanged in the two data sets even though the usage of mobile devices has increased substantially. Furthermore, we find that the relationships between various loyalty antecedents and customer loyalty differ between the segments. The insights from this paper help retailers develop segment-specific customer journey strategies.