From customer journeys to consumption journeys: a consumer culture approach to investigating value creation in practice-embedded consumption

Abstract

Prior research on customer journeys chiefly focuses on identifying, from the firm perspective, firm-customer touchpoints. Importantly, the extant literature begins to maps aggregate firm-customer interactions over time to reveal how sequenced firm-controlled touchpoints contribute to customer experience. These customer journey maps tend to emphasize market actions, specifically purchases, over other, customer-centric touchpoints like use occasions, use experiences, storage and disposal. We extend the firm-centric customer journey framework to consider customer-centric touchpoints within a broader social and cultural context for value creation. We propose a consumer-centric consumption journey which considers consumption within progressive engagement with a practice or set of practices. We offer a culturally grounded consumption journey framework that highlights the importance of practices, communities, and institutions in value creation, and reveals various experiences and value outcomes. Future research regarding consumption journeys can advance understanding of customer experiences and journeys by investigating a variety of sociocultural influences and outcomes of value creation.