The ‘customer journey’: Learning from customers in tourism experience encounters

Abstract

For micro-tourism firms, customers are a readily-accessible and highly important knowledge source that often remains unutilised. This study explores firm–customer encounters along the customer journey as learning opportunities. Based on data collected through participant observations, interviews and a review of user-generated content, this case study provides an in-depth look into the customer journey, with a Swedish micro-tourism firm. The findings suggest that the possibility to generate knowledge about experiential purposes is conditioned by the firm's ability to bestow encounters with an experience-like quality and promote the customers' transformation into participants. This is facilitated by involving customers, adopting an experiential discourse and utilising in-situ supporting moments to socialise. Firms can also learn about customers' subjective perception of value from user-generated content. The study concludes that in the context of learning from customers, small size provides micro-tourism firms with an opportunity to engage in personal relationships with their customers.