Holistic Customer Experience Research Articles

MARKETING MIX STRATEGIES TOWARD CUSTOMER SATISFACTION OF YUFIRO COFFEE IN TANZA, CAVITE: BASIS FOR ENHANCEMENT PLAN OF MARKETING MIX STRATEGIES

This research explores the transformative landscape of the coffee shop industry focusing on Yufiro Coffee. With a commitment to a holistic customer experience, Yufiro Coffee's marketing mix strategies (7Ps) - product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence - are scrutinized to understand their influence on customer satisfaction. The objective of the study is to determine the socio-demographic profile of the participants, determine the customer perception and satisfaction levels, and to propose a comprehensive enhancement plan where it serves as a roadmap for Yufiro Coffee that shows competitiveness in the local coffee scene. This study used quantitative research methods to analyze the marketing mix strategies and customer satisfaction. The descriptive research design describes the marketing mix strategies of Yufiro Coffee and customer satisfaction in terms of the 7Ps of the marketing mix. The data were gathered from 100 participants that are customers from Yufiro Cofee. As a result, most of the participants are female and belong to the age group 18 - 22 years old. After analyzing the results of the study, the people and processes of marketing mix strategies show outstanding customer perception and satisfaction, leaving us with product, price, place, promotion, and physical evidence that need enhancement. The overall result shows a positive viewpoint, indicating that Yufiro Coffee is good at meeting customer expectations and providing a truly satisfying experience.

Unleashing the digital building bricks

The increasing online competition, associated changes in customer behaviors, and effects of the pandemic in recent years have led to increasing retail store closures. This development has given rise to a downward spiral in terms of a decreasing attractiveness of local shopping places and a further reduction of stores. Research has recognized that smart services can unleash the potential to compensate for the competitive disadvantages of physical retailers by combining tailored physical and digital offerings to enhance customer-oriented value creation. However, most approaches are limited to in-store services without addressing the wider shopping experience in retail surroundings. Therefore, this paper provides a classification framework for smart services in retail evaluated against 163 use cases, as well as six service archetypes. This work contributes to understanding relevant service design elements and proposes applying the idea of a holistic customer experience to service design in physical retail environments.

Uncovering the gamified customer experience in the retail environment

PurposeRetailers increasingly are using gamification to make the customer experience (CX) more exciting and encourage favourable customer outcomes. This paper aims to conceptualise the gamified customer experience (GCX), including relevant affordances, and investigate its effects on key customer outcomes, as well as its influential factors.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a qualitative interview study with retail customers and gamification experts, plus a scenario-based experiment to test the hypotheses.FindingsFive distinct affordances induced by game elements in retail have led to a more exciting CX. The connections between these affordances and the holistic CX have led to a GCX that influences customer engagement, satisfaction and brand attitude. This effect is dependent on different factors, e.g. retail brand personality, customers' shopping motivation and fear of manipulation.Originality/valueThis study contributes to retail research by conceptualising the GCX phenomenon and providing a summary of relevant affordances. It further provides insights into the GCX's effects on customer outcomes and influential factors, some of which have been ignored in previous research.

The Three Most Critical Aspects for Implementing Holistic Customer Experience at Scale

Businesses are increasingly challenged by increasing competition, changing customer preferences and, industry dynamics. Moreover, the proliferation of channels and customer touchpointshas added to the complexity of keeping up with these constant changes. Only organizations that are agile enough to understand, evaluate and react to these dynamic requirements can drive innovation and growth. Therefore, organizations must be creative in their consumer engagement strategy across the marketing funnel to enhance overall customer experience, measure the performance, and establish the loopback to refine the strategy.The following paper outlines concepts to help consumer businesses accelerate customer experience management. The objective of the paper is to lay out guiding principles that organizations can use as part of their business processes to create, deliver, and measure personalized customer experiences and drive growth, loyalty, and satisfaction. The paper will dive into the three most important pillars of building successful customer experiences –Design a Customer Experience Management Model, Activate across touchpoints, and Measure performance across touchpoints.

Closing the experience gap in banking: Humanising customer experience in four dimensions

In the rush to translate analogue interactions into the digital space, many financial institutions (FIs) skipped a step. They failed to define the holistic customer experience (CX) — the subjective thoughts, feelings, sensations and actions — that they want their tools to generate. This is a significant oversight, because a decade of developments in the behavioral and social sciences have demonstrated that business returns accrue from ensuring that brands engage not only the intellectual but also the emotional, sensorial and behavioral dimensions of human experience. In this paper, we present the first model designed to assess multidimensional experience in the banking sector. The humanising customer experience (HCX) model, developed by brand experience agency Monigle in partnership with American Banker, predicts 78 per cent of bank customer satisfaction and net promoter score (NPS). It measures more than 60 variables, crafted for their relevance to the financial sector, which together create the four dimensions of experience that are proven to drive important customer outcomes. By revealing the dimensions and attributes where FIs are currently lagging, the HCX framework offers newfound precision in directing future CX investments. The inaugural year of data, from 2021, shows that FIs are strongest in delivering on behavioral and intellectual experiences, while trailing in sensorial and emotional dimensions. After outlining the social sciences backdrop of this model and explaining its predictive power, we discuss several areas of industry focus where lopsided investments have led to less than fully humanised CX. We conclude that banks need to design experiences that yield emotional benefits, move from providing self-service tools to supporting customers’ financial self-actualisation, and approach services from a fully interactional rather than transactional perspective.

Service Design for a Holistic Customer Experience: A Process Framework

Modern service design practices conceptualize services as multistep processes. At each step, customers derive an uncertain value, which depends on a functional benefit and a subjective experience. The latter may depend on experiences realized at previous steps. Service designs determine the provider effort at each step given that customers prefer less-variable experiences, and enable a holistic perspective of the overall experience. We quantify two factors that shape service designs: the type of steps ((i) routine steps, where effort increases the functional benefit and decreases the experience variability, and (ii) nonroutine steps, where effort increases the functional benefit at the expense of higher variability) and a holistic coupling factor (at each step, the design is determined not only by experience realizations at predecessor steps but also by how it can shape subsequent experiences). The optimal efforts depend on the combination of these two factors, giving rise to actionable design rules. For a positive coupling factor, step type homogeneity leads to “spread the effort” designs (complementary efforts), whereas a negative coupling factor suggests focusing the effort on a few key steps at the expense of the rest of the service (substitutable efforts). Step type heterogeneity reverses these recommendations. Moreover, when the customer experience unfolds according to a nonstationary process with serial correlation, the effort at each step is determined by an impact zone defined by the steps surrounding the focal service step. Stronger correlation always induces higher effort, whereas weaker correlation may induce less effort in services with heterogeneous step types.This paper was accepted by Serguei Netessine, operations management.

Digitalisation in grocery retailing in Germany: an exploratory study

ABSTRACT This study examines German online grocery retailing structures, market participants and the degree of digitalisation in marketing services. This industry is characterised by a subpar share (0.9%) coupled with an above-average growth (20% from 2015 to 2017) thus making the market economically auspicious. This has attracted new competition with pure online players joining the market themselves or pairing with established logistic providers. While there is academic research on global online grocery retailing mostly on consumer behaviour and adoption, academic research for the German market with a changing environment due to globalisation and an ageing society, is very limited. This research, therefore, functions as a baseline study to allow further confirmatory research on the German market. We conducted an exploratory, qualitative study based on 20 in-depth interviews with industry experts. Data analysis was conducted using MAXQDA, Vers. 2018, that facilitated qualitative content analysis (QCA). We found that logistic issues (specifically the maintenance of the distribution cool chain) and technological infrastructure are viewed as key drivers of online grocery retailing. Furthermore, the degree of digitalisation within service processing can be improved This is especially true regarding an integrated and holistic customer experience from order to reception. Most online grocery retailers still lack a convincing online service and communication strategy. This is particularly true with regard to the communication of real-time delivery location and the integration of social functionality within their online offerings. Marketers should, therefore, adapt to these crucial and perceivable remarks from the experts perspective.

A designerly way of analyzing the customer experience

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate the usability of different design methods in understanding the customer experience from a contextual and systemic standpoint.Design/methodology/approachThree design methods (i.e. personas, observations and collaborative service mapping) were applied to analyze customer experiences in two service settings. These methods’ usability was compared across the two settings.FindingsPersonas, as informed by phenomenological interviews, provide insights into the customer’s broader lifeworld context. These insights assist in connecting with and understanding the customer experience from a dyadic customer-firm perspective. The involvement of the customer in service mapping activities supports the validation of findings and gives access to experience dimensions beyond the immediate service setting.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis is limited to three design methods and is based on small samples. Future research should systematically review design methods to provide a basis for a more comprehensive evaluation.Practical implicationsTo successfully capture the contextual and systemic nature of the customer experience, managers should apply interpretive approaches and actively involve selected customers as “experts of their experiences”. The study provides guidelines on how design methods can be combined and applied to a more holistic customer experience analysis.Originality/valueThe paper shows that design methods, when applied in a combined form, can support an analysis that captures both in-depth insights into the customer’s lifeworld and the complexity of value constellations.

Orchestrating service brand touchpoints and the effects on relational outcomes

PurposeThis research aims to identify critical brand touchpoints that generate value for customers and brands and examine their effects on two relational outcomes: relationship quality and word of mouth (WOM).Design/methodology/approachThree studies combining qualitative and quantitative research provide evidence distinguishing four different stages of customer experience in the telecom industry and develop a research model of staged customer experience; structural equation modeling analyses are used to validate the proposed model and test for the examined effects.FindingsCustomer experience in the telecom industry consists of four related but distinct stages (i.e. pre-touch, in-touch, post-touch and service failure) and these stages have direct and indirect effects on WOM. Furthermore, the effects of customer experience stages on WOM are partially mediated by relationship quality.Research limitations/implicationsThe research model introduced here will allow academics and practitioners to focus their efforts on important touchpoints that influence relationship quality and WOM. Future research should examine the proposed model of staged customer experience in different applications and industries.Practical implicationsA common myth among marketers is that firms should design a painless experience if they want a superior market position. While avoiding a drain on financial resources, the prime objective should be to provide a holistic customer experience that is valuable to customers and the brand alike. Marketers should disregard touchpoints and stages that do not provide noticeable value.Originality/valueThis research answers the call for a more appropriate model to elucidate the factors that link customer experience with relational outcomes.

Beyond customer experience models: identifying idiosyncratic perceptions

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a deeper analysis of customer experience (CE) can identify idiosyncratic and critical perceptions in the experiences of groups of customers.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology that the authors used is made of three main steps: segmentation analysis, profiling and identification of idiosyncratic clusters’ profiles (i.e. those with a CE perception different respect to the whole sample) and among these idiosyncratic clusters, identification of those that may be critical for the business.FindingsThe authors identified clusters of customers showing significant differences in their perceived experience with respect to the holistic CE model. Nevertheless, a sample of bank managers assessed three cluster profiles among them to be critical signals a company. The identification of these idiosyncratic patterns provides managers with interesting additional insights that would be hidden in a holistic CE model.Practical implicationsManagers can gain valuable insights of CE from this analysis that should be added to those coming from an holistic CE model.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the scientific research in that it extends the knowledge about CE by showing how personal factors can be identified and how drawing additional managerial insights.

To Study the Relationship between Service Encounter and Retail Experience on Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty with Impact of Loyalty Program Membership

The authors of the study are inquisitive to understand the relationship between Service Encounter and Retail Experience under the dynamic business environment in India. The purpose behind conducting this study was to examine the link between the customers’ idea of a retail customer experience (CE), service encounter and its effect on satisfaction and loyalty and to further establish the effect of loyalty programs on these links as well. The study was undertaken in Pune city, which is well established, and it has been evident to observe and possibly imitate entrance of international competitors. The data was collected using convenience-sampling technique from the Major supermarkets, hypermarkets, malls and single brand retail stores of Pune with or without loyalty programs based on their location and model of operations. In addition to that, partly data was collected using google forms to capture the attitude of retail customers from major cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Ludhiana. The findings confirmed the model of customer experiences and service encounter leading to customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and supported positive relation with customer satisfaction. However, it discarded the role of loyalty programs membership in enhancing customer loyalty. Further studies can / may examine whether the findings hold true for each individual loyalty program or not. The paper calls for more studies and measures to encourage publication of negative empirical outcomes to ensure empirical generalization and self-correction in the literature. Managers in retail segment should focus their attention on the design and delivery of customer experience, without placing reliance on loyalty programs. Both cognitive and emotional attributes of retail services must be considered for managing a holistic Customer Experience.

Service Design for a Holistic Customer Experience: A Process Perspective

Despite the growing interest in the design of services, most design approaches used in practice do not provide a comprehensive analysis of the factors that drive successful service design. This paper builds on the design method of the customer journey to propose an analytical framework that characterizes the multi-stage nature of services and treats the customer experience holistically. In this context, the provider decides how much effort to allocate at each step of the service process and how much to charge for the service. We find that these design decisions need to account for nuanced effects related to the nature of customer preferences. Cost, albeit important, cannot solely determine the provider's effort. Moreover, the design is driven by how the experience that customers derive at one step depends on the experience at other steps. These interactions determine whether the provider's efforts at different steps emerge as substitute or complementary.

A study on holistic customer experience in selected resort hotels in China

A study on holistic customer experience in selected resort hotels in China

A Holistic Customer Experience Design on the Internet

This paper proposes a holistic customer experience framework on the internet. According to the framework, we can effectively manage the direct experience, indirect experience, primary experience and secondary experience through web interface, and enhancing the holistic customer experience to pleasurable experience(including vivid experience, consummatory experience and aesthetic experience ), which can unite the consumer’s sensory, emotional, social, and intellectual experiences in a new and positive way. The framework proposed here can achieve a more successful customer pleasurable experiences and increase customer satisfaction on the internet. Furthermore, we make the theories and applications of customer experience will be more extensive and convenient for researches and businesses. Keyword: Holistic Customer Experience, Web Interface, Pleasurable Experience

The Holistic Consumer Experience—Insights from DMI Members

What are the elements of a great customer experience? What kinds of commitments and resources have to be invested to successfully integrate and engage customers across a broad spectrum of touch‐points? Which brand elements comprise a holistic customer experience? We asked some of our colleagues to offer their opinions.