چگونه تجربه مشتری را پایدار کنیم؟ بررسی اجمالی از تجربه اجزای که با مشتری ایجاد ارزش می کند

Nowadays the experience factor plays an increasingly important role in determining the success of a company’s offering. The literature on Customer Experience is growing fast and the debate among scholars and practitioners is fervent. While many studies explore such theme from a theoretical viewpoint, tools aimed at supporting marketing managers in devising the right stimuli to support an excellent Customer Experience are still scarce. In this perspective, this study sheds some light on the concept of Customer Experience, and on how the right environment and setting for the desired Customer Experience should be created in such a way as to contribute to the value creation for customers and the company itself. Drawing from the results of a survey submitted to several groups of customers, this paper attempts to understand the specific role of different experiential features in the success achieved by some well-known products. Following the empirical investigation, this work also suggests an interpretative model to support the marketing manager in generating the proper stimuli to activate the various components of the Customer Experience.

Nowadays competing in a global market has become increasingly difficult and only the creation of long-lasting competitive advantages seems to offer an avenue for survival. But where should a company start looking to develop a competitive advantage? Many scholars advocate that one of the main routes to reach it is by means of a much stronger focus on the customer (Douglas and Craig, 2000, Farinet and Ploncher, 2002, Kotler and Keller, 2006 and Peppers and Rogers, 2000). In the last years, and particularly in the process of devising a company’s strategy, this growing attention on the customer resulted in an increased focus on CRM philosophies. More recently, as the number of contact points between a company and its customers increased, such attention to the customer revealed the fundamental importance of monitoring the many experiences that originate from those contact points. In this perspective, the central idea is to expand the transaction-based notion of Customer Relationship to the “continuous” concept of Customer Experience. Consequently, it becomes necessary to consider aspects that refer to the emotional and irrational side of customer behavior (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982) and which, more than the only rational ones, account for the whole experience coming from the set of interactions between a company and its customers. Such experience plays a fundamental role in determining the customers’ preferences, which then influence their purchase decisions. In fact, whilst the classical economic theory regards the consumer as a logical thinker whose purchasing decisions are based on rational problem solving, the recent developments on the literature on economics and marketing, and particularly the new stream of the Experiential Marketing, advocates for the exploitation of intangible elements linked to the emotional value perceived by customers. In addition, a similar position can be found in the managerial field; in fact, 85% of senior business managers believe that differentiating solely on the traditional elements, such as price, product and quality, is no longer a sustainable competitive advantage and even more senior managers hold the Customer Experience as the next competitive battleground (Shaw and Ivens, 2005). Despite such vibrant enthusiasm, however, the reality is very different, and far from being close to either what the literature advocates or what many companies claim in their statement of intent. In addition, the scientific literature on this topic shows the limitations and inadequacies that are typical of those research fields which are still far from their maturity, particularly as it lacks both in terms of a precise terminology and of structured and standardized approaches that can support the adoption of the above mentioned practices. Given these considerations, the aim of this paper is to contribute towards the formalization and the improvement of the existing models and approaches on the matter. In particular, the present study contributes to the scientific debate in terms of a further rationalization of the approaches and theories so far developed and in attempting to provide an answer to certain open issues. Specifically, in this work it is provided: ❖ a conceptual definition of “Customer Experience” based on the most relevant scholarly and managerial contributions; ❖ an analysis of the specific role played by the experiential features in a sample of innovative products with respect to the outcomes of their introduction to the market; ❖ an interpretative model aimed to support a company in the process of devising contexts and artifacts that are conducive of a (Customer) Experience, and which can then be used by consumers to co-produce their own experience.

The above analyses show how important it is to pay attention to the new arising tendencies in customers’ behavior interpretation. The study proved that a relevant part of the value proposed to customers, and actually recognized by them, is linked to experiential features; we found that, regardless of the context, customers want to live positive consumption experiences. Living a positive Customer Experience can promote the creation of an emotional tie between a firm’s brand and its customers which in turn enhance customer loyalty. Yet this does not imply that customers neglect the importance of functionalities: sometimes as required standard, sometimes as factors enabling an optimal experience. We notice that the functional value (or utilitarian value) obtains almost always (except in two cases) a score near the experiential (hedonic) one; in some cases even a little higher. Therefore this part of the study based on the analysis of best practices proves that it is important to deliver an adequate balance between utilitarian and hedonic value. The results also show that these successful products involve customers’ senses, emotions, thoughts, acts, values and relations in different ways: each product leverages on more than one component, the particular combination depending on the characteristics of the product itself. Furthermore, we can infer that, by leveraging on more components, it is theoretically possible to intensify the whole hedonic value thanks to the existence of positive interferences among the activated components. Hence, resting on psychological and sociological interpretations about the generation and elaboration of sensations, thoughts, emotions, behaviors and relationships and of their interactions and interrelations (Goleman, 1995), we can hypothesize the existence “complex experiences” involving more than a single component. Indeed, we found that each of the products we analyzed leverages on some experiential components; but at a deeper investigation, we noticed that the components are not activated independently: sometimes there are relevant overlapping areas and clear interrelations, as reported by the factor analysis (possibly an issue to be further investigated in future researches). From a managerial viewpoint, this observation suggests that when devising a value proposition focused on the Customer Experience, companies should carefully regard at potential interactions between the components of the Customer Experience on which their products leverage so as to fully exploit the effects above described.