Article summaries
Article 1 | Lemon & Verhoef (2016)
Customer Experience (CX) and Conceptual Distinctions
CX Definition: Customer Experience is the multidimensional construct
focusing on a customer’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensorial, and
social responses to a firm’s offerings during the customer’s entire purchase
journey. It is the internal and subjective response customers have to any direct
or indirect contact with a company.
Schmitt (1999) identified five types of experiences: sensory, affective,
cognitive, physical (act), and social-identity (relate).
Perspectives on Management: The design and delivery of CX can be viewed
from the firm’s point of view (designing the experience), the customer’s point
of view (the subjective experience), or a cocreation perspective, recognizing
the customer’s role in jointly constructing the experience within a broader
ecosystem.
CX in Relation to Other Constructs:
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): CSAT could be considered one component
of CX, primarily focusing on the customer’s cognitive evaluation of the
experience.
Service Quality (SERVQUAL): Often viewed as an antecedent of customer
experience.
Customer Engagement: This focuses on attitudes and behaviors beyond
purchase (non-transactional), such as word of mouth or cocreation.
Customer engagement behaviors constitute specific interactional touch
points along the customer journey and are therefore a part of the overall
customer experience.
Trust/Commitment (Relationship Marketing): Commitment is typically a
consequence of CX. Trust is a state variable that generally does not
directly influence the experience, though a good CX might build trust.
Article summaries 1
, Customer Journey Phases and Touch Point Details
The Customer Journey is a dynamic and iterative process incorporating past
experiences and external factors.
Phase Description & Key activities
Starts with need/goal/impulse recognition and extends through search
Prepurchase
and consideration of satisfying that need.
The stage covering all interactions during the transaction (choice,
Purchase
ordering, payment). Often the most temporally compressed phase.
Includes product usage, consumption, service requests, and
Postpurchase postpurchase engagement. This stage may trigger the “loyalty loop”
(repurchase) or lead to starting the prepurchase phase anew.
Touch Point Categories:
Characteristics &
Type of Touch Point Examples
Control
Designed and
managed by the firm; Advertising, websites, loyalty
Brand-owned
under the firm’s programs, sales force.
control.
Jointly designed,
managed, or
Distribution partners,
Partner-owned controlled by the firm
multivendor loyalty programs.
and one or more
partners.
Customer thoughts, choice of
Customer actions payment method, individual
that the firm or product usage/consumption
Customer-owned
partners do not (e.g., "IKEA hacking,"
influence or control. customer-uploaded
instructional videos).
Other customers, peer
Influences from third
Social/External/Independent influences, review sites
parties.
(TripAdvisor), social media.
This typology is broader than the paid, owned, and earned media model often
used in advertising literature.
Customer Experience Measurement
Article summaries 2
, Measurement Challenges: There is no yet agreement on robust measurement
approaches to evaluate all aspects of CX across the entire customer journey.
Customer Feedback Metrics:
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): The dominant metric for years.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Proposed as a replacement for satisfaction;
often considered more forward-looking.
Comparison: Research suggests that NPS and customer satisfaction
perform equally well in predicting firm performance and customer
behavior, though predictive performance differs by context.
Customer Effort Score (CES): Focuses on effort, but generally, feedback
metrics focusing on a specific domain of the experience (like CES) are not
strong in predicting future performance.
Key Finding: Using multiple customer feedback metrics predicts customer
behavior better than a single metric.
Customer Experience Management (CXM)
Definition and Scope: CXM is the process of strategically managing a
customer’s entire experience with a product or company. It emphasizes value
creation more strongly than CRM (which often focuses on value
extraction/profitability).
Key CXM Principles:
1. Customer-Centric Focus: A customer-centric orientation is a critical
facilitator for creating stronger customer experiences within firms.
2. Multidisciplinary Approach: CXM necessitates a multidisciplinary
approach where functions like IT, marketing, operations, customer service,
and HR cooperate to deliver the experience.
3. Seamless Experience: A seamless experience across channels through
channel integration (omnichannel retailing) will create a stronger CX.
4. Capabilities: Firms require specific capabilities, such as customer
analytics (big data) and partner network management, to develop
successful strategies.
Disney’s Magic Band Example: Disney invested over $1 billion in the Magic
Band and MyMagicPlus technology to remove friction from the Disney World
experience. By encouraging customers to preplan (optimizing the prepurchase
Article summaries 3
, stage), Disney reduced uncertainty and waiting times during the purchase and
consumption stages, thereby improving the overall experience. This case
highlights the integral role of IT and operations in successful CX
implementation.
Research Agenda (Critical Gaps)
The literature identifies critical areas for future research:
Conceptual Model: There is a strong need to develop and test an
integrated conceptual model to examine how existing constructs (like
service quality, engagement, and commitment) relate to, and interact with,
the overall CX construct.
Outcome Linkages: Research must integrate the purchase funnel
(focusing on immediate conversion) and the loyalty funnel to understand
both short-term and long-term loyalty effects (e.g., repurchase, retention,
CLV) of the customer journey design.
Touch Point Deepening: Researchers need to deepen the understanding of
how the four types of touch points (especially non-brand-owned) influence
each stage of the journey and identify the critical touch points (“moments
of truth”) that have the most significant influence on outcomes.
New Measurement Techniques: Utilizing new techniques, such as
neuroscientific approaches (eye tracking, biometrics) and big data
analytics (social listening, text analytics), is necessary to capture CX data
in situ and better understand the rich, multidimensional nature of the
construct
Article 2 | De Keyser et al. (2020)
TCQ: A Nomenclature for Granularity
The TCQ nomenclature aims to move the CX(M) field toward a more mature
state by providing a formal, actionable language. CX is defined as
nondeliberate, spontaneous responses and reactions to offering-related
stimuli embedded within a specific context. The TCQ framework
disaggregates this broad definition into 12 specific components under three
building blocks.
Based on an inductive analysis of 143 academic papers on CX, the TCQ
framework identifies three overarching building blocks of Customer
Article summaries 4
Article 1 | Lemon & Verhoef (2016)
Customer Experience (CX) and Conceptual Distinctions
CX Definition: Customer Experience is the multidimensional construct
focusing on a customer’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensorial, and
social responses to a firm’s offerings during the customer’s entire purchase
journey. It is the internal and subjective response customers have to any direct
or indirect contact with a company.
Schmitt (1999) identified five types of experiences: sensory, affective,
cognitive, physical (act), and social-identity (relate).
Perspectives on Management: The design and delivery of CX can be viewed
from the firm’s point of view (designing the experience), the customer’s point
of view (the subjective experience), or a cocreation perspective, recognizing
the customer’s role in jointly constructing the experience within a broader
ecosystem.
CX in Relation to Other Constructs:
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): CSAT could be considered one component
of CX, primarily focusing on the customer’s cognitive evaluation of the
experience.
Service Quality (SERVQUAL): Often viewed as an antecedent of customer
experience.
Customer Engagement: This focuses on attitudes and behaviors beyond
purchase (non-transactional), such as word of mouth or cocreation.
Customer engagement behaviors constitute specific interactional touch
points along the customer journey and are therefore a part of the overall
customer experience.
Trust/Commitment (Relationship Marketing): Commitment is typically a
consequence of CX. Trust is a state variable that generally does not
directly influence the experience, though a good CX might build trust.
Article summaries 1
, Customer Journey Phases and Touch Point Details
The Customer Journey is a dynamic and iterative process incorporating past
experiences and external factors.
Phase Description & Key activities
Starts with need/goal/impulse recognition and extends through search
Prepurchase
and consideration of satisfying that need.
The stage covering all interactions during the transaction (choice,
Purchase
ordering, payment). Often the most temporally compressed phase.
Includes product usage, consumption, service requests, and
Postpurchase postpurchase engagement. This stage may trigger the “loyalty loop”
(repurchase) or lead to starting the prepurchase phase anew.
Touch Point Categories:
Characteristics &
Type of Touch Point Examples
Control
Designed and
managed by the firm; Advertising, websites, loyalty
Brand-owned
under the firm’s programs, sales force.
control.
Jointly designed,
managed, or
Distribution partners,
Partner-owned controlled by the firm
multivendor loyalty programs.
and one or more
partners.
Customer thoughts, choice of
Customer actions payment method, individual
that the firm or product usage/consumption
Customer-owned
partners do not (e.g., "IKEA hacking,"
influence or control. customer-uploaded
instructional videos).
Other customers, peer
Influences from third
Social/External/Independent influences, review sites
parties.
(TripAdvisor), social media.
This typology is broader than the paid, owned, and earned media model often
used in advertising literature.
Customer Experience Measurement
Article summaries 2
, Measurement Challenges: There is no yet agreement on robust measurement
approaches to evaluate all aspects of CX across the entire customer journey.
Customer Feedback Metrics:
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): The dominant metric for years.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Proposed as a replacement for satisfaction;
often considered more forward-looking.
Comparison: Research suggests that NPS and customer satisfaction
perform equally well in predicting firm performance and customer
behavior, though predictive performance differs by context.
Customer Effort Score (CES): Focuses on effort, but generally, feedback
metrics focusing on a specific domain of the experience (like CES) are not
strong in predicting future performance.
Key Finding: Using multiple customer feedback metrics predicts customer
behavior better than a single metric.
Customer Experience Management (CXM)
Definition and Scope: CXM is the process of strategically managing a
customer’s entire experience with a product or company. It emphasizes value
creation more strongly than CRM (which often focuses on value
extraction/profitability).
Key CXM Principles:
1. Customer-Centric Focus: A customer-centric orientation is a critical
facilitator for creating stronger customer experiences within firms.
2. Multidisciplinary Approach: CXM necessitates a multidisciplinary
approach where functions like IT, marketing, operations, customer service,
and HR cooperate to deliver the experience.
3. Seamless Experience: A seamless experience across channels through
channel integration (omnichannel retailing) will create a stronger CX.
4. Capabilities: Firms require specific capabilities, such as customer
analytics (big data) and partner network management, to develop
successful strategies.
Disney’s Magic Band Example: Disney invested over $1 billion in the Magic
Band and MyMagicPlus technology to remove friction from the Disney World
experience. By encouraging customers to preplan (optimizing the prepurchase
Article summaries 3
, stage), Disney reduced uncertainty and waiting times during the purchase and
consumption stages, thereby improving the overall experience. This case
highlights the integral role of IT and operations in successful CX
implementation.
Research Agenda (Critical Gaps)
The literature identifies critical areas for future research:
Conceptual Model: There is a strong need to develop and test an
integrated conceptual model to examine how existing constructs (like
service quality, engagement, and commitment) relate to, and interact with,
the overall CX construct.
Outcome Linkages: Research must integrate the purchase funnel
(focusing on immediate conversion) and the loyalty funnel to understand
both short-term and long-term loyalty effects (e.g., repurchase, retention,
CLV) of the customer journey design.
Touch Point Deepening: Researchers need to deepen the understanding of
how the four types of touch points (especially non-brand-owned) influence
each stage of the journey and identify the critical touch points (“moments
of truth”) that have the most significant influence on outcomes.
New Measurement Techniques: Utilizing new techniques, such as
neuroscientific approaches (eye tracking, biometrics) and big data
analytics (social listening, text analytics), is necessary to capture CX data
in situ and better understand the rich, multidimensional nature of the
construct
Article 2 | De Keyser et al. (2020)
TCQ: A Nomenclature for Granularity
The TCQ nomenclature aims to move the CX(M) field toward a more mature
state by providing a formal, actionable language. CX is defined as
nondeliberate, spontaneous responses and reactions to offering-related
stimuli embedded within a specific context. The TCQ framework
disaggregates this broad definition into 12 specific components under three
building blocks.
Based on an inductive analysis of 143 academic papers on CX, the TCQ
framework identifies three overarching building blocks of Customer
Article summaries 4
