Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,3, Maastricht University (School of Business and Economics), language: English, abstract: Abstract The thesis at hand develops a new scale to measure customer experience quality on the basis of four dimensions: service quality, atmosphere quality, flow quality, and learning quality. The American coffee company Starbucks is used as exemplary case to validate the theory empirically. Product quality is found to be a separate, but related construct to customer experience quality. The author investigates the effect of customer experiences on customer loyalty and finds that customer experience quality indirectly affects customer loyalty intentions through perceived value. The relative importance of customer experience quality for perceived value and in succession customer loyalty intentions is found to be much higher than that of product quality. Moreover, perceived wealth of the customer acts as a moderator and increases the positive effect of customer experience quality on perceived value wheras it weakens the effect of product quality on perceived value. Collectively, the results extend and clarify concepts in the evolving, but inconsistent customer experience literature. The findings enable managers to stage customer experiences more effectively and more efficiently.

Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good, so over the top, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong? In their acclaimed bestseller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted many longstanding myths about sales. Now they’ve turned their research and analysis to a new vital business subject—customer loyalty—with a new book that turns the conventional wisdom on its head. The idea that companies must delight customers by exceeding service expectations is so entrenched that managers rarely even question it. They devote untold time, energy, and resources to trying to dazzle people and inspire their undying loyalty. Yet CEB’s careful research over five years and tens of thousands of respondents proves that the “dazzle factor” is wildly overrated—it simply doesn’t predict repeat sales, share of wallet, or positive wordof-mouth. The reality: Loyalty is driven by how well a company delivers on its basic promises and solves day-to-day problems, not on how spectacular its service experience might be. Most customers don’t want to be “wowed”; they want an effortless experience. And they are far more likely to punish you for bad service than to reward you for good service. If you put on your customer hat rather than your manager or marketer hat, this makes a lot of sense. What do you really want from your cable company, a free month of HBO when it screws up or a fast, painless restoration of your connection? What about your bank—do you want free cookies and a cheerful smile, even a personal relationship with your teller? Or just a quick in-and-out transaction and an easy way to get a refund when it accidentally overcharges on fees? The Effortless Experience takes readers on a fascinating journey deep inside the customer experience to reveal what really makes customers loyal—and disloyal. The authors lay out the four key pillars of a low-effort customer experience, along the way delivering robust data, shocking insights and profiles of companies that are already using the principles revealed by CEB’s research, with great results. And they include many tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, decrease customer churn, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the “dazzle factor” fails to deliver. The rewards are there for the taking, and the pathway to achieving them is now clearly marked.

The study at hand investigates customer experiences at the American coffee company Starbucks and develops a new scale to measure customer experience quality on the basis of four dimensions: Service quality, atmosphere quality, flow quality and learning quality. The study reveals that product quality itself is a separate, but related construct to customer experience quality which alone is not sufficient to create customer loyalty. The effect of customer experience quality and product quality on customer loyalty intentions is found to be fully mediated by perceived value. Moreover, perceived wealth of the customer acts as a moderator and increases the positive effect of customer experience quality on perceived value whereas it weakens the effect of product quality on perceived value. Collectively, the results extend and clarify concepts in the evolving, but inconsistent customer experience management literature. The findings enable managers to stage customer experiences more effectively and more efficiently.

In Customer Experience Management, renowned consultant and marketing thinker Bernd Schmitt follows up on his groundbreaking book Experiential Marketing by introducing a new and visionary approach to marketing called customer experience management (CEM). In this book, Schmitt demonstrates how to put his CEM framework to work in any organization to spur growth, increase revenues, and transform the image of your company and its brands. From retail buying to telephone orders, from marketing communications to online shopping, every customer touch-point offers companies an opportunity to maximize the customer experience and establish a bond that will never be broken. Customer Experience Management introduces the five-step CEM process, a comprehensive tool for connecting with customers at every touch-point. This revolutionary marketing guide provides cases of successful CEM implementations in a wide variety of consumer and B2B industries, including pharmaceuticals, electronics, beauty and cosmetics, telecommunications, beverages, financial services, and even the nonprofit sector. A must-read for senior executives, marketing managers, and anyone who wants to drive growth, increase income, and spur organizational change, Customer Experience Management demonstrates the power of collecting truly relevant customer information, developing and implementing winning strategies, and measuring their results.

The Customer Experience is the sensory, cognitive, emotional, social and behavioral dimensions of all activities that connect the customer and the organization over time across touch points and channels. It encompasses all activities involving the customer where the organization is the focal object, including pre-purchase activities (such as exposure to a website ad), and purchase, consumption, and engagement behaviors (blogging, sharing photos). This book analyzes the challenges of creating excellent customer experiences, including the management of technology and new media. It describes how customers co-produce and co-create their experiences, and how these activities influence business revenues and costs. The book takes a deep dive into the psychology of customers, revealing the conceptual building blocks of customer experiences and how they build relationships over time. These ideas provide a business perspective on how to manage relationships with customers to generate cash flows and profitability, including the role of pricing.

Loyalty is one of the main assets of a brand. In today’s markets, achieving and maintaining loyal customers has become an increasingly complex challenge for brands due to the widespread acceptance and adoption of diverse technologies by which customers communicate with brands. Customers use different channels (physical, web, apps, social media) to seek information about a brand, communicate with it, chat about the brand and purchase its products. Firms are thus continuously changing and adapting their processes to provide customers with agile communication channels and coherent, integrated brand experiences through the different channels in which customers are present. In this context, understanding how brand management can improve value co-creation and multichannel experience—among other issues—and contribute to improving a brand’s portfolio of loyal customers constitutes an area of special interest for academics and marketing professionals. This Special Issue explores new areas of customer loyalty and brand management, providing new insights into the field. Both concepts have evolved over the last decade to encompass such concepts and practices as brand image, experiences, multichannel context, multimedia platforms and value co-creation, as well as relational variables such as trust, engagement and identification (among others).

Gain, engage, and retain customers with positive experiences A positive customer experience is absolutely essential to keeping your business relevant. Today's business owners need to know how to connect and engage with their customers through a variety of different channels, including online reviews and word of mouth. Customer Experience For Dummies helps you listen to your customers and offers friendly, practical, and easy-to-implement solutions for incorporating customer engagement into your business plans and keep the crowds singing your praises. The book will show you simple and attainable ways to increase customer experience and generate sales growth, competitive advantage, and profitability. You'll get the know-how to successfully optimize social media to create more loyal customers, provide feedback that keeps them coming back for more, become a trustworthy and transparent entity that receives positive reviews, and so much more. Gives you the tools you need to target customers more precisely Helps you implement new social and mobile strategies Shows you how to generate and maintain customer loyalty in order to achieve success through multiple channels Explains how a fully-engaged customer can help you outperform the competition Learn how to respond effectively to customer feedback Your brand's reputation and success is your lifeblood, and Customer Experience For Dummies shows you how to stay relevant, add value, and win and retain customers.