Customer experience management: Expanding our understanding of the drivers and consequences of the customer experience

The present doctoral dissertation aims to analyze thenew business landscape that suggests the importance of customer experience ¿ its drivers and consequences from a dynamic perspective. The drivers of customer experience provide firms with crucial knowledge about the experience expectations and desires of the customers, thereby enabling firms to identify the key determinants which significantly shape customer perceptions toward the experience with the firm. This is very important for firms, since the effort dedicated by firms to improve customer experience is not always equally perceived and/or valued by customers. Likewise, integrating the consequences of customer experience allows firms to translate their investment in customer experience into specific opportunities and enhanced performance outcomes (financial, behavioral, and relational). This is specifically critical, considering that a customer experience perceived as favorable by customers might not have a positive impact on firm outcomes. Customer experience is not static but evolve over time. By taking into account the dynamic nature of customer experience, firms may capture the occurred changes in customers and adjust the factors under their controls immediately, thereby ensuring the alignment between customer experience expectations and firms¿ offerings. In this way, through a dynamic lens, we establish the linkage across what firms do, what customers think, what customers do, and finally what firms get. The thesis is consisted of three studies. Study 1 investigates the impact of firms¿ investments in three key strategic levers (i.e., value, the brand, and the relationship) on the customer experience as well as the direct and moderating role played by social influence. We integrate research in customer relationship management (i.e., customer equity framework) (Rust, Lemon, & Zeithaml, 2004) and customer experience management (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016; Verhoef et al., 2009) and offer a unifying framework to understand the linkages between the three equity drivers (i.e., value equity, brand equity, relationship equity), social influence, the customer experience, and its ultimate impact on profitability. Study 2 focuses on the separate and joint effects of customer experience and lock-in on customer retention. Building barriers to lock customers and improving the customer experience are two key strategies employed by firms to enhance customer retention. Although pursuing the same goal, these strategies work differently: the former relies more on a calculative, cost¿benefit approach to the exchange, while the latter promotes the affective aspects of the relationship. Finally, study 3 investigates how different dimensions of customer experience (recency effect, peak effect, trend effect, and fluctuation effect) and different relationship marketing (RM) actions (i.e., advertising communication, product innovation, and conflict) impact customer relationship expansion from a dynamic perspective, and distinguishes their short-term and long-term effects. Self-determination theory posits that motivation for pursuing activities are consisted of intrinsic (the ones originating from the self and one¿s desire) and extrinsic factors (originating from external demands).<br /