Over the last three decades, customer experience (CE) has developed from a burgeoning concept to a widely recognized phenomenon in terms of both research and practice. To account for the complexity of consumption decisions, the CE literature encompasses both the rational information processing approach to consumer decision-making and the experiential approach, which includes emotions, feelings and sub-consciousness. The authors classify and examine CE research on two levels. Studies on static CE analyze experiences during touchpoints at one point in time, while studies on dynamic CE assess how experiences evolve over time. Furthermore, both static and dynamic CE research take place from two distinct theoretical perspectives: the organization and the consumer. As both theoretical perspectives essentially deal with the same phenomenonthe organizational perspective with the creation of CEs and the consumer perspective with the perception of customer experiences -there is potential for a productive symbiosis between them. The authors propose that connecting insights from both perspectives can contribute to a better understanding of what constitutes a CE for consumers and how firms can effectively manage it. First, the authors discuss the development of CE and argue that it has evolved into a broad and fragmented 'umbrella construct'. Second, after distinguishing and defining static and dynamic CE, they systematically evaluate the state of knowledge in both the organizational and consumer perspectives. Finally, they develop an agenda for future research that integrates the consumer perspective into organizational CE research. IntroductionCompetitive advantage is the focus for much management and organizational research. Yet the bases of differential advantage between competitors are often marginal, subject to change, and open to imitation (D'Aveni et al. 2010;McGrath 2013). This is largely attributable to the growing commoditization of goodsThe authors are grateful for comments provided by Tim Edwards on an earlier draft of this paper. and services (D'Aveni et al. 2010;Pine and Gilmore 1998). In seeking to explain emerging sources of competitive advantage, customer experience (CE) has been identified as a compelling antecedent. Increasingly, scholars argue that firms' differential advantage is derived from CE (Pine and Gilmore 1998; Verhoef et al. 2009). Both practitioners and scholars agree that a favorable CE positively affects marketingrelevant outcomes such as customer satisfaction, loyalty and word-of-mouth behavior (e.g. Mascarenhas et al. 2006;Pullman and Gross 2004). Despite this consensus, the CE phenomenon is limited by a lackThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. of conceptual clarity, explained by a diverse set of theories, and founded upon divergent empirical concl...

Firms struggle to manage touchpoints in their customer journey that consumers perceive as dissatisfying. Based on attribution theory and associative learning we examine branded outsourcing as a strategic means to reduce such touchpoints' negative impact on brand evaluations. We find in the field and in a series of experimental studies that brands can reduce the detrimental impact of dissatisfying touchpoints. This effect is reversed for satisfying touchpoints. Importantly, we find that the explanation for the effect of branded outsourcing goes beyond consumers' responsibility attributions. Rather, we find evidence that branded outsourcing reduces the extent to which consumers mentally associate the focal brand with the outsourced touchpoint, which results in a shift in brand evaluations. In an additional study we show that a strong thirdparty brand is not always more beneficial than a weak third-party brand, which further enhances the managerial relevance of our findings.

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