Impact of nonverbal customer-to-customer interactions on customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions

Purpose Creating an extraordinary and memorable customer experience is the goal of every company seeking to be a market leader. This amplifies the need for customer experience management (CEM), particularly in customer-centric industries. Despite the indispensable importance of CEM, studies conducted within this area have been scattered and no agreement has been reached upon its stages. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the main stages and steps for effective and efficient CEM in the hotel industry. Design/methodology/approach Considering the variety of approaches in the literature and also the need to explain CEM stages in the hotel industry, a systematic literature review (SLR) has been picked as the first research methodology. It entailed a systematic review of 116 academic and professional studies. Then, the framework was completed by interviewing 19 experts. Findings With SLR and complementary interviews, this study obtains a four-stage framework for CEM in the hotel industry, each comprising necessary steps. These four stages are customer identification, customer experience design, customer experience implementation and customer experience measurement, which are all executed through organizational factors such as culture, structure, leadership, human resources and technology. Research limitations/implications This study identifies CEM stages in the hotel industry via SLR and interviews. Due to dispersion in customer experience studies, the need for research on CEM in another service- and customer-based industries is apparent. Practical implications The suggested framework can help hotel managers enhance the management of their customers’ experience and deliver a superior and memorable experience. Originality/value The current study aims to add value to the literature by presenting a framework of CEM in the hotel industry. Through a systematic literature review and interviewing experts, a framework of CEM stages and steps was identified. The proposed framework allows for improving future CEM studies.

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 70%

A framework of customer experience management for hotel industry

Rahimian

Shamizanjani

Manian

et al. 2021

“…Affective experience, rarely discussed in prior literature, is identified in this study, echoing the suggestion of and Wu and Gao (2019) to emphasize the emotional experience of customers rather than purely cognitive experiences. The concept of social experience, proposed in this study, is related to but beyond human interaction (Lin et al, 2020;Walls, 2013), staff relational/interactional experience (Ren et al, 2016) and humanity clues (Chepngetich et al, 2019) as stated in prior studies. It shall include customer's self-esteem and social self-image, which are rarely mentioned in other studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Customer experience and brand loyalty in the full-service hotel sector: the role of brand affect

Guan

Wang

Guo

et al. 2021

Purpose This study aims to propose a comprehensive causal model to examine the relationships between customer experience and four key factors in brand building, i.e., brand loyalty, brand trust, brand affect and brand involvement. The dimensionality of customer experience in full-service hotel is also particularly examined in relation to brand building. Design/methodology/approach Three steps of data collection were used: interviews of 50 customers on their experiences of staying full-service hotels, a small survey of 176 hotel guests to establish the measurement scale of customer experience and a major survey of 732 hotel customers in ten major Chinese cities to test the model of brand loyalty. Findings Customers’ experiences with full-service hotels are proposed to be categorized into functional, affective and social. There is a chain effect from customer experience to brand trust and to brand affect and then to brand loyalty. The brand involvement does moderate relationships between customer experience and brand trust and brand affect but not brand loyalty. Practical implications For full-service hotels, social and functional experiences are critical in building brand loyalty, and therefore, they need to be the focal points in the enhancement of customer experience. Also, hoteliers are advised to develop emotional connections between the customers and the hotel brand – an effective way of building trust and affection. Originality/value According to the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first few studies to link customer experience to brand loyalty with comprehensive causal effect analysis. This study also contributes to the knowledge of customer experience in the context of the full-service hotel sector.

“…Customer satisfaction and loyalty are paramount for a firm's performance, yet their exact relationship is not always clear (Baumann et al, 2017). The tourism and hospitality sector have long experienced the impacts of positive or negative experiences in customers' behavioural predispositions (Heung and Lam, 2003;Lin et al, 2020). Yet, Baumann et al (2012) identified that the relationship between the two concepts is rather non-linear, suggesting that customers' satisfaction after a poor experience is not directly converted into loyalty nor clearly predicted behavioural intentions.…”

Section: Ijchm 339mentioning

confidence: 99%

Risk-induced competitive productivity in times of recession: a chaordic tourism decision-making perspective

Παππάς

Glyptou

2021

Purpose This study aims to explore the interface of competitive productivity (CP) levels in times of turbulence. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from a sample of 507 Athenian holidaymakers, the study uses a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine the chaordic systems amongst perceived risks (social; destination; price; quality) in tourism purchasing intentions. It considers three grouping variables (age; monthly income; trip [domestic; overseas]). It further evaluates the effect sizes of those risks upon purchasing intentions by complementary using necessary condition analysis (NCA). Findings fsQCA revealed three sufficient configurations: price-quality nexus (micro); generated experience (meso) and perceived destination image (macro). NCA showcased that the effect size of the examined perceived risks is relatively low, while destination risks have the highest impact. Research limitations/implications Only a few studies use fsQCA and NCA in the field of tourism and hospitality studies thus, their full potential and implications of exploring the interface of tourism decision-making components with CP levels are still unexplored. Originality/value This is the first study examining the nonlinearity of risk-induced decision-making triggers of holidaymakers affected by the recession in line with the principles of CP. Its theoretical contribution lays in the exploration of the interface of CP and its three levels of application (micro [tourist], meso [firm/business], macro [destination]) in times of turbulence. Managerially, it strengthens the assumption that CP and customer loyalty are strongly associated even in times of turbulence when destinations and firms should make a strong point to maintain their competitive edge. Methodologically, the study highlights the value of fsQCA for identifying multiple pathways, a relatively new method in tourism. Furthermore, it introduces NCA, a new complementary method in tourism research.