Towards practical relevance — Delivering superior firm performance through digital customer experience strategies

Abstract

Managers, consultants and scholars alike consider the digital customer experience (CX) as the next competitive battleground for firms worldwide. The development of corresponding CX strategies, however, faces a number of challenges. First, similar to all emerging fields of management, there is no universally accepted definition of the concept, its scope and how it relates to associated management initiatives, such as quality and satisfaction. Second, it is widely accepted that CX is very context-specific and that there is unlikely to be a generally applicable 'play book' appropriate across all industries and company strategies. Scholars portray CX disparately by exploring important facets at, regrettably, high levels of abstraction. Therefore, their research fails to consider the vital role of management in the process. In spite of a plethora of published CX definitions and conceptual frameworks, there remains a need for both theoretical and conceptual development, and empirical research to determine which digital CX strategies and practices have the most positive influence on organizational performance. To contribute to the development of CX practice and what the author characterizes as a Theory of Relevance, this article argues that scholars must conduct research to reveal current CX management practices as a necessary foundation for providing direction. A typology of CX practice will act as the foundation to explore the link between practice and performance. This study uses this typology to highlight the superior performance of firms executing a value-driven digital customer experience strategy. These vanguards, unlike others, apply value creation to all stakeholders of their business. Their business practice reflects these principles by developing a strategy crossing departmental boundaries and integrating all of the firm's functions into one aim -delivering superior digital customer experiences.

Online shopping experience in an emerging e‐retailing market: Towards a conceptual model

“…Experiential consumption was discussed in the 1930s (see Parsons, 1934, in Klaus, ), 1950s (see Abbott, 1955, in Klaus, ), and early 1980s (Holbrook & Hirschman, ). Holbrook and Hirschman () were the first to argue that consumption experience is “directed toward the pursuit of fantasies, feelings, and fun” (p. 132).…”

“…There has been a growing acknowledgment that customer experience is a key driver of customer behaviour (Klaus, Gorgoglione, Buonamassa, Panniello, & Nguyen, ; Palmer, ; Verhoef et al, ). This is because customer experience is directly linked to marketing outcome variables such as loyalty (Berry & Carbone, ) and profitability (Klaus, ). Specifically, online customer experience has attracted significant academic research interest (see Lemke, Clark, & Wilson, ; Rose, Clark, Samouel, & Hair, ; Trevinal & Stenger, ).…”

“…Specifically, online customer experience has attracted significant academic research interest (see Lemke, Clark, & Wilson, ; Rose, Clark, Samouel, & Hair, ; Trevinal & Stenger, ). However, Klaus () contends that little progress has been made beyond the traditional conceptualisations of the construct. Although online shopping experience (OSE) constitutes process and outcome elements (Klaus, ) and, as such, spans prior, during, and after purchase stages (Verhoef et al, ), this broad viewpoint warrants further examination.…”

“…However, Klaus () contends that little progress has been made beyond the traditional conceptualisations of the construct. Although online shopping experience (OSE) constitutes process and outcome elements (Klaus, ) and, as such, spans prior, during, and after purchase stages (Verhoef et al, ), this broad viewpoint warrants further examination. For instance, although an agreed structure of customer experience has been suggested (Verhoef et al, ), studies that attempted to fit qualitatively evolved context‐specific dimensions of customer experience into the existing structure from more specific theoretical viewpoint are relatively scarce.…”

The influence of digital customer experience and electronic word of mouth on brand image and supply chain sustainable performance

“…Digitalization plays an important role on creating good words of mouth. Digital customer experience has significant effect on customer satisfaction (Joshi, 2018) by providing better customer value (Bolton et al, 2018;Klaus, 2014). It provides better experience for customers through digitalization (Betzing et al, 2018) which influence on brand image, significantly.…”