Paper Sample on Maximizing Customer Experiences: Evolving Paradigms

Introduction

Customer experience is an important aspect of marketing for a considerable time. Schmitt (1999) further established that experiences are gained through sensory, emotional, behavioural, cognitive, and relational values. However, these aspects are often substituted. Gilmore and Pine (1998) further presented hedonic product consumption behaviour that primarily focused on the emotive elements of the customer's experience. The modern subjective-based experiential paradigm has primarily emphasized customer's fun, feeling, and fantasies. The modern subjective-based approach has been widespread in marketing research in various contexts including branding, shopping, and service experience. Succeeding research explored the dimensions of consumer attitude and experiences (Holbrook et al., 1984).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Experiential Marketing and Experiential Value

Experiential value is the perspective of a customer towards a service or a product through either indirect observation or direct association. Experiential value can be established through the consumer's use of a product or service. The basis of experiential value is the experience acquired during a transaction or a personal viewpoint. The experience obtained from consumption is either through fun, feeling, and contact fantasies that influence the decisions made by a consumer. Therefore, the traditional model of experiential value ought to be incorporated because it has elements such as internal/external values and reactive/active value. Delgado-Ballester and Sabiote (2015) stated that experiential marketing and experiential value are directly connected. Efficient experiential marketing leads to increased experiential value. Experiential value originates from individual direct use or indirect appraisal on products or services. Yuan et al. (2008) researched Starbucks Company to study the relationship of customers' experiential marketing and experiential value. The outcomes showed that both factors are positively linked. Experiential value can be identified through the customers’ assessment of buyers return on investment, service excellence, playfulness, and aesthetic. Additionally, Wong and Tsai (2010) proposed that experiential value can be evaluated through service effectiveness, service brilliance, playfulness, and aesthetic in the service counter.

Maghnati et al. (2012) researched the relationship between experiential marketing and experiential value among smartphone users in Malaysia. The research confirmed that there is a significant positive relationship between experiential value and sense, feel, act, relate and think experiences. Huber et al. (2001) show that a consumer gains value from a product or service while purchasing or consuming. Experiential marketing lays a critical role in incorporating the value of the product through thinking, sensing, connection and feeling. Considerable emphasis is put on the needs of the customer through satisfaction and loyalty that ultimately leads to increased sales of the product. Subsequently, Gentile et al. (2007) pointed out that a company must provide experiential value to consumers to gain its uniqueness.

Experiential Value and Purchase Behavior

Experiential value is crucial for purchase behaviour. The experiential value offers internal and external values to consumers. The internal value is the generation of consumer experience because of the individual factor (Jeong et al., 2009; Holbrook, 1994). This is because the experiential value is personal occurrences with the likelihood to interfere with people's behaviours or beliefs. Also, experiences are felt, nor read as a message (Williams, 2014). According to Walls et a. (2011), experiences are different among consumers as everybody has distinctive preferences, physical understanding, and attitude. Lin and Chiang (2010) stipulate that experiential values are an actual part of consumer's purchase behaviour, and are linked to a chain of pleasures, opinions, and myths. If businesses that want to increase their purchase behaviour should highly prioritize on enhancing a positive experiential value. Businesses can build experiential values by providing good experiences to customers. Good experiences encourage positive consumer behaviour due to improved buyers' contentment. The customers assess the product quality and experience a specific level of satisfaction after purchasing a service or product. The level of satisfaction determines the rate of repurchasing behaviour. There are instances that a contented consumer switches to another brand and a dissatisfied buyer continue purchasing from the same brand. Consumers with positive purchase behaviour towards a product can recommend the brand to other people thereby increasing the experiential; value to others. Iglesias et al., (2011) concluded that the pressure caused by time limitation significantly impact consumer's intention to buy positively.

Experiential values connect customers with a brand or a product to form a perfect experience for the buyers to recognize clues, which are linked to emotions and functionality. Customers with less understanding of their buying choices usually collect information about product-linked elements or marketing indicators to help in decision making. The marketing indicators and product-associated elements impact the intentions towards a brand or a store. Experiential values give customers intrinsic or extrinsic benefits. The external component includes the pleasure and happiness they attach to purchasing a particular product. The active aspect of experiential value is associated with the interaction between the business and the consumer while the reactive aspect is resultant of the evaluation and responses of customers and comprehension of the particular product they want to purchase (Atwal and Williams, 2017; Mathwick et al., 2001). Aesthetic value is the visual appeal of the product. Playfulness involves involving the customer as a co-producer of value. The intrinsic value dimension is primarily composed of aesthetics and playfulness.

Experiential Marketing and Customer Loyalty

Experiential marketing implies an extra effort beyond advertising and social media campaigns to ensure a customer gets a unique impression and experience about the product or company. Experiential marketing influences a customer with a newfound attraction to the product, which significantly affects the emotional affinity towards the brand. Ena and Hadisumarto (2013) stated that customer loyalty is the extent to which a consumer exhibits repeated behaviour towards purchasing a particular product. Smilansky (2017) further explained that customer loyalty primarily involves a consumer's buying behaviour uniquely revolving around purchasing the same product brand repeatedly, while satisfaction creates a distinctive feeling. Pham and Huang (2015) highlight several indicators that of measuring customer loyalty such as the continuous attitude of repeated buying towards a particular company or service, positive feedback to other customers concerning the company or the product.

Taghi Pourian and Bakhsh (2015) aligns true customer loyalty to the psychological conceptualization as well as the cognitive effect that involve the four stages of customer loyalty; cognitive loyalty, affective loyalty, conative loyalty and action loyalty. Cognitive loyalty is the initial stage that involves developing a belief towards a brand, primarily based on their cognitive knowledge. A company might opt to offer discounts and get value for their money, however, customers move from one company or brand to another. Wu and Tseng (2015) indicate that first time customers are most likely to move for a better offer. Subsequently, consumers graduate to affective loyalty where they develop an emotional connection with a company or product. Customers develop a liking towards the product, hence, the creation of an attitude. This stage is stronger than the cognitive aspect since it involves the consumer's emotions and cognition. At the effective loyalty stage, the customer still values the monetary aspect of a product, however, it is specifically restricted to products with similar attributes. Conative loyalty involves a repeated experience by the customer to a level that they turn to be an influencer or a customer. Companies including Mercedes and Apple fall into these categories. Primarily, it is the behavioural intention of a consumer to buy and continue buying from a particular company or store. Conative loyalty does not consist of the attitudes of the consumer including the intentions to buy the product. The final stage is the active loyalty, Shah et al. (2019) indicate that not all intentions are transformed into buying, the readiness of a consumer is followed by the inclination to search for a more favourable alternative. The action loyalty stage is the most critical stage of a company or product since consumers' act as brand ambassadors (Bilgihan, 2016; Yeh et al., 2019). Trustworthiness between the company and the consumer is high through a strong eagerness to buy from a retail store.

Conclusion

Recent consumers also consider their experiences when purchasing services or products, which provides a basis for marketing managers to innovate on various marketing strategies. For instance, for a brand to fulfill the demand of a customer, customer loyalty is imperative, however, it is based on the concept of experiential marketing. Experiential marketing has grown significantly over the past years beyond the traditional view of consumers including experience, exhibition, and entertainment.