Customer experience theoretical frameworks and models

Leading retailing and customer experience journals were reviewed (see Chapter 2) to understand the theoretical frameworks and models most commonly used to understand the retail customer experience.

The set of most commonly used models and frameworks was examined (Havif, 2017) to establish how they were referenced or cross-referenced, or whether they were unique models that represented gradual development in this field, especially to identify the key dimensions through which they perceive

customer experience. Some models reflected the rise of e-commerce, some built upon old approaches to deepen the understanding of customers' perceptions. The dimensions of some models are more concrete

and focused on the customer as an emotional human being; some, on the other hand, focused on the process of acquiring goods or services.

• SERVQUAL Model: There are five dimensions of the SERVQUAL scale (Parasuraman et al., 1988) – reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibility. Reliability represents the provider's ability to reliably and accurately deliver a service promised to the customer, including keeping promises related to the delivery, pricing, or complaint handling. Responsiveness is about providing prompt service and personnel's attitude towards customer complaints, requests, and questions. The overall ability to build trust and confidence between the company and the customer is assurance. Empathy evaluates the individual approach and the attention the company provides to each customer. Tangibility contains the appearance of all the elements that represent the service in its physical form (e. g., facilities, equipment, personnel).

• Total Retail Experience Framework: Berman and Evans (1998) define total retail customer experience as all the elements that encourage or inhibit consumers' contact with the retailer. Two groups of dimensions influence the experience. The first group consists of non-controllable

dimensions. These include aspects such as adequacy of street parking, the timing of deliveries from suppliers, and taxes, not controllable by the retailer. The controllable dimensions consist of six dimensions that the retailer can indeed control: personal interactions that provide numerous

opportunities for creating and fostering long-term bonds with customers; perceived product quality, which is the consumer's perceived value of a product and how that affects the evaluation of the retailer; product variety and assortment where customers expect to find a selection of different kinds of products consistent with their shopping intentions and preferences; store environment that

contributes to the atmospherics of both offline and online environments across channels and omnichannel; product prices that influence decision making; and store policies that relate to the retailer's responsiveness to customer's needs.

• eTailQ Experience Model: The underlying motive for this model is that quality is related to customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty in both product and service settings and is therefore expected to be a determinant of online retailer success as well. Wolfinbarger and Gilly (2003) establish the four dimensions of the etail experience, and develop a reliable and valid scale for the measurement of etail quality. The four dimensions - website design, fulfillment/reliability,

privacy/security and customer service - are strongly predictive of customer judgments of quality and satisfaction, customer loyalty and attitudes toward the website. Website design, which includes all the website elements that can influence the customer's experience, such as navigation style, information search, ordering process, or personalization. The fulfillment/reliability dimension evaluates the accuracy of the product's description on the website and the delivery of the right product at the promised time. Customer service, another dimension, which should be quick,

responsive, and helpful. The fourth dimension, security/privacy, is based on the security of payments and privacy of all shared information.

• E-S-QUAL Model: Developed by Parasuraman et al. (2005) supports the measurement of both pre- and post-e-service quality aspects and includes the following four dimensions: Efficiency - the ease and speed of accessing and using the site since convenience and saving of time are generally considered as the main reasons for shopping online. Fulfillment - the extent to which the site’s promises about order delivery and item availability are fulfilled and are elements of service quality that lead to customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. System availability - the correct technical functioning of the site. When consumers purchase from an online shop or they are just surfing, function problems like non-working buttons or missing links, disappoint customers and can lead to exiting. Privacy - the degree to which the site is safe and protects customer information. Many people are still not willing to purchase products from the internet because of the risk that is related to maltreat of personal information. Online retailers are becoming more acquainted of the importance of providing consumer privacy.

• Consumption Experience Model: Fornerino and de Gaudemaris (2006) identified five basic customer experience perception dimensions. The first dimension, called sensorial/perceptual, is the dimension that reflects the stimulation of senses. The affective dimension refers to the moments of strong emotions, excitement, joy, pleasure, or sadness. The physical/behavioral dimension describes the visible manifestations aroused by the most intense moments. Social is the next dimension related to the interaction, even the communion, with other people (friends but also unknown). The cognitive dimension contains thoughts produced during the event, whether related to it or not.

• Customer Experience Model: Gentile et al. (2007), drawing on past literature, created a model with six main dimensions of customer experience. Sensorial whose stimulation affects the senses such as sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell and could create aesthetical pleasure, excitement, satisfaction, and sense of beauty. Emotional which involves one’s affective system through the generation of moods, feelings, emotions to generate emotional experience and could create an affective relation with the company, its brand or products. Cognitive related to thinking or conscious mental processes to engage customers in using their creativity or in situations of problem solving that a company could lead consumers to revise their usual idea of a product or some common mental assumptions.

Pragmatic, the practical act of doing something refers to the use of the product in the post- purchase stage, but it extends to all the product life-cycle stages. Lifestyle coming from the affirmation of the system of values and the beliefs of the person through the adoption of a lifestyle and behaviors.

Relational that involves the person and their social context, the relationship with other people or also with their own ideal self to leverage products which encourages the consumption together with other people or which is the core of a common passion that may eventually lead to the creation of a

community and finally the product can be also a means of affirmation of a social identity that induces a sense of belonging or of distinction from a social group where the link with the lifestyle dimension is very relevant.

• Conceptual Model of Customer Experience: Verhoef et al. (2009) developed a conceptual model of customer experience creation based on prior research. This model's first dimension is the social environment based on customer-to-customer interactions, such as customers' interactions with other customers in retail space and interactions with family or friends shopping with the customer. The second service interface is similar to the first one as it relates to the interactions between the customer and company employees (e. g., retail staff, service personnel). The retail atmosphere dimension includes aspects such as in-store music, the color of the interior, and placement of the equipment. Assortment represents the company's ability to provide a wide range of different, unique, and quality products. The price dimension consists of all the company's benefits, from loyalty programs, personalized promotions to customized products. Customer experience is nowadays perceived from the multichannel perspective, so one channel's experience can impact the experience in another channel. This fact is captured by the sixth dimension called customer experiences in alternative channels. The last dimension, retail brand, considers that customers buy products from one brand in a store that belongs to another brand in many cases. So, the resulting experience is determined by the expertise provided by both these brands.

• EXQ Framework: Klaus and Maklan (2012) conceptualized and validated the EXQ framework for measuring the customer experience. From a wide variety of sub-dimensions, they defined four main dimensions that influence the overall perceived experience. The first dimension, product experience, advocates that customers want to have an opportunity to choose from a range of products and to have the ability to compare different offerings. The outcome focus dimension is based on reducing the customer's transaction costs (e. g., searching for new providers). The moments of truth dimension reflects the quality and flexibility of the company's service if complications arise. The fourth

dimension, peace of mind, represents all the customer's appraisals, mainly of an emotional nature, of his whole customer journey.

• Theoretical Customer Experience Model: This model (Stein and Ramaseshan, 2016) considers touchpoints (communications, technology, atmospheric, process, employee-customer interactions, customer-customer interactions, service or product interactions) moderated by motivation orientation (hedonic or utilitarian) affecting customer experience, and resulting in outcomes (loyalty, purchase).

It is controlled by innovativeness, shopping enjoyment, and price consciousness.

• Integrative Customer Experience Framework: This framework (Kranzbühler et al. 2018) organizes the customer experiences literature according to the organizational and consumer level of analysis, and whether the works take a static (structural) or dynamic (process) view on customer

experience. It includes the dimensions of contextual conditions, employee-customer interactions, customer journeys, co-created experiences, consumer-consumer influences, personal characteristics, sequential effects, and negative impressions.

• Integrated Customer Experience Framework: This framework (Saini and Singh, 2019) considers service excellence, CROI, aesthetics, and playfulness to create a frictionless or pleasurable customer experience, resulting in a behavioral response.

Table 14 below summarizes the dimensions from the different frameworks and models described (Havif, 2017). The review of papers to understand retail customer experience shows that several models emerged in reaction to changes in the market environment. Most of the authors use the dimensions of customer experience devised for their specific research. There is an overlap in dimensions between the different frameworks and models studied, and there is no universal framework or model or variations of one.

Table 14. Overview of the dimensions of most used customer experience theoretical frameworks and models

Next, an extant review was conducted on how AR related to retail customer experience, to determine the customer experience dimensions and theoretical framework, model, or variation to serve as the basis for my research analysis.