Contemporary approaches studying customer experience in tourism research

Book description

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Pine & Gilmore (1999) have presented the experience as the next step in what we call the progression of economic value. Hence, the customer experience is transformed into a distinctive value that could be an axis of differentiation into the marketing strategy of the company. Unlike other sectors, the tourism provides an intensive experience based on a set and complex interactions between tourists and service providers (Yachin, 2020). The experience concept takes a fresh impetus by considering the customer journey as a basis, which will take fully the experience concept in its complexity. It is a plethora of encounters involving the pre-experience, an active tourism experience and a reflective post-tourism experience (Yachin, 2020). As mentioned in Yachin (2020, Cederholm & Hultman, 2010)-“Close interactions with tourists are an integral part of their daily operations”. These encounters presents a rich source of experiential knowledge important to shine the light on it, as the different parts of customer journey will enable tourism companies, to learn from customers on the first level  and to develop and readjust their marketing on the second level. To benefit from the experience as a source of knowledge (Jaziri, 2019), marketing researchers should rethink the use of conventional studying methods of the customer experience in tourism sector (as customer survey..) and to migrate to an innovative approaches and new related methods or through techniques’ combination (example: the use of interpretive approach), that will grasp the complexity of customer experience and can paint the customer’ latent desires.

To this regard, this book aims to present the contemporary approaches and related methods for studying the customer/tourist experience along the three main stages of the customer journey. Different methods should be applied to understand and to evaluate the customer experience before, during and after the experience.

Viewed in this way, the book will highlight not only a holistic view of the customer experience in tourism research, but also on considering its study in terms of a sequential process related to a set of tourism stakeholders.

We adopt the holistic definition inspired from the work of Gdovykh & Tasci (2020), and that of McColl-Kenney et al (2015), the definition provides a holistic nature  of the concept, it involves the emotional, cognitive ,sensorial, and conative responses, on a spectrum of negative to positive, evoked by all stimuli (direct & indirect contact with the Service provider, brand..) encountered in pre, during, and post phases of consumption affected by situational and brand-related factors , across the a multiple touch points during the customer journey, filtered through personal differences of consumers, eventually resulting in differential outcomes related to consumers and brands (Godovykh &Tasci, 2020).

In line with McColl-kennedy et al (2015), there is a little empirical support of understanding the CX as a process involving various channels and touch points- hence, this book is looking for contributions that are looking to deeply understand the set of interactions joining the customer-company dyadic while mapping out the interactions with other possible stakeholders in tourism research.

Treating the experience concept through different conceptualizations has led to limit the capturing of the customer experience itself, in fact this problem resulted from the limitation resulted from the methodologies chosen. Generally, the tourism field investigates the CX by focusing on the self-reported of past experience, forgetting the essence of the experience and the delusive nature of CX changing at touch points with the implied stakeholders and changing equally along the different series of experiences lived with the company and forming the consumption’s lifetime. Hence, the CX needs to be measured moment by moment. To capture the totality of tourism experience at pre-visit, onsite and post-visit stages with the measurement of its different components.

This book is an endeavor to push academics as well tourism managers (service providers and destination responsible)to remodel their way of thinking about the customer experience and, hence to readapt their practices and research employed methods.

Book objectives

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• To discuss and provide adequate analytical frameworks, tools and new methods.
• To explore the adoption and implementation of approaches to managing and marketing customer experiences in various tourism contexts and industries, and
• To present and discuss case studies illustrating approaches adopted, methods implemented and best practices in addressing related issues.

Subject/topic description

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• This book bridges the gap in contemporary literature by carefully investigating the contemporary approaches studying customer experience in tourism research.
• The book focuses on new methods adopted in studying the customer experience. An emphasis will be particularly allocated to social behavioral (ethno-marketing, phenomenology and psychoanalytic approaches by presenting them and their respective techniques. Along the philosophical orientation and facet theory will be discussed  in capturing the customer experience along the customer journey lived along the tourism channels as well as the new quantitative researches supporting the use of innovative techniques studying CX.
• The book concludes by offering strategic management and marketing implications and recommendations for tourism businesses and destinations to facilitate them to successfully create, manage, market and evaluate tourism experiences.

Table of contents

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The book will be composed of two main parts and submissions related to (but not limited to):

Part I – theoretical part

The part I aims to present theoretical chapters presenting the contemporary approaches and their contribution by giving a fresh perspective studying the CX in tourism. This part will present an overview of the evolution in term of approaches modeling the customer experience,. In this case, the presentation of this evolution, will focus on the traditional approaches of consumer modeling and their limitations to modeling a more complex customer experience influenced by the macro micro environmental evolution, the multiplicity of situations and the essence of the hedonic, emotional, irrational side playing a fundamental role to understand his behavior. It follows a brief introduction of the postmodern consumer.

Hereafter, the Sub-thematic areas that contributors can treat:

1. Presenting the different paradigms of studying the customer experience. Especially, the postmodernism will be scrutinized.
2. Discussing the recent approaches of customer experience while presenting the link between the paradigms/theories and their respective approaches. As example, the interpretive consumer research approach could be stressed (ICR) which is related to the consumer culture theory (CCT, Belky& Sherry, 2007).
3. Emphasizing the crucial role of sociology, anthropology and ethnology into the marketing methodology studying customer experience in tourism field. Authors may provide some examples. To that end, seminal approaches are expected to be stressed as well as their related examples regarding the CX in tourism marketing, principally:
4. The ethno marketing, defined as the application of the ethnology to study the consumer behavior in marketing, will be highlighted while presenting its related techniques.
5. The phenomenology approach, which takes in the whole the complexity of the consumption experience.
6. The revisiting of the psychoanalytic approach, by focusing on the technique of the subjective personal introspection (SPI).  In this case, Holbrook (2015) stressed the crucial role of the psychoanalytic approach to apply to marketing and consumer research and the contribution of the psychodynamic of Freud for the consumer modeling.
7. Conceptual development/s in CX and consumer behavior in tourism

Part II – methodological part

The part II aims to study the CX along the Customer journey through the contemporary approaches and to mapping out the role of stakeholders in co-creating the experience with the customer on the basis of SDL-paradigm (Vargo ad Lush, 2004, 2020). Hence, this books call to study the CX at the different phases, i.e. the pre-consumption, the consumption and the post- consumption.

Hereafter, the Sub-thematic areas that contributors can treat

1. Studying as well as the CX components or each component separately
2. CX as a source of experiential knowledge (Jaziri, 2019). Thereof, the externalization methods are required, to address the different experience dimensions. Researchers are invited to propose the adequate method combination acquiring this customer data and to use it for an effective business activities. Moreover, the information’ analysis issued from the customer experience is relevant to understand customer’s practices and the interactions across multiple channels. 
3.  CX relationship with antecedents issued from the experiences cape (physical dimension as well as social interaction, situational factors, individual characteristics.), the Customer experiences are uniquely and contextually interpreted (McColl-Kennedy et al, 2015).
4. CX relationship with consequences (outcomes related to each CX’ component, satisfaction, customer engagement, customer co-creation, and loyalty)
5. Proposing new measures of CX on the basis of innovative methods, by using a combination of different methods integrating the experience sampling method by interacting with people in natural settings, and other techniques
6.  Systematic analysis applied to CX, enabling dissecting the CX processes into sequences of activities
7. Empirical support of applying new techniques to capture  emotions states before, during and after visit, as for example applying the moment-based psychophysiological techniques and/or a new combinations of a set of methods (experience sampling, experiments)
8. Proposal of measures capturing the sensory component of the CX along the customer journey.
9. Empirical support for using the psychophysiological research techniques in capturing and measuring the tourist experience.

Case studies relating to consumer behaviour and experience, which is changing due to current pandemic.

Manuscript submission information

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Chapter submission guidelines

Looking forward to receiving original work and quality-oriented chapters without plagiarism or copyright issues. If any figures/tables in the chapter are reprinted, permission from the copyright holder is necessary. The publisher can provide instructions. Unethical/plagiarized works are not being considered.

Proposal/extended abstract submission 31 March, 2021

The interested authors/contributors may submit a proposal of Max. 1500 words to the editors by emailing it to:[email protected], [email protected].

The proposal should contain this information :

• The chapter title,
• Author(s)’ name(s), affiliation,
• Contact information,
• Short abstract of 250 words
• Chapter proposal
• At least 6 Keywords

Deadlines

31 March 2021	Proposal/extended abstract submission deadline (max. 1,500 words including references)
5 April 2021	Notification of proposal/extended abstract acceptance
17 May 2021	Full chapter submission deadline (5,000–6,000 words including references)
30 June 2021	Revised chapter submission deadline
10 July  2021	Notification of chapter acceptance

This book will be released in December 2021

References

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Bray , J.P. (2008).  Consumer Behaviour Theory: Approaches and Models , provided by Bournemouth University,http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/10107/1/Consumer_Behaviour_Theory__Approaches_%26_Models.pdf

Foxall, G.R. (2001).Foundations of consumer behaviour analysis, Marketing Theory, 1(2), 165–199.

Godovykh, M and ,Tasci, A.D (2020). Customer experience in tourism: A review of definitions, components, and measurements , Tourism management perspectives, 35, 1-19.

Holbrook , M.B (2015). Some reflections on psychoanalytic approaches to marketing and consumer research, Marketing Theory, Commentary, vol. 15,1, 13–16.

IJCHM-04-2015-0192

Jaziri, D (2019). The advent of customer experiential knowledge management approach (CEKM): The integration of offline & online experiential knowledge, Journal of Business Research, 94(1), pp.241-256, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.05.029

Jaziri-Bouagina, D. &Triki, A (2014). From Postmodernism to Postmodern Consumer. The Impact on the Consumption Theory ,Postmodern Openings, 5 (2), .99-117

Johye Hwang, SoobinSeo, (2016) "A critical review of research on customer experience management: Theoretical, methodological and cultural perspectives", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 28 (10), pp.2218-2246, https://doi.org/10.1108/

McColl-Kennedy, J.R., Gustafsson, A., Jaakkola, E., Klaus, P., Radnor, Z.J., Perks, H. and Friman, M. (2015), "Fresh perspectives on customer experience", Journal of Services Marketing, 29 (6/7), 430-435. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-01-2015-0054.

Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The experience economy: work is theatre & every business a stage. Harvard Business Press.

Rather, R. A. (2020). Customer experience and engagement in tourism destinations: the experiential marketing perspective, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 37(1), 15-32.

Rather, R.A., Hollebeek, L.D., &Rasoolimanesh, S. (2021). First-time vs. repeat tourism customer engagement, experience, and value co-creation: An empirical investigation. Journal of Travel Research, Forthcoming.

Sotiriadis, M., &Gursoy, D. (2016). The Handbook of Managing and Marketing Tourism Experiences. Emerald Group Publishing.

Smit, B., &Melissen, F. (2018). Sustainable Customer Experience Design: Co-Creating Experiences in Events, Tourism and Hospitality. Routledge.

Vargo, S. L., Lusch, R. F., Akaka, M. A., & He, Y. (2020). Service-dominant logic. The Routledge Handbook of Service Research Insights and Ideas

Yachina, M (2020). The ‘customer journey’: Learning from customers in tourism experience Encounters ,Tourism Management Perspectives.