Experience marketing: An empirical investigation

Abstract

Customer experience theory, research, and practice represent an evolving area of study within the marketing discipline. Despite its importance, the customer experience concept remains vague and lacks a thorough theoretical foundation. This study addresses this gap in the literature and examines the antecedents and consequences of customer experience from customer perspectives. The study provides a conceptual framework building from a qualitative study and the existing literature. This article includes a formal test of the framework using a large-scale survey to examine the experience of British customers with resort hotel brands. The results show that price perception, core services, and word of mouth have a direct impact on how customers interpret their experiences with resort hotel brands; perceived service quality plays a mediatory role in the relationship between servicescape, core service, and customer experience. Measuring the validation strength of customer experience upon brand loyalty by best fit in combination with cross-sample predictive validity models is a valuable contribution of this study.