New Perspectives on Customer Relationships: How Relational Models Influence Customer Experience and How They Are Activated

Harald Pol*, Mirjam Galetzka, Ad Pruyn

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
131 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Much research has been conducted into the determinants of customer experience. However, these studies do not include relationship norms as a possible determinant of customer experience. Nevertheless, there are strong indications that the relationship norms used by a customer are an important factor in customer behavior and customer experience. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of relational models on customer experience and to explain possible differences in presence of relational models. This paper describes the results of two studies. The first study focuses on the effects of relational models on customer experience. This first study shows that the type of relationship has a strong influence on customer experience in terms of consumption emotions, customer satisfaction, and recommendation intention. Knowing that differences in the presence of relational models have a strong influence on customer experience, a second study focuses on finding a possible explanation for the differences in the presence of relational models. We hypothesize that differences in the presence of relational models can be explained by how organizations approach their customers and how customers perceive the organization. Especially, the perceived organizational involvement and freedom of choice as perceived by the customer play an important role. The second study, therefore, focuses on the influence of perceived organizational involvement and freedom of choice on relational models. The study shows that organizational involvement and freedom of choice have a significant impact on the activation of relational models. The findings are interesting for organizations that want to improve customer experience.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)29-51
Number of pages23
JournalJournal of relationship marketing
Volume19
Issue number1
Early online date22 Sept 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Keywords

  • Customer experience
  • Customer relationship(s)
  • Relational models
  • Relationship noms
  • Customer connections
  • 22/2 OA procedure

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'New Perspectives on Customer Relationships: How Relational Models Influence Customer Experience and How They Are Activated'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this