How to sustain the customer experience: an overview of experience components that co-create value with the customer

Nowadays the experience factor plays an increasingly important role in determining the success of a company’s offering. The literature on Customer Experience is growing fast and the debate among scholars and practitioners is fervent. While many studies explore such theme from a theoretical viewpoint, tools aimed at supporting marketing managers in devising the right stimuli to support an excellent Customer Experience are still scarce. In this perspective, this study sheds some light on the concept of Customer Experience, and on how the right environment and setting for the desired Customer Experience should be created in such a way as to contribute to the value creation for customers and the company itself. Drawing from the results of a survey submitted to several groups of customers, this paper attempts to understand the specific role of different experiential features in the success achieved by some well-known products. Following the empirical investigation, this work also suggests an interpretative model to support the marketing manager in generating the proper stimuli to activate the various components of the Customer Experience.