Frontiers in Service Karlstad 2010

Dr Stan Maklan!email: s.maklan@cranfield.ac.uk!

EXQ – An Empirical Construct of Customer Experience Quality

Dr Phil Klaus!email: phiipp.klaus@cranfield.ac.uk!

2 Frontiers in Service

Call for a measure of customer experience

•  Creating superior customer is a key objective for service organisations (Verhoef et al. 2009) in their efforts to build customer loyalty (Badgett, Boyce and Kleinberger 2007). "

•  Focus of research as it is the key determinant of consumersʼ service quality evaluation: “By definition, a good customer experience is good customer service, thus the customer experience is the service” (Berry et al. 2006, p.1). "

•  A corresponding scale needs to be developed to evaluate the customer experience quality from the customerʼs point of view (Verhoef et al. 2009). "

•  “Scale [development] must go hand-in-hand with conceptual development of the construct [customer service] itself” (Brakus et al. 2009, p. 52). "

3 Frontiers in Service

Stage 1:" Scale Generation and

Initial Purification"

Stage 3:" Reliability and Validity

Assessment"

Stage 2:" Scale Purification

through EFA"

Stage 4:" Conceptual Framework and SEM connection to

outcomes"

- Insight from literature to choose context - 30 in-depth interviews - Initial pool of items - Readability Check (n=10) - 7 experts assess face and construct validity - Q-sorting (8 categories) - Initial purification and categorization (a)n=7 (b)n=5 -Produced 37 items in 5 dimensions

- Collect responses from representative sample (n=75) - Exploratory factor analysis (on 5-dimensional model) - Assess content validity, scale reliability and validity - Develop purified scale with 19 items in four dimensions for next stage

- Additional representative sample (n=218) - Confirmatory factor analysis on 4-dimensional model - Assess factor structure and dimensionality of scale - Assess model fit - Assess scale and construct reliability and discriminant validity - Final EXQ scale of 19 items in four dimensions

- Test salience of EXQ scale in explaining variances and predictive ability to important customer experience outcomes: customer satisfaction, loyalty, and word-of-mouth intentions

Qualitative Enquiry and Initial Purification

Purification and Refinement

Final Refinement and Validation

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Dimensions of Customer Experience Quality (EXQ)!

Peace of Mind! Outcome Focus! Moments of Truth!

Product Experience!

Expertise" Inertia" Flexibility" Freedom of choice"

Process ease" Result focus" Pro-activity" Cross-product comparison"

Relationship focus (versus transaction)" Past experience" Risk perception" Comparison necessity"

Convenience retention" Common grounding" Interpersonal skills" Account management"

Familiarity" Service recovery"

Independent advice"

5 Frontiers in Service

Peace of Mind

Outcome Focus

Moments of Truth

Product Experience

Freedom of choice"

Cross product comparison"

Comparison necessity"

Account management"

Flexibility"

Pro-activity"

Risk perception"

Interpersonal skills"

Service recovery"

Inertia"

Result focus"

Past experience"

Common grounding"

Expertise"

Process ease"

Relationship V transaction"

Convenience retention"

Familiarity"

Independent advice"Loyalty

Word-of-Mouth

Customer Satisfaction

Customer Experience

Quality (EXQ)

.86

.94

.63

.69

.61

.71

.66

6 Frontiers in Service

Customer experience quality is the customer's assessment of all attributes of their

dealings with a service provider that explains their purchase behavior. Its dimensions

are product experience, outcome focus, moments-of-truth, and peace-of-mind

(POMP).

Our definition

7 Frontiers in Service

EXQ dimensions’ impact on marketing outcomes

Standard Path Estimates"

Customer Satisfaction" Loyalty" Word-of-Mouth"

Peace of mind" 0.90" 0.72" 0.40"

Outcome focus" 0.09" 0.20" 0.20"

Moments of truth" 0.04" 0.13" 0.09"

Product experience" 0.10" 0.09" 0.04"

8 Frontiers in Service

Explanatory power of EXQ vs customer satisfaction

8

Customer Satisfaction" Loyalty" Word-of-

Mouth"

EXQ" 0.63" 0.86" 0.94"

Customer Satisfaction" NA" 0.65" 0.87"