 RESEARCH AT CRANFIELD SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: ARE WE MEASURING THE RIGHT THINGS?
Dr Stan Maklan
Reader in Strategic Marketing
There is a need to update customer experience measurement and align it
with the nature of the firms’ offer to customers.
Marketing practice and research have
undergone a series of large-scale
transformations over the past 25 years,
shifting focus from creating fast-moving
consumer product brands to building customer
relationships through service marketing, and
now to creating compelling customer
experience. While acknowledging that
organisations are increasingly competing on
the basis of customer experience, academics
and practitioners are struggling to understand
and define the concept. This lack of specificity
is generating a mismatch between what
marketers are now trying to achieve and what
market research measures.
Maklan and Klaus argue that customer
experience is still being measured against
criteria more suited to evaluating product and
service marketing. Therefore, there is a need
to update customer experience measurement
and align it with the nature of the firms’ offer to
customers. The most widely researched and
used measure today is service quality. The
authors demonstrate that the notion of service
quality
cannot be extended to measure customer
experience. From their empirically validated
measure of experience quality of a UK
mortgage provider, the authors developed the
EXQ (Experience Quality) scale. The four
primary dimensions identified, within the
specific context of a UK mortgage provider,
are: peace of mind, outcomes focus, moments
of truth, and product experience.
Another example of customer experience in a
very different context is explored. The sports
tourism industry has long acknowledged
experience as a key marketing objective but is
yet to define it in a way that is actionable. The
typical focus has been on describing “what”
the experience is rather than enquiring about
“why” experiences drive behaviour. The aim,
therefore, of the study was to develop a
framework through which (sports) tourism
marketers can strategically identify, enhance
and deliver their offers.
Klaus and Maklan propose a conceptual
model of sports tourism customer experience
in the context of a mountain-biking extreme
RESEARCH AT CRANFIELD SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
sport camp. Customer experience in this
context is conceptualised as a threedimensional framework consisting of five
dimensions: hedonic pleasure, personal
progression, social interaction, efficiency and
surreal feeling.
The authors support the development of an
appropriate measure for the concept of
customer experience that, in two very diverse
contexts:
•
is based upon an overall cognitive and
emotional assessment of value from the
customer’s point of view rather than
evaluated against benchmarks or
expectations
•
captures the value-in-use of the
organisation’s offer, not just the
attributes of product and service
delivery
•
assesses, as much as is practical,
emotional responses as well as the
functional delivery of the organisation’s
promise
Although customer experience is far
more complex to measure, it is not all
encompassing. It is up to the
researcher to uncover what attributes
are in and out and what matters most
3.
Model customer experience for their
unique context
4.
Scales such as EXQ which identify
attributes of customer experience are
most strongly associated with the
marketing outcomes organisations are
trying to achieve. The attributes are not
likely to be captured in current market
assessments of service quality or
customer satisfaction.
Klaus P, & Maklan, S. (2011), ‘Bridging the Gap for
Destination Extreme Sports - A Model of Sports
Tourism Customer Experience: Integrating Social
Science with Marketing’, Journal of Marketing
Management, vol. 27, no. 13-14, pp. 1341–1365.
•
determines a reasonable focal time
period, sufficiently pre and post the
service delivery, to allow the customer
to assess the experience over time and
across channels and,
•
is validated against behavioural
measures.
The implications for the market researcher
are:
1.
2.
Maklan, S. & Klaus, P. (2011), ‘Customer Experience:
Are we Measuring the Right Things?’, International
Journal of Market Research, vol. 53, no.6, pp. 771–
791.
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Customer experience is an important
strategic objective
Management Theme: Marketing,
Sales and Client Relationships
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