Focus: Customer Experience

For some time now, the term customer experience has been a buzz word in marketing science and practice. "Customer experiences result from a customer's response to specific stimuli from the company before, during, and after the purchase of a product or service." (Bruhn & Hadwich, 2012). In this context, the concept of customer experience encompasses both emotional reactions in the form of customer experiences and cognitive processes with regard to the experiences that customers have. For companies, triggering positive customer experiences has now become an essential issue/requirement. The questions of the focus "Customer Experience" at the Department of Marketing start at this topic area. In addition to dealing with customer experience as a marketing science concept, the department has a special research interest in the area of online shopping experience.

Topics related to the following issues are particularly desired:

Questions in the area of general customer experience:

• What is an experience at all (from the consumer's perspective) or what is understood or perceived as an experience from the consumer's perspective?
• How can customer experiences be measured empirically?

Questions in the area of online shopping experience:

• How do consumers form expectations about a product they order online?
• What happens to customer expectations in the time between the formation of expectations and the delivery of the product?
• How can consumer expectations of products in online shopping be specifically aligned with (product) reality (e.g., presentation of products in the online store)?
• How are returns due to unfulfilled expectations perceived by consumers (returns experience) and how do they affect customer loyalty (e.g. word-of-mouth, repurchase)?
• How are selected measures to prevent returns perceived in relation to the returns experience?

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