Pieter Verhoef

Understanding customer experience throughout the customer journey

Understanding customer experience and the customer journey over time is critical for firms. Customers now interact with firms through myriad touch points in multiple channels and media, and customer experiences are more social in nature. These changes require firms to integrate multiple business functions, and even external partners, in creating and delivering positive customer experiences. In this article, the authors aim to develop a stronger understanding of customer experience and the customer journey in this era of increasingly complex customer behavior. To achieve this goal, they examine existing definitions and conceptualizations of customer experience as a construct and provide a historical perspective of the roots of customer experience within marketing. Next, they attempt to bring together what is currently known about customer experience, customer journeys, and customer experience management. Finally, they identify critical areas for future research on this important topic.

The effectiveness of direct response radio commercials: Results of a field experiment in The Netherlands

Radio is becoming increasingly popular as an advertising medium. At the same time, more and more companies are integrating direct marketing in their communication strategies. Considers the influence of the day of the week, the time of the day, the position of an ad in the commercial break, the length of the commercial break and the type of the preceding program on two effectiveness measures: responses per rating point and responses per cost using a field experiment. A total of 111 commercial spots, covering two campaigns, were broadcast on two radio stations in The Netherlands. Tobit analysis is used to test the influence of the different variables. The most effective direct response radio commercials are those broadcast on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and those broadcast between 2.00 p.m. and 4.00 p.m.