Customer Experience Management (CEM Master Marketing VU) - Complete summary of all ARTICLES 2025/2026

Articles: Customer experience management

Inhoudsopgave
Article 1: Lemon & Verhoef (2016)..................................................................1

Article 2: de Keyser et al. (2016).....................................................................3

Article 3: Homburg et al. (2015)......................................................................5

Article 4: Thomke et al. (2019)........................................................................7

Article 5: Reichheld. (2003)............................................................................8

Article 6: Reichheld. (2021)............................................................................9

Article 7: Gahler et al. (2023)........................................................................11

Article 8: Teixeira & Mendes (2019)...............................................................13

Article 9: van Vaerenbergh et al. (2019)........................................................14

Article 10: Gelbrich & Roschk (2010).............................................................16

Article 11: Herhausen et al. (2023)................................................................17

Article 12: Herhausen et al. (2019)................................................................18

Article 13: Harvard Business Review. (2020)..................................................20

Article 14: Miller et al. (2011).......................................................................21

Article 16: Homburg et al. (2005)..................................................................22

Article 17: Huang & Rust. (2018)...................................................................24

Article 18: Luca et al. (2016).........................................................................25

Article 19: Hume & Taylor. (2021).................................................................26

Article 20: Agrawal et al. (2020)....................................................................27

Article 21: Agrawal, Gans & Goldfarb (2022)..................................................28

Article 22: Agrawal, Gans & Goldfarb (2024)..................................................29

Article 23: Porter & Heppelmann (2014)........................................................30

Article 24: Porter & Heppelmann (2015)........................................................32

Article 25: Wortmann et al. (2020)................................................................33




Article 1: Lemon & Verhoef (2016)
Understanding Customer Experience throughout the Customer Journey
Main goal of the article

,To explain what customer experience means, how it differs from older
marketing concepts, and how companies can measure and manage it
across the entire customer journey.

Key concepts
1. Customer Experience (CX)
 CX is multidimensional: It includes a customer’s cognitive,
emotional, behavioral, sensory and social responses.
 It happens across the entire customer journey: from before the
purchase (prepurchase), during the purchase, and after (post
purchase).

2. Customer journey
 The customer journey is the full process customers go through –
including all touchpoints (interactions with the brand).
 There are 3 main stages:
- Prepurchase: searching, learning, considering.
- Purchase: choosing, paying, buying.
- Post purchase: using the product, engaging, giving feedback.

3. Touchpoints
Four types:
 Brand-owned (e.g., advertising, website).
 Partner-owned (e.g., retail partner, app store).
 Customer-owned (e.g., personal thoughts, payment choice).
 Social/external (e.g., online reviews, word-of-mouth).

How is CX different from older ideas like customer satisfaction?
 CX is broader – It’s not just about if you’re satisfied, but how you
feel, think, and react at every point in the journey.
 Older concepts like service quality, loyalty, and CRM are all part
of the history that led to the current focus on CX.

Measuring customer experience
 No perfect tool yet, but methods include:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
- Customer Effort Score (CES)
- Brand Experience Scales (like Brakus et al., 2009).

Challenge: how to measure CX across channels, devices, and time.

Managing Customer Experience
 Requires cross-functional teamwork: marketing, IT, HR and
logistics.
 Needs a customer-centric mindset and use of big data, analytics
and even AI.
 Designing smooth omnichannel experiences is key (e.g., no
friction between online and offline shopping.

,Key takeaways
 CX is a holistic, evolving process – not just a moment in time.
 Great CX means coordination all touchpoints, often with limited
control (e.g., reviews, social media).
 Firms should identify and improve “moments of truth” – crucial
moments that shape the overall experience.
 It’s essential to combine qualitative insights (emotions, stories)
with quantitative metrics (conversion rates, NPS).
 Future research is needed to better define, measure and optimize
CX.

Summary sentence: customer experience is a multidimensional,
dynamic process that happens throughout the customer journey and
includes every interaction a customer has with a brand – directly or
indirectly.




Figure 1 - Process model for customer journey and experience


Article 2: de Keyser et al. (2016)
Moving the customer experience field forward: Introducing the
touchpoints, context, qualities (TCQ) nomenclature

Key concepts
 The CX field has grown, but current definitions are too broad,
making CX unclear and difficult to manage.
 Aim: introduce the TCQ nomenclature (touchpoints, context,
qualities) as a precise, shared language to describe CX.
 TCQ helps academics identify research gaps and helps firms
design actionable CXM practices.

The TCQ framework

, Touchpoints
= all interactions between customers and firm.
 Control:
- Firm-controlled (store, staff, website) vs. non-firm-controlled
(reviews, other customers, influencers).
 Nature: human, physical, digital.
 Journey stage: pre-purchase, purchase, post-purchase.
 Insight: research focuses too heavily on firm-controlled
touchpoints, real journeys involve many external actors.

Context
= situational factors that shape how customers experience a touchpoint.
Four contextual layers:
1. Individual: mood, memories, physical condition, goals, budget.
2. Social: presence of others, norms, roles.
3. Market: competitors, complements, substitutes, ecosystems.
4. Environmental: economy, politics, infrastructure, weather.

Same touchpoint can feel very different depending on context.

Qualities
= attributes of the customers’ spontaneous responses.
Each exists on a continuum:
 Participation: passive <-> active.
 Dimensionality: cognitive, emotional, sensorial, social, behavioral.
 Valence: negative, neutral or positive.
 Ordinariness: every day or extraordinary.
 Time flow: short/monotonous or long/dynamic.

These captures how the experience feels.




Figure 2 - Visual summary of the TCQ components



Implications for CX research