A Conceptual Model of Customer Experiences and Experience Quality: The Service Setting and The Customer's Perspective

在今日，有愈來愈多的顧客、經理人與學者開始了解體驗的重要性。對顧客來說，他們不再只是消費產品或服務，他們開始重視置身於商店時，所感受到的體驗感，並且顧客也願意花錢購買體驗。對管理者來說，他們致力於營造觸動人心與具吸引力的體驗，並嘗試全面地管理顧客與公司接觸的每一項體驗。從學者的觀點來看，認為體驗是一種經濟商品，消費體驗是可以被企業塑造的，學者們指出經濟的重心開始轉移為體驗，這呼應了正在蓬勃發展的體驗產業。 然而，探討體驗本質的實證研究仍然不多，本研究界定兩個研究焦點來探索顧客體驗：（1）研究顧客體驗的情感面，（2）所研究的體驗乃是發生於精心設計之服務場景。研究目的有二，其一為從顧客觀點探討顧客體驗的本質：根據消費者深入訪談的結果，歸納構成顧客體驗的五大要素與提出相關的概念架構和命題，五大要素分別為顧客本身、顧客與實體環境的互動、顧客與服務人員、其他顧客與同行夥伴的互動。第二，本研究探討顧客對於體驗品質的情感性知覺，並發展體驗品質的衡量工具、檢驗體驗品質與顧客滿意度和忠誠度的關係，研究結果驗證了體驗品質為較高階的構念，並發現體驗品質對顧客滿意度與忠誠度有正向影響。本研究亦提出關於研究應用、未來研究與研究限制的討論。Today, more and more customers, managers and scholars have become aware of the importance of experiences, which are characterized as satisfying customers’ psychic or personal needs. For customers, they are not merely consuming products or services. They care more about the experiences, which are provided by the stores, and they are willing to pay for experiences. As for managers, they have made more efforts to create touching and attractive experiences for customers, manage customers’ experiential journey with the companies, or even charge for experiences. For academic researchers, they view experiences as distinct economic offerings, which are different from goods and services. They believe that the focus of the economy has been transferred into experience (Pine and Gilmore, 1998, 1999; Schmitt, 1999; O’Sullivan and Spangler, 1998) and experience industries are rising (Toffler, 1970, O’Sullivan and Spangler, 1998). This study focuses on exploring the emotional aspects of customers’ experiences underlying the context of deliberately designed service settings. Two research objects are approached in this study. First, this research comprehensively explores the essence of customer experiences from the customer’s perspective. A qualitative study is conducted to find out the elements that constitute customers’ experiences, and a conceptual model that describes what is customer experience is thereby proposed. In this model, customer experience is made up of five elements (dimensions): the customers themselves and customers’ interactions with physical surroundings, service providers, other customers, and companions. Second, this research attempts to probe customers’ emotional perceptions of experience quality and to develop an instrument to measure this construct. This research clarifies the concept of experience quality by reviewing the literature, conducting qualitative studies, performing a procedure of scale development, testing the relative importance of dimensions, and examining the relationship among experience quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty. The findings verify that experience quality, as a higher-order construct, is made up five first-order constructs, which are demonstrated in the result of the qualitative study. The result of this research also reveals that experience quality has positive effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Relevant discussion of applications, future research, and limitations are also provided in the conclusion