Service Experiences

Presentation at 2006 Doctoral Consortium June 28th

By

Bo Edvardsson

Director Service Research Center, University of Karlstad Sweden

Many service providers recognize the value created by providing favorable, memorable customer experiences (for example IKEA, Ritz Carlton and Singapore Airlines). Value can be created by involving customers in the co-creation and/or personalization of their experiences (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004).

By extending the nature of the service experience into the pre-purchase arena organizations can:
add unique and personalized value to the service connect with the customer through exposure to the organizations norms and values learn more about the customers needs and desires to be used in service development and quality improvement efforts create a unique identity manage customer expectations and quality-in-use, and improve sales.

A service experience is a service process that creates the customers cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses, resulting in a mental mark, a memory (in line with
Johnston and Clark, 2001). The role of the pre-purchase service experience is to help customers assess the quality and value of the service in context, thus facilitating assessment and decision-making by the customer.

Customers can be involved in the testing of a service, like test driving a new car, allowing them to experience, at no risk, the nature of the service in order to enable them to assess not only the functional qualities, but also to experience the likely emotional qualities.

New tools/methods: 3D technology.. Service simulation methods and techniques

The service scape and the experience room can be used as theoretical points of departure. Data on customers behavior in the service process and their cognitive and emotional responses forms the basis for identifying and understanding experience drivers.

Research areas/research questions:

Develop a more solid theoretical framework for studying Service experiences than is suggested by e.g. Pine and Gilmore What are the key drivers of favorable customer experiences in different service contexts? How can services be test-drived before purchase and consumption? Describe and understand how customers can be involved in designing the prerequisites for service experiences Describe and understand how modern 3d technology can be used when test-driving services.