Customer Experience

Enhancement of customer experience and branded apps

Customer experiences occur in every stages of customer-brand relationship. As it is mentioned before enhancement of this relationship is vital for new marketing approach. Brands must use every touch points of customer experience to create better experience in order to have more loyal customers. Nowadays mobile devices are inseparable part of customers’ life and indisputably one of the most important parts of customer touch point to the brand.

In this section, common success factors of enhanced customer experience will be explained via different approaches of various academicians and practitioners and the applicability of these factors on branded apps as a mobile marketing tool will be discussed.

Extrinsic values are that a product is perceived as an instrument that is mean to an end. Extrinsic values refer that consumption is a prize because of its functional to accomplish a goal in product-customer relationship. On the other hand, “intrinsic value occurs in a consumption experience which it is prized for its own sake as an end in itself”. (ii) Self versus Other Oriented Values. Self oriented value occurs when customer appreciate the experience selfishly for her own sake. Other oriented value is another aspect of evaluation of experience where something is valued for the others’ sake for how they response to it. (iii) Active versus Reactive Values. Active values cause manipulation by its user. Reactive values result from reacting to object. In other words, “active value is done by an individual, reactive value is done to an individual” (Holbrook, 1996, p. 139). Eight different types of customer value occur in these three distinctions such as Efficiency, Play, Excellence, Aesthetics, Status, Ethics, Esteem and Spirituality. However, the complication of operational implementation of the typology such as subtle differences between status and esteem or ethics and spirituality has brought researchers to term of adaptation of the original typology. In this study, instead of original eight values of Holbrook’s typology the adaptation of Fernandez & Bonillo with six

Status value is active manipulation of customer’s consumption to have a positive impression on others and esteem value is reactive admiration of prestige which is related with customer’s possession (Fernández & Bonillo, 2009, p. 100). Those two values which are deeply interrelated and sometimes hardly distinguish from each other are used as one value in order to make more practical implementation (Fernández & Bonillo, 2009). In branded apps context, presenting the consumption of customer for the sake of favorable impression of his social network or the other who share the same experience and the expression of the others and social network is only possible by interactivity. Due to the nature of mobile, interactivity gives a chance to branded apps exchanging information between customers and brand or customer to customer which as it was mentioned before, viral marketing might have more trustful effect than push notifications. Also interactivity features of branded apps creates social value such as customers present their activities, buying or using the product, and see the others reaction and they response those reactions which create enhanced experience via social networks. In this study, social value will be considered as success factor whether branded apps provide