Customer Touchpoints: A Case Study

Customer touchpoints mean a medium or contact point where the customer and the company interact (Neslin, Grewal, Leghorn, et al. 2006). Dhebar (2013) defines customer touchpoints as “points of human, product, service, communication, spatial, and electronic interaction collectively constituting the interface between an enterprise and its customers over the course of customers’ experience cycles” (Dhebar 2013, p. 200) and this means touchpoints encompass every moment and place where interaction between the brand and customers. Customers increasingly experience the brand through multi-touchpoints and due to technological development, companies contact customers in diverse and new ways (Edelman 2010). For instance, marketers used to deliver their

First, consumer experiences can be divided into direct and indirect experiences. Direct experience includes physical product experience such as trial and mostly occurs when consuming the product. Indirect experience refers to the experience that occurs through other non-physical product experience such as marketing communication during an advertising campaign. When making a decision of purchase, consumers rely on both direct and indirect experiences. In most cases, they spent more time on indirect experiences such as searching product information online. However, their satisfaction with the product tends to be based on direct experience such as actual usage. Previous research explains the reason as direct product experiences provide consumers more complex, credible information and will trigger a more concrete mental construal (Hamilton and Thompson 2007). But in most cases, it is costly or impossible for companies to engage in direct experience with customers, such as product trial, although it is an effective way to form preferences. For that reason, customers more often and more easily encounter with indirect experiences and rely on them. The present study will consider customer experiences containing actual, physical product as direct experiences. Among all the touchpoints included in the study, some may contain direct product experience and others may not. Therefore, it

The FITs include any encounter initiated by brands as exemplified by advertisement and promotions through diverse channels. Customers might respond passively to FITs but marketers have better control over FITs compare to CITs. On the contrary, CITs are defined as any encounter with a manufacturer that is initiated by a customer. CITs used to be limited to customer complaints because customers would initiate the interaction mostly when there is a problem with the product. But the concept has broadened as more and more customers actively engage and initiate interaction with firms due to development of technologies (Bowman and Narayandas 2001). For instance, customers aggressively search for information online and actively engage with companies via social networks services. Recent studies show that CITs have higher response rates and prove more influential than FICs. As a consequence it becomes more important to managing CITs (Wiesel, Pauwels, and Arts 2001; Shankar and Malthouse 2007). Lastly, and to complete the classification, other-initiated touchpoints (OITs) refer to interactions and encounters among customers. OITs are important as the Internet has empowered consumers to communicate with one another. On the Web, consumers can easily reach out to other consumers’ opinions, reviews, and may even create their own