Lecoeuvre, L, Turner, R orcid.org/0000-0002-4139-7548 and Kuppelwieser, VG (2021) Customer experience in the B2B area: The impact of age-related impressions. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 58. 102216. ISSN 0969-6989
Abstract
Services are dyadic experiences and many of these experiences require personal relationships for service provision. The co-acting parties' early impressions shape their unique expectations regarding, for example, appearance, behavior, and age. In a business-to-business (B2B) context, for example, younger employees might create a favorable impression in design-related tasks, while older employees might create a favorable impression in engineering tasks. The business partner subsequently contemplates the impression made by the individual's age (hereafter referred to as age impression) and ascribes certain competences to the individual.
This paper emphasizes the role of the others' age impressions in a working context. More specifically, a qualitative study's results highlight the impact of age impressions on service expectations and perceptions. The results identify several dimensions of age impressions that allow for adapting service personnel to a B2B context. This paper fills a void in the age-related marketing literature because it focuses on the others' age impression rather than the individual's perception. The paper also contributes to recent customer experience (CX) literature, as it emphasizes the context factors' role in the service encounter. Furthermore, this paper is one of the rare CX studies in a B2B context and enriches research in the CX's adaptability in such contexts.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This is an author produced version of an article published in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Customer experience; CX; Customer journey; Age; Business-to-business; B2B; Purchase |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Civil Engineering (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Jun 2020 11:11 |
Last Modified: | 24 Feb 2022 01:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102216 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:162135 |