Are you providing the “right” customer experience? The case of Banca Popolare di Bari

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to model customer experience (CE) as a “continuum”, labelled customer experience continuum (CEC). The paper adopts a CE quality construct and scale (EXQ) to determine the effect of CE on a bank's marketing outcomes. The paper discusses the study's theoretical and managerial implications, focusing on CE strategy design. Design/methodology/approach – The paper empirically test a scale to measure customer experience quality (EXQ) for a retail bank. The paper interviews customers using a means-end-chain approach and soft-laddering to explore their CE perceptions with the bank. The paper classifies their perceptions into the categories of “brand experience” (pre-purchase), “service experience” (during purchase), and “post-purchase experience”. After a confirmatory factor analysis, the paper conducts a survey on a representative customer sample. The paper analyses the survey results with a statistical model based on the partial least squares method. The paper tests three hypotheses first, Customers’ perceptions of brand, service provider, and post-purchase experiences have a significant and positive effect on their EXQ, second, EXQ has a significant and positive effect on the marketing outcomes, namely share of wallet, satisfaction, and word-of-mouth, and third, the overall effect of EXQ on marketing outcomes is greater than that of EXQ's individual dimensions. Findings – The results of the statistical analysis support the three hypotheses. Practical implications – Banks should focus their CE strategies on the CEC and not on single encounters, tailoring marketing actions to specific stages in a customer's CE process. Different organisational units interacting with customers should be integrated into CE strategies, and marketing and communication budgets should be allocated according to CEC analysis. The model proposed in this paper enables the measurement of the quality of CE and its impact on marketing outcomes, thus enabling continuous improvement in CE. Originality/value – The research proposes a different view of CE by modelling the interaction between company and customer as a continuum (CEC). It provides further empirical validation of the EXQ scale as a means of measuring CE. It also measures the impact of CE on a bank's marketing outcomes. It discusses the guidelines for designing an effective CE strategy in the banking industry.