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August 19, 2026Journal of Services Marketing

Reimagining customer experience as a 4E cognitive ecology in phygital service ecosystems

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Authors

PBPierre BerthonPDPhilip DesAutelsTRTamara Rabinovich

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Overview

Conceptual analysis models phygital customer experience as a distributed 4E cognitive ecology, suggesting that hybrid service design relies on seamless cognitive scaffolding and affordances.

Key Points

  • To reconceptualize phygital customer experience through 4E cognitive science (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) to clarify how hybrid service environments shape consumer sense-making, agency, and value creation.
  • Conducted a conceptual synthesis integrating phygital customer experience research, 4E cognitive science, and service design principles.
  • Reinterpreted existing phygital customer experience frameworks as distributed cognitive systems defined by driving forces, connectors, and experiential pillars.
  • Phygital services operate as cognitive ecologies in which consumer mental and affective processes are distributed across bodies, spatial layouts, digital interfaces, employees, and infrastructures.
  • Successful hybrid customer journeys depend on coherent environmental affordances, low recoupling costs, and affective continuity during transitions between digital and physical modes.
  • Connectors in service systems function as cognitive scaffolds and prostheses that lower friction and support customer agency.

Cite This Study

Berthon et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a8563c403308d306e2d718chttps://doi.org/10.1108/jsm-06-2026-0516
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