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

Purpose This paper reconceptualizes phygital customer experience (PH-CX) through the lens of 4E cognitive science, which understands cognition as embodied, embedded, enacted and extended. This study aims to clarify how hybrid service environments shape consumer sense-making, agency and value creation. In doing so, the paper extends the PH-CX framework by offering a cognitive and phenomenological account of how human-first phygital service logic operates. Design/methodology/approach The paper develops a conceptual analysis that integrates PH-CX research, 4E cognitive science and service design. Batat’s PH-CX framework is reinterpreted as a distributed cognitive system in which driving forces, connectors and experiential pillars shape how consumers perceive, act and create value across physical and digital service settings. Findings The analysis shows that phygital services operate as cognitive ecologies. Consumers’ cognitive and affective processes are distributed across bodies, spaces, interfaces, employees, communities and service infrastructures. Driving forces are understood as value-laden couplings, connectors as cognitive scaffolds and experiential pillars as phenomenological qualities of customer-environment interaction. Effective phygital experiences depend on coherent affordances, low recoupling costs and affective continuity as consumers move between digitalization and physicalization. Research limitations/implications As a conceptual paper, the framework requires empirical testing across service contexts. It also encourages in situ, embodied and phenomenological methods for studying phygital engagement. Practical implications Service organizations should design connectors as cognitive prostheses that reduce friction, clarify action possibilities and support customer agency. Social implications Well-designed phygital cognitive ecologies can improve inclusion, service access and collective well-being by supporting diverse customers, frontline employees and communities. Originality/value The paper provides a cognitive foundation for human-first phygital service design.