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Understanding cultural activity involvement of loyalty segments in the performing arts

Purpose–The purpose of this paper is to describe and understand dimensions of cultural activity involvement and the relationship between cultural activity involvement and behavioural loyalty. Design/methodology/approach–Semi-structured in-depth interviews with 47 customers of a theatre were held. Findings–The study shows that the concept of cultural activity involvement consists of six dimensions: attraction, centrality, self-expression, social bonding, cultural transmission and financial contribution. Three customer segments are taken into consideration according behavioural loyalty levels: incidental spectators, interested participants and the core audience. There are large differences between the three customer segments regarding cultural activity involvement. Research limitations/implications–Introspection might have decreased the reliability. As the study is a case study, problems with external validity are recognised. Practical implications–Given the decline of subsidies in the arts world, it becomes more important to attract more visitors and to increase spending. Performing arts organisations might attract more visitors in case they provide additional services which enable cultural transmission. Moreover, the study shows that certain visitors are willing to contribute additional money to the arts. Originality/value–Current studies about leisure involvement focus on recreation and distinguish four dimensions of involvement. This study focuses on cultural activity involvement and explores these four dimensions, but also shows there are two new dimensions. This study contributes to a further understanding of the relationship between cultural activity involvement and behavioural loyalty.

Building customer loyalty with augmented reality: current and future trends.

Service quality or customer experience: what drives cultural heritage satisfaction and loyalty?

Previous research suggests that in today’s experience economy, service is no longer the key determinant and that customer experience has taken over. However, few studies compare the relative impact of service quality and customer experiences on outcomes. The aim of this quantitative study is to examine the separate effects of service quality and customer experience on satisfaction, revisit intentions and word-of-mouth communication. Contrary to expectations, service quality has a larger effect on outcomes than customer experience. The mediation analysis shows very small indirect effect sizes, suggesting that that customer experience hardly mediates the relationship between service quality and the three outcomes. The conclusion is that measuring service quality remains essential to explaining consumer behaviour in the experience economy.

Business Customer eXperience Alignment Framework

From the article: Globalization and technological innovation has led to an increasing competition between telecommunication service providers and has eroded traditional product- and service-based differentiation. One way to gain a competitive advantage is to create distinctiveness by improving customer experience in such a manner that it leads to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. One of the drivers to improve the customer experience is the service interface. To improve this service interface, organizations must get insight into their customer interaction process. The amount of data about customers and the service provider processes is increasing and becoming more readily available for analysis. Process mining is a technique to provide insight into these processes. In this paper, a framework is presented to improve the customer satisfaction by alignment of the business service delivery process and the customer experience by applying process mining.

Mastering Meaningful Customer Connections

Within large service organizations there are currently two trends visible. These trends seem to be diametrically opposed. On the one hand organizations face increasing price pressure and thus a pressure to cut costs. One of the consequences of this trend is that organizations are increasingly encouraging customers to make more use of digital communication channels. At the same time, companies find it important to know their customers in order to respond adequately to their needs. To do this, organizations must have a certain degree of personal involvement to their customers and they must have regular personal contact. It is assumed that both trends – digitisation and personalisation – will have a strong impact on customer experience and (perhaps) on the relational models customers use. If it is true that relational models - so the way in which people perceive and assess a relationship - play a role in the perception of the customer, it is also interesting to know if it is possible to influence these relational models. During the last fifty years much research has been done into the possibilities to influence customers by using subliminal priming techniques. In these techniques thoughts and feelings are unconsciously activated by showing people certain words or images (eg Bargh, Chen & Burrows, 1996; Dijksterhuis, 2005). In recent years a number of experiments were performed in which customers were unconsciously primed at some type of relationship (eg Aggarwal, 2004; McGraw & Tetlock, 2005; Tuk, Verlegh, Smidts & Wigboldus, 2009). These experiments showed that it is possible to activate a certain type of relationship. The experiments however the researchers used scenario’s based on an interpersonal relationship, and often to a fictitious relationship. The question is whether priming techniques also work for an already existing and more complex relationship between an organization and its customers. From 2010-2013 we conducted research for six large service providers in banking, insurance, utilities and social welfare to discover what the customer experience of these organisations, what role relational models played in customer experience and whether it was possible to influence these relational models. The research project has provided answers to the following questions: - Which relational models are used by customers and what is the influence of these models on customer experience? - What is the influence of digitisation in customer communication on relational models and customer experience? - What is the influence of personalisation in customer communication on relational models and customer experience? And finally, - Is it possible to influence relational models (and customer experience) by using specific words and images that are associated with relational models (relational framing)?

Engagement-based loyalty : the effects of social media engagement on customer loyalty in the travel industry

In this article, we investigate the relation between customer loyalty and social media engagement. Two dimensions of customer loyalty are considered: affective and conative loyalty. We distinguish two forms of social media engagement: consuming of social media (passive engagement) and contribution to social media (active engagement). In a survey among 1,050 customers of a travel agency, the level of engagement of customers with the company’s social media activities is measured in relation to their degree of loyalty. Results show a partial positive relationship between social media engagement and customer loyalty: only consuming social media is directly related to affective loyalty.