Abstract
The chapter aims to discuss the effects of online and offline touchpoints on customer experience and the effect of customer experience on brand performance, which will help to establish the omnichannel strategy. The results indicate that touchpoints (digital, physical, and human) positively influence customer experience dimensions (sensory, cognitive, affective, behavioral, and social) and explain up to 60% of its variability. Customer experience positively influences customer satisfaction and explains 62% of its variability. Customer satisfaction positively influences brand performance in the form of repurchase intentions, which improves sales revenue and explains 65% of its variability, and brand equity dimensions (awareness, associations, perceived quality, and loyalty), which explain around 45% of its variability. Thus, online and offline touchpoints are the major determinants of customer experience and brand performance, with no impact from previous experiences to mitigate the impact of customer dissatisfaction on repurchase intention.
TopMain Focus Of The Chapter
Many types of research have been conducted on building a conceptual model that describes the relationship between some types of touchpoints and customer experience, but there is no clear overall model that covers all types of online and offline touchpoints, customer experience, and brand performance. So, there is a gap in the area under study, which is not researched and practiced enough. This chapter aims to close this gap and provide a clear definition of the types of online and offline touchpoints that customers interact with brands through, as well as define the impact of implementing touchpoint integration on customer experience and brand performance. Thus, this chapter seeks to investigate how each touchpoint impacts customer experience and how that will impact the brand's performance. Also, investigate the impact of a customer's previous history on brand performance, which shows confusing results in previous studies.
The Study contributes to the body of knowledge regarding all types of touchpoints that customers interact with brands and how each type impacts customer experience, giving an overall image of the topic and a clear guide during the establishing of the omnichannel strategy.
Furthermore, no study was found about brands' performance in relation to achieving a superior customer experience has yet been conducted in the Egyptian market. The study will show the relationship between customer experience and brand performance in the Egyptian market, which will have a significant impact on the brands in Egypt to achieve superior brand performance and long-term competitive advantage.
The study adds to the kind of literature about the effect of customer previous history on brand performance in Egypt that no research has discussed before. It also investigates the impact of customers' previous experiences with brands in Egypt and whether brands can rely on this history to improve brand performance or mitigate any customer dissatisfaction without impacting brand performance.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Online-to-Offline (O2O) Commerce: O2O commerce is a business strategy that draws potential customers from online channels to make purchases in physical stores.
Digital Touchpoints: Customer interaction with digital tools (e.g., websites, emails, mobile applications, and non-human social interaction like Chatbots).
Brand Equity: refers to a value premium that a company generates from a product with a recognizable name when compared to its generic equivalent, Aaker (1991) defined it’s four basic dimensions as perceived quality, brand awareness, brand associations, brand loyalty.
Physical Touchpoints: Customer interaction with the store environment (for example, furniture, lighting, and music) and products (for example, packaging, colors, features, and ease of use).
Omnichannel: is a cross-channel strategy that integrates online/offline touchpoints and related channels to focus on giving customers seamless experiences.
Customer Satisfaction: is the degree of happiness that the customer feels, which results from the product or service's ability to meet the customer's desires, expectations, and needs ( Hellier et al., 2002 ).
Human Touchpoints: Customer interaction with employees or other customers, either in-store face-to-face or indirectly through the telephone or social media (e.g., Facebook).
Touchpoint: is any point of interaction with a customer or potential customer at any stage of the customer journey, before, during, or after the purchase of a brand’s product or service.
Repurchase Intention: is the judgement of an individual to purchase a product or service from the same company again, considering his current situation and potential circumstances ( Hellier et al., 2002 ).
Offline to Online (E-Commerce): Shifting from offline to online means that customers transfer the methods they use to purchase from brands from offline (stores) to online (using digital tools that brands create, like websites and mobile applications).