Online Versus Face-to-Face: How Customer-to-Customer Interactions Impact Customer Experience Behaviors: An Abstract

Service dominant logic (SDL; e.g., Vargo and Lusch 2004, 2008) and customer engagement research (e.g., Hollebeek et al. 2016) over the past two decades have led to an increased focus on the customer experience journey and its subsequent challenges (e.g., Lemon and Verhoef). Given the increasingly connected world, organizations must now try to manage multiple touchpoints in the customer experience journey; one of these touchpoints being customers interactions with other customers. While customer-to-customer interactions can present a challenge to organizations, this research seeks to find the opportunity in these connections. Specifically, this research will examine how both online and face-to-face customer-to-customer interactions impact customer engagement behaviors, as well as objective organizational outcomes (e.g., actual purchases in a retail establishment). The present research seeks to examine how different levels/types of customer-to-customer interactions impact the customer experience (customer engagement behaviors (CEBs; Hollebeek et al 2016)) as well as organizational outcomes. Specifically, this research will look at two different partner-owned customer touchpoints and their impact on the customer experience. These include: (1) Online customer-to-customer connections (e.g., F.B. group tied to the retail establishment, partner-owned touchpoint) and (2) Face-to-face customer-to-customer connections (e.g., group of customers formed by the establishment, partner-owned touchpoint).