Synthesizing the customer experience concept: A multimodularity approach

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyse the customer experience (CX) literature by applying a modularity approach. To understand in greater depth the roots of modularity in the CX literature and its implications for future research going forward, we adopt co-citation analysis to track the transformation of the CX literature from 1984 to 2021 with 546 articles published in business and management journals in four intellectual time periods (1984–2005, 2006–2010, 2011–2015, and 2016–2021). The results show evidence of a vibrant multivocal CX literature landscape, with a dynamic and evolving intellectual structure staffed by a coalition of intellectual inputs from the three major marketing systems and their corresponding logics – service marketing logic, experiential marketing logic, and branding logic. Based on this finding, a new modular CX framework is presented, one that weds a firm’s multi-logic response to a modular view of consumption. It then concludes with relevant opportunities for future research directions and provides novel applications for managers.