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.