Omnichannel Customer Journeys–Fragments of a Never-Ending Story?

TY - GEN

T1 - Omnichannel Customer Journeys–Fragments of a Never-Ending Story?

AU - Both, Alina Diana

AU - Steinmann, Sascha

AU - Chrysochou, Polymeros

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - While the potential of storytelling to create emotional and memorable connections to a brand has long been realised, today’s omnichannel brands face the challenge of telling their story across a multitude of touchpoints and channels, forming a multi-associative network for customers to navigate and make sense of. With an increasingly blurry boundary between content and commerce, fueled by new technologies and digital channels emerging and evolving rapidly within the current economic climate, the need for theoretical and methodological approaches that span the entirety of touchpoints at marketers’ disposal has grown. By proposing a framework and research agenda of customer touchpoints as narrative fragments, we strive to generate a customer-based understanding of meaning co-creation along the customer journey. This conceptual work represents an endeavour to contribute insights into new and emergent channels. As such, the approach presented herein will contribute to retail– and omnichannel marketing literature as well as retail branding theory and practice.

AB - While the potential of storytelling to create emotional and memorable connections to a brand has long been realised, today’s omnichannel brands face the challenge of telling their story across a multitude of touchpoints and channels, forming a multi-associative network for customers to navigate and make sense of. With an increasingly blurry boundary between content and commerce, fueled by new technologies and digital channels emerging and evolving rapidly within the current economic climate, the need for theoretical and methodological approaches that span the entirety of touchpoints at marketers’ disposal has grown. By proposing a framework and research agenda of customer touchpoints as narrative fragments, we strive to generate a customer-based understanding of meaning co-creation along the customer journey. This conceptual work represents an endeavour to contribute insights into new and emergent channels. As such, the approach presented herein will contribute to retail– and omnichannel marketing literature as well as retail branding theory and practice.

KW - Brand narratives

KW - Branding

KW - Customer journey

KW - Omnichannel retailing

KW - Sensemaking

KW - Storytelling

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-031-06581-1_4

DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-06581-1_4

M3 - Article in proceedings

SN - 9783031065804

SP - 31

EP - 38

BT - Advances in National Brand and Private Label Marketing - 9th International Conference, 2022

A2 - Martínez-López, Francisco J.

A2 - Gázquez-Abad, Juan Carlos

A2 - Ieva, Marco

PB - Springer, Cham

ER -