1. Introduction
Customer experience marketing is one of the key strategies adopted by the business organisations to focus their marketing efforts in the direction to improve customer experience and to enhance customer engagement with their product and service. In the contemporary environment with the emergence of digitalization and technologies, customer experience marketing can be used to develop the strategy in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer’s (B2C) context. However, appropriateness of different strategies is based on the type of experience demanded by the customers of specific products or services. In this regard, the article tends to discuss how the business organisations can adopt customer experience strategy in their B2B and B2C context, the importance of such strategy, and types of customer experiences. For comprehending the theoretical perspectives critically, the paper will further investigate practical case studies of customer experience marketing strategy.
2. Adopting Customer Experience Strategy in B2B And B2C Context
Customers experience a standout as a new dimension of marketing thinking, where the marketers are engaged in facilitating unique customer experiences throughout different psychological and physical dimensions. In this regard, Hill, (2012) has considered four streams of thought consumer experience strategy such as
- consumer experience dimensions
- value creation
- consumer interface dimension
- communication options.
When applying these streams of customer experience strategy in B2B and B2C context, it is important to understand the relative complexity involved in B2B companies’ customers and buying patterns therefore such businesses need specific strategies for differentiating themselves via customer experience. Maechler, et al., (2016) indicate that in adopting customer experience strategy, B2B businesses need to understand that there is no one single customer in B2B and therefore it is impossible to ensure a great and consistent experience for all.
According to the first stream of consumer experience strategy, there are different dimensions of consumer experiences such as entertainment, information, and emotional dimensions that should be considered when forming any product or service for the consumers. However, it is important to understand that there can be variations in the dimensions of consumers’ experience in the B2B and B2C contexts. When the B2C customers are mainly searching for entertainment and emotional dimensions, most of the B2B customers search for information dimensions to drive customer experience processes. This is so because of B2B Peter’s battle for low-cost, speed, ease of accessing through digitalisation of process.
The second stream of value creation covers to address the customer experience dimensions identified in the first stream for the creation of a new experience value curve. Applying the dimensions of the B2B and B2C context, the stream identifies the influence of complex buying behaviours and rational decision-making in the B2B business is critical. Like B2C marketers, B2B marketers need to consider their customer experience is not based on the total cost of ownership as a decision factor. Rather, the customers in the B2B environment decide to interact and engage with a specific business organisation based on the total cost of ownership.
The third stream of the customer interface dimension plays a vital role in differentiating how the customer experience strategy should consider the adoption of an online environment or in a retail environment. Since B2B companies have relatively more offerings and services for their customers compared to the B2C companies, therefore customer experience marketing should be adopted by tailoring it according to the individual customer’s needs, where each of such need was bundled together. Therefore, customer experience marketing for the B2B organisations needs to belong, complex, and technical and based on ongoing interaction of services and sales touchpoints. Most of the B2B organisations, technological applications are used to offer ongoing connectivity between the organisation and its customers. However, the B2C organisation may not require such technological interaction between the business and the customers due to the non-fragmented nature of experience in operations for them.
The fourth stream of the customer experience strategy such as communication options is also different for the B2B and B2C context. In adopting the customer experience marketing strategy for these two different contexts, marketers need to understand that B2C customers get information about the product and service through the mass media and online platforms easily. For this purpose, the range of social media platforms is available to be used as a platform for the co-creation process where the customers are engaged in the creation of the product and services of the business. Contrarily, a direct communication approach is identified as appropriate for B2B customers. In this regard, business to business customer experience needs to take account of points of influence (POI) and moment of truth (MOT) as the key aspects.
The point of influence (POI) is the exact moment when a consumer is interacting with a product or when a shopper is influenced to make a purchase. Creative brands make the most of these points of influence by winning over consumers’ senses.
Moment of truth (MOT) in marketing, is the moment when a customer/user interacts with a brand, product or service to form or change an impression about that particular brand, product or service.
3. The Importance of Customer Experience Marketing Strategy
Besides, the business organisations whether in the B2C or B2B market segments need to consider the importance of customer experience marketing strategy in multiple dimensions such as tangible and intangible dimensions. Firstly, by addressing the emotional or informational dimensions of the customer experience, these businesses can encourage the customers to purchase from the brand. Consequently, such purchase behaviours lead to brand loyalty for that specific product or service. It is important to indicate that most of the products are required to be sold to the customer more than once. Brand loyalty is an important feature of the contemporary business, where the loyal customers do not only purchase things from the business organisations frequently but also try to disperse information about the brand’s production services to the other potential customers through word of mouth, ultimately helping the business to spread their business to a larger market.
The importance of customer experience marketing can also be analysed from increased customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is an important key success factor for a business organisation, where satisfied customers help the business and co-creating values in the long run for a sustainable competitive advantage. For increasing customer satisfaction, the needs and expectations are required to be met. In this regard, business marketers need to investigate the diverse patterns of such needs and expectations for the customers.
4. Types of Customer Experience Examples
In this regard, when pursuing the customer experience marketing strategy business organisation needs to focus on different types of customer experiences to drive perceived value for the B2B and B2C customers. Such experiences can be classified as physical, informational, emotional, and spiritual experiences. As far as the first experiences concerns such as physical experience, customers search for tangible benefits associated with the brand. Physical experience is the lowest level of customer experience.
Subsequently, the informational experience is based on the second level in the higher-order position in the experience hierarchy. In this regard, by providing adequate information to the consumers, the brand marketers help the business organisations and moving up the value curve. By fulfilling the informational experience of the customers, the marketers allow them to discover new opportunities. Similarly, the provision of adequate information is also associated with peaceful feelings as information availability helps individuals to decrease anxiety and uncertainties associated with a specific brand.
Likewise, the third type of customer experience is an emotional experience, where the consumers search for a thrill and create excitement after her changing and consuming some product or service. Emotional experiences are larger than the informational ones as by meeting the emotional needs of the customers, the brands try to differentiate themselves from their competitors. The example of such an experience can be viewed in the form of Ritz-Carlton hotels and Harley-Davidson.
Fourthly, the customers may search for spiritual experiences associated with their brand. Such experiences are associated with consumers who have desires to get connected or get associated with some larger purpose. However, it is important to understand that the consumers who are satisfied with the first three levels of customer experience such as physical, information, and emotional experiences can only lead toward spiritual experience. The example of such customer experience can be viewed from the rising demand for ecological and sustainable sourcing products and services across the globe such as ethical clothing, the demand for organic food, Starbucks’s fair-trade policies, and ethical work practices.
5. Case Studies
In this section of the report, case studies of the business organisations are given to identify how customer experience marketing strategies are selected by the B2B and B2C organisations differently.
5.1 Institute of Business Management (IBM) – B2B Customer Experience Marketing Strategy
IBM presents a case study of the B2B Customer Experience Marketing Strategy. IBM has identified that customer engagement and experience in a B2B organisation is quite challenging, specifically when the business is dealing with industrial products. For this purpose, leadership requires a unique perspective to market their product to the target market by focusing on customer centricity and experience relatively. For IBM, since their customers are more empowered and have greater expectations, therefore the marketing efforts need to focus on the type of experiences as well as the point of interaction relatively. IBM has been offering sprained to the customers through online as well as offline platforms.
With the help of current customer experience marketing strategy, the business is successfully attracting new customers, improving the ability to serve customers, increasing customer satisfaction, increasing cross-selling, improving customer insights, differentiated brands, increasing market share, introducing new revenue streams and enhancing the share of wallet. For targeting their B2B customers, the business has been using search engines, personalised recommendations, blogs, social media, video ads, digital assistants, mobile applications, third-party sites, webinars, and white papers. In this organisation, the customers are mainly searching for emotional and information experiences.
5.2 Nestle – B2C Customer Experience Marketing Strategy
Likewise, Nestle has been focused around the customer-centric strategy developing its customer experience marketing strategy. the marketing manager of the company considers that every consumer has a relevant experience associated with the Nestlé brand which can help them in their lives rather than being interrupted. For this purpose, they have provided an e-commerce subscription channel to their consumers to maintain direct connectivity at every step of the journey. By doing so, they have been fulfilling the informational experience of the consumers and helping them to make informed decision-making. On the other side, the use of both digital and traditional media as well as public relations has allowed the company to attain the goals of customer experience more effectively.
In this regard, the marketers of the company are involved in developing content and embracing and sharing the data more smartly with adequate coordination and conversation with the customers. For this purpose, the company has been working with the Google marketing platform, which has been helping them to unify the customers’ view, and capturing the patient is necessary for them. By doing so, Nestlé has successfully re-targeted and re-engaged customers necessary for optimisation of lifetime value. Customers can achieve value through a direct relationship. Besides physical experience needs, the consumer experience marketing strategy of Nestlé is leading towards the successful meeting of the informational, emotional, and spiritual needs of their consumers. While gaining valuable companionship with the customers, the business has ultimately gained consumer preference and market share, necessary for gaining a winning edge.
6. Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded from the overall analysis of the customer experience marketing strategy, its adoption for the B2B and B2C contexts, and its importance that customer experience holds an important place for different types of business organisations in the contemporary, although can vary. The findings of the investigation have further confirmed that the business needs to stay adaptive to the changing consumers’ experiences and their needs. The complexity and the nature of the context are extremely important to drive an adequate customer experience marketing strategy. Likewise, without focusing on the appropriate customer experience hierarchy, none of the businesses can attain their marketing objectives successfully.
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