Does customer experience always benefit service companies? Examining customers’ epistemic motivation and interaction with the beauty service contexts

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study is to explain how and when customer experience benefits the company. Built upon Customer-Dominant Logic, Social Identity theory and Need for Cognition, the study propose that customer experience leads to customer engagement behavior via two routes: customer-firm and customer-employee identification. Furthermore, the study advances that customers’ epistemic motivation negatively moderates the mediated effect of customer experience on customer engagement behavior. The methodologies used for the research is a combination of qualitative and quantitative technique. A survey method was employed for the two studies by recruiting female consumers of beauty salons in Vietnam. The results demonstrated that customer experience quality as a measurement for customer experience applies to the context of the study and provided empirical support for the hypotheses. This research found that customer experience positively influences customer engagement behavior mediated by customer-firm and customer-employee identification. Furthermore, this research revealed that customer epistemic motivation negatively moderates the mediated effect of customer experience on customer engagement behavior via customer-employee identification. However, the moderating role of customer epistemic motivation is insignificant for the mediated relationship via customer-firm identification. Finally, this research offers theoretical and practical contributions that are elaborated and further discussed.