The Effectiveness Of Customer Experience Touchpoints On Brand Equity In An Omnichannel Environment

The information age and the wide use of Internet changes individuals’ consumption behavior,leading to omnichannel consumption pattern.Brands increasingly realize the significant importance of transformation of omnichannel strategy.Academics and practitioners have a growing interest in exploring how to communicate with customers and provide seamless customer experience in appropriate omnichannel touchpoints.Many brands are actively engaging in omnichannel marketing strategy.However,the majority of customers have neither gained satisfying customer experience,nor brands meet customers’ needs by integrating and coordinating existing omnichannel touchpoints.In fact,customers increasingly have a desire to keep in touch with brands anywhere and anytime and to search for solutions by their own,pursuing a meaningful customer experience and engaging with brands.This customer-brand value co-creation approach results in evaluation of overall brand equity.To address these problems,this study proposes following research questions:Which customer experience touchpoint should be adopted to increase brand equity in the marketing communication activities?Whether significant differences exist in the influence of different types of omnichannel customer experience touchpoints on brand equity?What roles do customer psychological factors play in these relationships?This study draws on Marketing Signaling Theory and uses the data drawn from a questionnaire survey to explore the impacts of different omnichannel customer experience touchpoints on brand equity.Based on the initiator of customer-brand interaction,this study divides omnichannel touchpoints into customer-initiated touchpoint and firm-initiated touchpoint and investigates the impact and influence paths of customer-initiated customer experience touchpoint and firm-initiated customer experience touchpoint on brand equity.This study also includes customer engagement,customer equity,and customer satisfaction from customer psychological perspectives and further explores the how these psychological factors affect the relationships.Findings show that omnichannel customer touchpoints have positive impact on brand equity,and customer engagement mediate this positive relationship.In addition,customer engagement and customer loyalty play serial mediating roles in the relationship between customer-initiated customer experience touchpoint and brand equity.Customer engagement and customer satisfaction also play serial mediating roles in the relationship between firm-initiated customer experience touchpoint and brand equity.These findings provide managerial guidance and sheds lights on improving omnichannel marketing strategy,stimulating customer engagement,and enhancing brand equity.