Customer Experience in the Retail Industry in Australia

Running head: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Customer experience in the retail industry in the nation of Australia has been seen to
undergo evolution from a vague subset of customer service to that of a strategic priority that had
in turn resulted in warranting dedicated business units. Researchers are of the opinion that
customer experience has indeed become one of the largest drivers of any forms of business in the
retail industry of companies that are both of small as well as of larger stature (Lewrick et al.,
2015). The present day analysis of the different enterprises have shown that they are spending
millions of dollars in trying to understand the ways of improvement of the customer experience
in the retail stores as well as through digital channels (Verhoef et al., 2015). This assignment
would mainly help in establishing the relationship of customer experience with that of marketing
decision making in the retail industry in Australia. It will also depict the ways by which the
professionals can take the help of the literature evidences to make more profits in the retail
industry in Australai.
Customer experience can be defined as the effect of the interaction between a customer as
well as an organization throughout their business relationship. Such an interaction is mainly
researched to include not only awareness of the customer about the retail organization but also
about the discovery, cultivation, service, advocacy as well as the purchases. Researchers have
claimed that customer experience is one of the integral parts of the customer relationship
management (Ramanathan, Subramaniam & Parrot, 2017). It is seen that this attribute is
important because a customer who has appositive experience with the retail organization and are
satisfied by the products and the service are more likely to become a repeat as well as well as a
loyal customer. His or her own experiences become the greatest method of marketing and
advertising the product and the service through the word of mouth that will in turn being more
profits in the form of more number of consumers. Therefore, researchers like Lemon and

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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Verhoef (2016) are of the opinion that customer experiences have the ability to affect the
willingness of the customer to be loyal advocate. Therefore, it is recommended to the
organizations that if they want their customers to be loyal, they have to invest in the experiences
of the customers. Different types of data can be produced here to shed more light on the concept.
Studies have confirmed that customer experience affects the willingness to be loyal. Researchers
Morenzo et al. (2016) have stated that customers have now got more power than they had about
three years ago are quite fast in switching bands due to poor experiences. Customers nowadays
are willing to pay for better experiences and all these facts should be kept in mind by the retail
organizations, plan accordingly, and take market decisions. Woolworth is a leading retailer
company in the nation of Australia. It has developed a three year strategy that will help the
organization to be termed as customer first business organization and will even be neutralizing
its competitors. The three years of customer engagement are improvement of the core offer,
developing innovating products and services so that the customer needs are met in better ways
and through new “Lean retail” model, new efficiencies can be initiated for improvement of
customer service and values. Managing director of the organization called Brad Banducci stated
“What is clear is that while lower prices are essential, the true battleground is the overall
customer experience.” He also stated, “We are placing the customer at the start of everything we
do. This strategy will result in lower prices, more compelling offers and greater innovation.”
One of the first steps of developing the customer experience strategy is to prepare a clear
customer focused vision and this should be communicated within the organization. The
organization should take the initiative to define this vision for creating the set of statements that
would mainly act as guiding principles for the organization (Parise, Guinan & Kafka, 2016).
Once the principles are discussed in details, these principles will become the main driver for the