University Marketing Management: Consumer Experience Report Analysis

This report examines the multifaceted concept of consumer experience within the realm of marketing management. It begins by defining customer experience and its significance, drawing upon academic and non-academic sources. The report reviews the customer decision-making process as a key marketing theory, outlining its stages and their relevance to consumer experience. A case study analysis of Southwest Airlines illustrates the practical application of these concepts, demonstrating the airline's focus on customer service and its impact on brand loyalty. The report also incorporates insights from various authors to emphasize the importance of consumer experience in shaping customer behavior and achieving competitive advantages. The analysis highlights the role of consumer experience in driving customer decisions and its impact on brand loyalty. This report also emphasizes the importance of customer experience in the airline industry.

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Topic: Consumer Experiences
Introduction
The main aim of this assignment is to find out the various activities related to the brand
community and customer experience. For which, the article of Transcendent customer
experience and brand community will be taken. There are many brands all over the world that
supports campaign and promotion activities in order to attract a large number of customers all
over the world towards the brand. Customer experience as a topic is selected for this assignment
that has been taken from the chosen article. The consumer decision-making process as marketing
theory will be reviewed and the relation of it on the specific brand will be defined. This essay
relies on the use of secondary information from a sort of academic and non-academic sources.
Literature review
According to Han (2013), customer experience is the way of interaction between a company and
a customer over the time of their bonding. Consumer experience has a significant role for
remaining in the competitive market. It is the term that entails four factors of product, marketing,
support and sales. Maity and Dass, (2014), stated that there is a customer experience strategy that
focuses on the sum of every interaction of consumers with the business and the customer
experience strategy shows the actionable plans for delivering affirmative and meaningful
experiences across these interactions. It has been found that the race to own customer experience
is on and the companies are identifying the importance of providing an experience that makes
them stand out from their rivalry. The researcher has identified the issue in which, it has been
found that last year United Airlines had a brand crisis, in which $1.4 million in value was

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destroyed overnight due to sharing the worst experience of a passenger on social media (Forbes,
2018).
Customer decision-making process is a marketing theory for the topic of consumer experience as
it entails some steps to complete the procedure. These steps are problem recognition, information
search, and evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase satisfaction. It has been found
that the involvement of these steps is related to the selected topic of the consumer experience.
The first stage of the process is working out what exactly the customer requires. They want to
switch from one place to another due to not filling the exact requirements. The second step of
information search is not related to only accumulated stuff and on things or the previous
experiences they may have had with various products. It is the stage that force customer to think
about risk management (Karimi, Papamichail and Holland, 2015). The third step of marketing
theory has raised the question for the customer regarding the right choice. Once the customer is
satisfied with the decisions, they move ahead with the decisions. Next step of the purchase, the
customer has decided to buy the products on the basis of the knowledge and accumulated what to
buy and where to buy what they need. Post-purchase satisfaction is the step of the customer
decision making process marketing theory that enables customer to handle any issue with the
support of the chosen brand.

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Now, companies have become so active and 89% of companies compete initially based on the
customer experience- up from just 36% in 2010 (Mihart, 2012). On the other hand, there are
around 80% of companies believe they provide an outstanding experience to their customers. In
other words, companies have a huge way to go and this refers to incredible opportunity to
disorder a competitor in an industry. Centering on customer experience management can be the
single most vital investment a brand can make in the competitive business climate. However, the
use of consumer decision-making process belongs to the consumer experience that put a wide
impact on the decision process of the customer. Here are some things which need to consider on
a prior basis by the companies. Customer does not want the statement from the companies that
they are Omni-channel and keeping multi-channel capabilities. They only require to be
connected by the company for a long time. They always look for those channels that are
convenient for them or it could be phone, mail or whatever communication method they are most
comfortable with. According to Darley, W.K., Blankson and Luethge (2010), it is necessary for

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the companies to make maintain the customer experience in the long term for attaining
competitive advantages. These can be done by putting all interactions and data in one place and
developing consistency in the processes to develop consistency for the customers. It is good to
say that the company can elaborate its brand promise, but it is the customer who determines
whether or not the company provided on its promise. There is huge fighting behind getting good
customer experience.
Case study analysis
The case study for the brand of South West Airlines has been decided to analysis for selected
topic i.e. customer experience. Because of the fast-paced and issue-prone nature of the industry,
it is necessary for the airlines to invest more in social customer care instead of brands in other
industries. Southwest airlines have found the exact meaning of the reputation for the brand to
become so friendly airlines, involving competitive prices, free checked luggage and friendly
employees. But these experiences demonstrated to me that it is helpful in getting good
knowledge regarding advantages. It is easy for the brand to keep up the great reputation when
things are going well. The challenges for the company are to have a system in the place and well-
trained employees when things are not moving towards right track (Southwest, 2018). The role
of the customer experience keeps significant value for the southwest airlines as well and the
marketing theory of consumer decision making process is applicable for the same. The customer
decisions at the top priority for the airline but due to the involvement of many competitors in the
airline industry, it has become a challenge for the southwest airline to maintain the recognition
for the company in the airline industry.

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With the help of the article, it has been found that the lines between the sacred and the profane in
the global of consumer experience are not withdrawn along traditional religious boundaries. A
customer can experiences as holy virtually any symbol, person and object under the correct
situations. The customer service of the southwest is considered as the legendary care. A
southwest airline has an efficient and successful business model has created several imitators
around the world including Easy Jet, Ryanair and Air Arabia (Pitfield, 2008). It has been
analyzed that the demands of the customer authority the resolve of the quality. In order to
provide better customer experience to the consumer through better services, Southwest Airlines
are based on the low price cost and provide high-quality services to the customer that attract
them towards maintaining the relationship with the airline for a long term. It is necessary for the
operations of the airline to improve the cost competitive priority in order to pay attention to
cutting costs in the system efficiency.
In the context of defining the impact of customer decision-making the process as a marketing
theory on the products of Southwest Airline, it can be said that the impact of the marketing
theory would be helpful for the airline because it helps customer to analyse what services are
better for them. Southwest Airline is the only organization in the entire airline industry that
provides low prices of flights to its customer with good quality (Muduli and Kaura, 2011). This
strategy of them is helpful for providing better consumer experience, on the other hand, it is the
challenge for the airline to apply lean and agile concept for the operations. The customer
experience has significant impact on the services of the company because with the help of the
consumer decision making process strategy, they can evaluate and compare different airline
strategies product with existing one. In case of finding more satisfactory services, the customer
can switch from one place to another in easy way (Kelley, Cranor and Sadeh, 2013).

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Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above discussion that this essay has highlighted the marketing
management, in which the marketing theory of consumer decision-making process has been
considered. It can be seen that the scope of the selected theory for the chosen topic i.e. consumer
experience is huge that helps customer to buy things with proper evaluation of the process. It has
been found that the steps of these theories provide step by step information of thinking of the
customers towards buying products. The case study of southwest airline brand has been chosen,
which is related to the airline industry and it would be helpful for the readers to understand the
consumer experience. The views of different authors are undertaken in this essay for
emphasizing the marketing theory on consumer experience. In the context of Southwest Airlines,
it has been found that a major differentiating factor of south airlines is that it provides better
services to its employee in the context of profit sharing and empowerment programs.

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References
Darley, W.K., Blankson, C. and Luethge, D.J., 2010. Toward an integrated framework for online
consumer behavior and decision making process: A review. Psychology & marketing, 27(2),
pp.94-116.
Forbes, 2018. Customer experience is the new brands. Availble [online]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2018/07/15/customer-experience-is-the-new-brand/
#7c3234ce7f52 Accessed on 16th April 2019.
Han, H., 2013. Effects of in-flight ambience and space/function on air travelers' decision to select
a low-cost airline. Tourism management, 37, pp.125-135.
Karimi, S., Papamichail, K.N. and Holland, C.P., 2015. The effect of prior knowledge and
decision-making style on the online purchase decision-making process: A typology of consumer
shopping behaviour. Decision Support Systems, 77, pp.137-147.
Kelley, P.G., Cranor, L.F. and Sadeh, N., 2013. Privacy as part of the app decision-making
process. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp.
3393-3402). ACM.
Maity, M. and Dass, M., 2014. Consumer decision-making across modern and traditional
channels: E-commerce, m-commerce, in-store. Decision Support Systems, 61, pp.34-46.
Mihart, C., 2012. Impact of integrated marketing communication on consumer behaviour:
Effects on consumer decision-making process. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 4(2),
p.121.

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Muduli, A. and Kaura, V., 2011. Southwest Airlines Success: A Case Study Analysis. BVIMR
Management Edge, 4(2).
Pitfield, D.E., 2008. The Southwest effect: A time-series analysis on passengers carried by
selected routes and a market share comparison. Journal of Air Transport Management, 14(3),
pp.113-122.
Southwest, 2018. About us. Available [online] https://www.southwest.com/html/about-
southwest/index.html Accessed on: 16th April 2019.