Abstract:
Experience economy has changed the way firms conduct business. Firms need to provide a superior and memorable experience to sustain a competitive advantage. This study examines underlying factors affecting customer experience value in hotel industry context. The results show that customer experience antecedents and customer experience value have significantly different effects on an overall customer satisfaction. In lower class hotel environment, both physical and social environments only have significant effects on utilitarian and social values whereas, in higher class hotel setting, physical environment and staff characteristic have significant effects on all values. Nonetheless, in both cases, hedonic value has the strongest impact on satisfaction and social value has the second strongest effect. The physical environment contributes most to the customer experience value. In addition, the relative effect of each customer experience component on an overall customer satisfaction is investigated. The physical environment has the highest effect on customer experience value for both classes of the hotels. However, the social environment has a significant effect in lower class hotels and the staff characteristic has a significant impact in higher class hotels.
