Heard It Through the Grapevine! How Peer-to-Peer Interaction Affects Customer Experience and Word-of-Mouth Intention in Different Service Environments: A Bayesian Approach

Abstract

The study of customer experience (CX) has become a prominent topic in marketing research lately because of the evolution of the customer/company relationship. The total number of touch points where this interaction can take place has increased significantly due to the total number of channels and media outlets now available to customers, further increasing the complexity of the customer journey. As a consequence, the level of control companies yield over the experience provided to customers decreased resulting in a more intricate process of creation, management and delivery of experiences to customers. The present research contributes to marketing research in four main ways. First, it investigates the relationship between peer-to-peer interaction, peace-of-mind, and service outcome quality with the customer experience construct. Second, we examine the role peer-to-peer (PTP) interaction plays as a social/external/independent touch point in accordance with Lemon and Verhoef (2016), where interpersonal communication among customers occurs through WOM. PTP interaction is particularly important within the retail context. The present study introduces the novel approach of utilizing an innovative and less common analysis methodology based on Bayesian modeling that offers several advantages over traditional methods such as SEM in terms of how it approaches sample size and homogeneity, potential missing data and specification of research.