Relevance of patient intimacy
Healthcare services are the most personal and important service that individuals receive (Berry & Bendapudi, 2007) and are highly concerned by extended, affectively charged, and intimate encounters (Price, Arnould, & Tierney, 1995). While enhancing patient intimacy is key to foster patient-centricity, it is often under stress in healthcare. Indeed, patients are often exposed to (un)intimate situations as they need to cooperate and deliberately disclose very intimate (1) information about their health condition (e.g., psychological and/or physiological issues such as an impairment), health lifestyle (e.g., unhealthy eating habits), risky behaviors (e.g., addiction to drugs) and/or (2) body parts (e.g., breast for a mammography). Sharing intimate information and/or body parts can create—among patients—stress, anxiety, embarrassment, and/or guilt because of the fear of being judged, stigmatized or mistreated (Biancarelli et al., 2019; Nieuwsma & Pepper, 2010)—which can lead to counterproductive behavioral responses such as the withholding of key health information and/or lying to health professionals (Levy et al., 2018; Vogel, 2019).
The term ‘intimacy’ is frequently being mentioned in various domains and scientific fields of knowledge, such as—for instance—management (e.g., Treacy & Wiersema, 1993), relationship marketing (e.g., Beetles & Harris, 2010), gender literature (e.g., Camarena, Sarigiani, & Petersen, 1990), and psychology (e.g., Patrick, Sells, Giordano, & Tollerud, 2007; Schaefer & Olson, 1981). Yet, to date, one has barely paused to clearly conceptualize patient intimacy within healthcare services. There is no agreement among scholars about the dimensions of customer intimacy (Akçura & Srinivasan, 2005; Hoffman, 2001), resulting in the lack of a clear theoretically based framework. Next to a clear definition of patient intimacy, also its antecedents are currently not well understood. In addition, how patient intimacy affects short- and long-term patient outcomes (e.g. patients’ trust in their primary care physician, or patient well-being) and hospital outcomes (e.g. negative worth of mouth), has not been elucidated to date.

Research objectives and design
Considering the need to enhance intimacy in healthcare services, thanks to a multidisciplinary literature review and 39 in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders from maternity wards—patients, medical staff, and hospital senior managers—the authors address two research objectives: (1) conceptualize patient intimacy, and (2) develop a framework—by building on the Stimulus-Organism-Response model (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974)—to uncover both the antecedents and short- and long-term outcomes of patient intimacy.

Research contributions
In addressing both research objectives, we extend the multidisciplinary and fragmented research on intimacy. In particular, literature from multiple disciplines such as social sciences, architectural design and environmental psychology, healthcare and service management, has been investigated. This clear conceptualization and integrative framework of patient intimacy can guide healthcare providers and designers to improve patient experiences in healthcare services. This research proposes suggestions on how healthcare organizations can best manage patient intimacy during healthcare experiences. Further, this study aims to stimulate continued research on patient intimacy—an under-investigated but crucial concept in healthcare services—by proposing a research agenda.

Access-based consumption has gained increased importance in the last decade with the rise of access-based services (ABS) such as Airbnb and Uber. Customers who use ABS interact with multiple actors at both firm-controlled and non-firm-controlled touchpoints along the customer journey (De Keyser et al., 2020). Most ABS comprise two distinct actors, i.e., the platform and the gig service provider, with differentiated roles and responsibilities. Each of these actors influence value co-creation along the customer journey differently. Existing research is limited in understanding customer experience in multi-actor settings. Therefore, the main objective of our study is to examine how customer experience (CX) perceptions vary between firm-controlled and non-firm-controlled touchpoints, and the implications for the ABS stakeholders. In doing so, we seek to address the following research questions:
1. To whom and under what conditions do consumers attribute positive and negative customer experience in ABS? What are the implications of CX attributions for the ABS stakeholders, i.e., ABS firm and gig-providers?
2. What are the mechanisms and moderating factors that influence asymmetrical effects of CX attribution in ABS?
3. How do cross-cultural factors influence any asymmetrical effects of CX attribution in ABS?

Our study is one of the first research work to empirically examine customer experience using a multi-method approach. We contribute theoretically to both the emerging streams of ABS and CX literature and provide insight into blame vs. praise attributions in multi-actor settings. Our results would also help triadic businesses like ABS manage their platform-level and provider-level strategies to enhance CX along the customer journey.

Previous research highlights the use of text-mining for measuring, and managing CX (Becker & Jaakkola, 2020; McColl-Kennedy et al., 2019). Using this method, we identified the components of the ABS platform and provider that generate compliments (positive attributions) and complaints (negative attributions). Our data comprises 4,37,839 consumer reviews of Airbnb listings in Austin, Texas, USA, between 2008 and December 2019. The text-mining analyses showed that 98% of compliments are directed towards provider components (e.g., resources such as bed, interactions such as warm welcome, ambience such as comfortable homes, processes such as smooth check-in /checkout) while only 2% of compliments are directed towards platform components of CX (e.g., customer support). The platform components receive nearly 25% of complaints, but provider components receive nearly 75% of the complaints. The results indicate platform-side touchpoints perceived as hygiene factors, with limited upside potential to delight consumers when present, but increase dissatisfaction when absent. The providers-side touchpoints, however, have the potential to lead to both customer delight and outrage.

For future work, we propose to investigate blame vs. praise attributions for dissatisfying and satisfying touchpoints using experimental design. Using attribution theory, Hertzberg’s two-factor theory, and expectation-disconfirmation theory, we conjecture that the platform would be evaluated less favorably than a provider at a dissatisfying touchpoint due to stronger responsibility attributions towards the platform. On the other hand, both the platform and the provider would be evaluated favorably at a satisfying touchpoint and the platform would benefit from the efforts of their providers.

Resulting from the increasing influence of digitalization within many areas of society and economy, interest among marketing and service researchers has progressively turned towards the effects of digitalization on customer experience. While much of the existing customer experience literature has approached the concept from a firm-centered perspective, recently proposals have been made for research that offers insights about the emergence of customer experience within the customer’s lifeworld and thus takes into consideration aspects that are beyond company control. In this paper, attention is on brand experience, a concept that can be situated under the umbrella construct of customer experience.

Contextually, this paper connects to digital health, meaning the use of connected mobile devices, for example phones and different kinds of wearables, to improve health and wellbeing. Since digital health solutions are increasingly used by their customers in their own lifeworlds, such devices can be categorized as customer self-service devices (SSDs). This means that their use is not confided to a specific company-controlled service environment, but rather that they can be used by the customers wherever and whenever the customer so decides.

Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate brand experience in digital health context by focusing on customers experiences with a digital health technology brand in their own lifeworlds.

Theoretically, this paper relies on literature on customer-centric perspective to customer experience as well as recent conceptual calls made for extensions of brand experience research through studies that consider brand experience as a multidimensional, socially constructed phenomenon. Additionally, insights are drawn from relevant discussions which have addressed the active role of the customer, such as literature on brand communities.

This paper is qualitative and abductive in nature. The empirical data was collected from a discussion forum used by diabetics and the focus of the analysis is on the narratives related to experience with a particular brand of wearable sensoring technology used for measuring blood glucose levels.

The analysis of the findings shows that the customers’, or diabetics’, experiences with the digital health technology form gradually and that direct experiences are often preceded by in-direct experiences one comes across with on the forum. Once the technology, and its brand, are integrated into the customers’ lives, experiences with it become intermingled with day-to-day activities. This means that the digital health solution becomes part of the customers’ daily narratives, thus indicating that experience is subjective and context-specific and thus truly dependent on wherever and whenever the customer decides to interact with the technology. The findings also indicate that the brand of the digital health solution gains relevance especially within the community setting as it is used as a reference point for sharing one’s experiences with other customers alongside, for example, technical tips and tricks specific for the brand focused on in this paper.

To conclude, this paper investigates brand experience as it forms within the customers’ lifeworlds through empirical data that connects to a digital health context.

Because the retail industry is more dynamic and complex than ever, marketers are interested in any approaches that can retain customers, and an omnichannel strategy offers an effective option. Omnichannel marketing aims to provide a completely seamless and consistent customer experience; it is a synchronized channel-management model that integrates all available channels and presents a single face to customers. Although some researchers have discussed the role of omnichannel and its impact on consumer purchase behaviour, few studies have explored how to construct effective omnichannel marketing and what are the key elements of omnichannel marketing. Moreover, consumer experiences occur in a variety of ways, including searching for products, shopping, receiving services, and consuming. Experiences also can affect customers’ interactions with various brand-related stimuli, and consumers are concerned about the overall experience they have with the brands. When implementing omnichannel marketing activities, managers should ensure customers perceive great experiences, by establishing well-designed channel combinations. However, little research has explored the relationships of different types of brand experience and purchase intention in omnichannel shopping environment.
This research adopts the stimulus-organism-response paradigm to investigate the impact of different omnichannel elements on various brand experiences and purchase intention. According to the SOR paradigm, omnichannel elements (stimuli) influence customers’ brand experiences (organism), which in turn affect their purchase intention (responses). We reviewed previous relevant literature and highlight three elements—integration, interaction, and individualization—that contribute to omnichannel. This research conducted an online survey to test the effect of various omnichannel marketing strategies on brand experiences and purchase intention.
The results showed all three omnichannel elements help to engage consumers, and these elements are related to corresponding brand experience, increasing consumers’ willingness to purchase. In this study, we confirmed the mediating effects of brand experience between omnichannel marketing elements and purchase intention. When consumers perceive good brand experiences provided by the company in the omnichannel shopping environment, they tend to buy the brand or company’s products. Specifically, integration has a positive impact on sensory and intellectual brand experience; interaction has a positive influence on sensory and behavioural brand experience; personalization has a positive impact on emotional and behavioural brand experience. This research applies the omnichannel marketing concept to the optimization of brand experiences in an empirical study. These findings provide a generalizable view of what constitutes an effective omnichannel, and this research proposes clear strategic directions for omnichannel designs. The findings also provide some managerial implications for practitioners who want to design appropriate omnichannel marketing strategies to increase business performance and enhance company-customer relationships.

Keywords: Omnichannel marketing, brand experience, integration, interaction, individualization