Circularity of customer service experience and customer perceived value

Traditionally, service marketing literature has explored the information processing and reasoning aspects of customers' value perception processes. In contrast, this paper adopts a phenomenological perspective to analyse the cyclical inter-relationship between customer service experience and customer perceived value and seeks to improve service marketing researchers' understanding of this phenomenon. The paper commences with a review of the customer service experience and customer perceived value literature. We then present the findings of a narrative study of customer service experiences and customer perceived value related to iPhone service experience following initial launch of the iPhone in the UK market at the end of 2007. The research findings show that the customer service experience – perceived value process is not a linear value chain but rather it emerges as a complex phenomenon, which includes dynamic interrelating processes of experiencing and conditioning value perceptions. The implication for service marketing researchers is that it is not possible to fully understand customer service experience and customer perceived value in isolation of the customer's other lived experiences recalled within his or her phenomenological frame of reference.