Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
Loneliness and the Customer Journey: Toward a Framework for Customer Experience Management. |
| Authors: |
Veflen, Nina1 (AUTHOR) nina.veflen@bi.no, Witell, Lars2 (AUTHOR), Fuglsang, Lars3 (AUTHOR) |
| Source: |
Psychology & Marketing. Nov2026, Vol. 43 Issue 11, p3265-3278. 14p. |
| Subject Terms: |
*Customer experience, *Customer relations, *Consumer attitudes, Emotional experience, Loneliness, Social isolation |
| Abstract: |
How can customer experience (CX) frameworks be used to understand and support service firms to mitigate loneliness and social isolation? This paper addresses this question by developing the Lonely Customer Journey, a conceptual framework that uses the Touchpoints‐Context‐Qualities (TCQ) framework (De Keyser et al. 2020) to theorize how loneliness and social isolation fundamentally reshape the goals, context, and experiential qualities in the customer experience. Loneliness is a chronic or recurrent subjective deficit in relationship quality, whereas social isolation reflects an objective lack of social ties; crucially, these conditions activate distinct psychological mechanisms, including the self‐preservation motive, that subvert the rational, purchase‐oriented customer assumed by standard CX models. The paper reconceptualizes the customer journey as a path‐to‐belonging rather than a path‐to‐purchase and argues that everyday customer experiences, such as shopping and dining, are used by consumers as low‐risk arenas for social connection and emotional regulation. Grounded in the TCQ framework, this paper develops four customer experience management strategies: INTERACT (proactively managing social interaction), COCREATE (proactively managing cocreation of meaning and wellbeing), RESPOND (reactively managing choice and relational quality), and RESPECT (reactively managing privacy and autonomy). A central theoretical contribution is the proactive reactive axis as a novel, generalizable organizing principle for CX management strategy, applicable beyond loneliness to other contexts of customer vulnerability. The strategies are designed as principles that create value for the individual customer (enhanced wellbeing and belonging), the service firm (increased loyalty and lifetime value), and society (reduced public health burdens). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| Database: |
Business Source Index |