Customer Experience Management with the Aim of Gaining a Competitive Advantage in the Iranian Automotive Industry
Keywords:
customer experience management, Iranian automotive industry, competitive advantage, Grounded TheoryAbstract
Today, customer experience management in the automotive industry has become an undeniable strategic tool for the development of manufacturing and service organizations. The purpose of this study is to design customer experience management with an approach to gaining a competitive advantage in the Iranian automotive industry. This research, based on its philosophical foundations, is situated within the interpretive paradigm. From the perspective of its objective, it is exploratory research, and its implementation method is qualitative. Using a systematic approach in grounded theory research strategy, data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The statistical population of the study, given the theoretical saturation of data, includes 15 senior managers of the Iranian automotive industry. To evaluate the validity of the qualitative findings, peer review and member-checking strategies were used. The reliability of the interviews was ensured by the method of inter-coder agreement, calculated through the percentage of agreement. Data analysis was performed using open, axial, and selective coding. The research findings indicate the extraction of 37 subcategories and 17 main categories, organized within a paradigmatic model. This model includes customer experience management actions aimed at gaining a competitive advantage as the central phenomenon (enhancing employee information, organizational information, and customer information), causal conditions (customer relationship management, organizational learning, and increasing organizational lifecycle), contextual factors (corporate trust-building, participative organizational culture, and experiential marketing), intervening factors (traditional culture and organizational risk aversion, industry monopoly, and regulations), strategies (organizational empowerment strategy and digital marketing development strategy), and outcomes (brand equity preservation, customer loyalty, and corporate social responsibility fulfillment).
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