Real Estate Investment Trends USA and Canada

E&P started its journey in 1975, aiming to fulfill the niche demands of replacing the old roofs of the homeowners and housing associations. By the early 1990s, E&P mostly worked as a sub-contractor of changing the building roofs, however, in the following years the company became a pioneer in this specialized area and operated overseas markets such Germany, England, and France.In the year of 2000, E&P was taken over by Denmark's largest construction company MT Højgaard a/s (SJP report). Nowadays, E&P is operating as a 100% owned subsidiary with its own profile strategy and business model. Currently E&P employs 530 employees distributed with 380 construction workers within the areas: carpenters, bricklayers, roofers, plumbers, painters, scaffold workers and unskilled workers and 150 office workers (SJP report). E&P is today engaged in new construction, renovation, restoration and building maintenance for housing associations and both public and private developers. The renovation segment within the housing association buildings and public buildings is the main activities.

PART II – THEORITICAL FOUNDATION

Discussion of this section will focus on analyzing and defining some important concepts that will be used throughout the paper. The notion of Customer Experience was first brought into focus by Holbrook and Hirschman in mid-1980s. Since then consumer researchers have extended their view from the mainstream approach which considered customers primarily as rational decision makers. Recently, the experience notion has become an important element to understand consumer behavior (Addis & Holbrook, 2001). Furthermore, the concept also has been working as a beacon for many significant literatures in marketing arena. Most notably, Pine and Gilmore’s book on the Experience Economy (1999) gives a good overview on how experience emerged as the forth economic offering after prior economic offerings - commodities, goods and services. Moreover, in the following years, various literatures can be found recognizing the importance of experience as a way to create value for both companies and their customers. Along these lines, a number of marketing experts have contributed in the sector in connection with experience, e.g. Bernd Schmitt (1999), LaSalle & Britton (2003), Shaw & Ivens (2002), and Gentile, Spiller & Noci (2007) to name a few. Despite of various contributions, it has been found that the concept of customer experience lacks solid foundation, mainly because the notion of “experience” is ill-defined (Caru & Cova, 2007). .

Defining Experience

According to consumer behavior study “an experience is above all a personal occurrence, often with important emotional significance, founded on the interaction with stimuli which are the products or services consumed” (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982; cited by Caru & Cova, 2003.p.270). This definition acknowledges that experience is subjective and personal in nature. Here, subjectivity refers to a personal psychological state, for example, consumers’ emotions during consumption experience are subjective, which changes according to change in environments (Addis & Holbrook, 2001). Moreover, the above definition also recognizes the roles of emotions as important features of experience, which have been neglected before (Ibid). Definitions of experience carry distinct meanings depending on various scientific disciplines such as, philosophy, sociology, psychology and etc. Even, consumer behavior and marketing disciplines hold separated meanings of experience (Caru & Cova, 2003). Thus, before dealing with customer experience and CEM concepts, it is essential to look at definitions of experience to highlight some important dimensions of experience implacable for this paper. Furthermore, the section will be followed by defining other necessary terms such as “customer experience” and “customer experience management” The marketing discipline views experience from a more objective point of view, where marketers aim to create unforgettable experiences at various interactions that take place between service providers and their customers (Caru & Cova, 2003). Such kind of experiences is termed as extraordinary experiences (Ibid). In order to make an experience memorable or extraordinary, creating positive emotions are crucial. From this perspective, marketing literatures can be found emphasizing emotions in creating experiences (e.g. Shaw, 2007). 

Despite differences, both consumer behavior and marketing studies have given importance to the roles of emotion to create superior value for customers through experience.

Elaborating on the marketing aspects of experience, several researchers have focused on extraordinary experiences (e.g. Arnould & Price, 1993; LaSalle & Britton, 2003). Arnould and Price (1993) define extraordinary experiences as those characterized by a sense of newness of perception and process, triggered by unusual events and high levels of emotional intensity and experience (Arnould & Price, 1993.p.25). The basic premise of this definition is the assumption that customers cannot predict the outcomes of an event due to vague expectations, dynamic interactions with other customers, and changes of contexts. Nevertheless, the definition given by Arnould and Price (1993) emphasizes solely on emotional aspects of customer experience and thus might limit its application to specific industries such as entertainment industry e.g. theme park, extreme sports e.g. river rafting, leisure business and the like (Voss, Roth & Chase, 2008). A study conducted by Gentile et al. (2007) on some well-known and remarkably successful products found out that both functional and emotional values scored almost similar and even in some cases functional value scored higher than emotional value (Gentile et al., 2007, p.404). Therefore, from the holistic perspective it is important to balance between both rational and emotional experiences. In summary, combining the above discussed views on experience from consumer behavior and marketing perspective, this paper draws on three distinguished characteristics of experience - internal and subjective phenomenon, highly context dependent and combines both rational and emotional aspects of experience.