Knaak, MaleenMaleenKnaak2023-04-132023-04-132019https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/99377Companies are increasingly innovating the customer journey to improve the customer experience, to achieve a competitive advantage, and to increase customer loyalty. Innovation is gaining ever greater importance not least due to developments in digitization and technology and rising customer expectations. Companies' response is currently strongly trial-and-error based and calls for a more strategic approach to innovating the customer experience. This dissertation addresses this need. Its main objective is to identify success factors and management approaches for a strategic innovation of the customer experience through changes in the customer journey. Customers form an experience during every interaction with a company. Innovating the customer experience means innovating these customer-company interactions in the customer journey. Changing the customer journey and customer-company interactions in novel ways is strongly driven by the company and subsequently affects the customer. Therefore, this dissertation investigates the effects and implications of innovating the customer journey by considering the company side, the interactions, and the customer side. On the company side, the results of a single case study find five process attributes, five management practices, and insight transformation practices. Together, these constitute a triple focus that supports the development of relevant and applicable high-impact innovations. Considering customer-company interactions, a multiple case study shows that innovating such interactions takes the form of nine innovation strategies. These are best approached with a sequence perspective on the customer journey that emphasizes sections of related touchpoints. A conjoint experiment with customers moreover identifies distinct innovation preferences for two customer segments. On the customer side, trust is a key consideration and expert interviews indicate the presence of three trust enablers in digital interactions with customers. An experimental study with customers finds that trust is always affected by changes in the interaction strategy and that trust enablers need to be strategically approached to manage the impact of changes on trust. Together, the results yield management implications for innovating the customer journey in order to improve the customer experience. A management plan suggests specific steps to approach such innovation in an organization. Moreover, avenues for further research in the field of customer experience management, customer journey management, and service innovation are suggested.enKundenmanagementBeziehungsmanagementVertrauenErlebniskaufEDIS-4839doctoral thesis