Cutting through the noise: understanding the usage of the customer journey mapping

In the last few decades, due to the booming of the Internet and the flourishing of new technologies connected to it, there has been a major change on how people interact with businesses. With the development of smart devices, companies started to unwrap the power of customer behaviour. A new kind of marketing, based on customer knowledge, emerged. However, firms are still grappling with how to understand their consumers and it is still ongoing to change how companies and customers interact. Contrary to traditional media, the Internet allows for amassing data, associated with millions of users, companies encompassing a constantly evolving amount of online marketing channels. To address this new complexity, the current paper contributes to the existing literature and theories regarding customer behaviour, customer journey and customer experience and explains the connection between the three concepts. This allows a better understanding of the mechanisms underneath consumers’ decisions and actions taken across different purchase phases. Built upon the literature reviewed, a customer journey mapping model is suggested and explained. Finally, customer journey mapping is necessary for companies to determine and analyze customer touchpoints in purchasing company’s products and/or services. Companies have to be able to develop customer journey mapping in order to analyze customer behaviour from their customer journey. Once companies understand the customer journey from the customer’s point of view, they can actually see where customer experience lags are present, focus back in on them and develop.