Design for Delight - Advancing Customer Delight Research as a Design Science
Raphael Stange is a PhD student in the Department Product–Market Relations. (Co)Promotors are prof.dr.ir. J. Henseler from the Faculty of Engineering Technology and dr. P. Scheffler from Volkswagen AG.
This dissertation examines the growing significance of customer delight in both academic and business contexts. Empirical research has demonstrated that customer delight has a positive impact on customer loyalty, willingness to pay, and positive word-of-mouth, which in turn provides organisations with a source of competitive advantage in the contemporary business environment.
Notwithstanding the growing significance of customer delight, this PhD thesis identifies a notable research gap in the extant body of literature: a paucity of useful and empirically validated artefacts (e.g. guidelines, models, processes) that organisations can utilise to enhance customer delight.
To address this gap in the existing literature, the dissertation explores the following research question: 'How can academia inform the creation of practical and relevant artefacts that enable organisations to enhance customer delight?'
One potential solution to address this research question is to integrate customer delight research with design science, a research discipline focused on developing pragmatic, future-oriented artefacts. In this context, four pivotal studies are presented as part of this PhD thesis:
- Study 1 (Chapter 2): A systematic literature review to identify the current state of customer delight research.
- Study 2 (Chapter 3): A World Café with industry experts to explore the current state of customer delight in practice.
- Study 3 (Chapter 4): A design science research approach to develop a tool to categorize and differentiate between behavioural and design-oriented research.
- Study 4 (Chapter 5): A design science research approach to develop a design science research process and publication guidelines for design research.
The focus of Studies 1-2 is the problem space, supporting the argument that design-oriented field-tested artefacts to enhance customer delight are underrepresented. Studies 3-4 put forward solutions to address this gap, in particular tools that assist customer delight scholars in developing and publishing practical relevant artefacts (e.g. guidelines, models, processes) to enhance customer delight.
To conclude, the PhD thesis provides a foundation for advancing customer delight research as a design science and concludes with a call for more design-oriented customer delight research in the future.
