Correspondence: Philipp Klaus, Faculty of Strategic Marketing, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 1234 751122; Fax: +44 (0) 1234 751806; E-mail: Philipp.Klaus@cranfield.ac.uk

¹is a doctoral candidate at Cranfield School of Management. His research foci are consumer behaviour, customer experience, the influence of customer experience on branding and measurements of service and customer experience quality.

²is Senior Lecturer in Strategic Marketing at Cranfield School of Management. His research foci are organisational brand development, customer relationship management, return on marketing investment and corporate responsibility.

Received 3 July 2007; Revised 3 July 2007; Published online 2 November 2007.

Abstract

Long gone are the days where a brand was merely a logo or trademark that distinguished a company's products from those of competitors. The fastest-growing sectors of the modern economy are dominated by companies whose offer is complex and delivered in the context of long-term service partnerships. In such a service-dominated economy, we must re-conceptualise our notion of brand so that it provides the context in which such service-based marketing flourishes. The notion of services marketing is not new, and there is a rich literature about the notion of brand building through a series of service encounters, each one exceeding the expectations of customers, thereby building brand equity. For almost 20 years, these key moments of customer–company contact, the bricks and mortar of the service brand structure, have been measured by SERVQUAL, a battery of measures for assessing the quality of service delivered at any customer–company contact point. Drawing on emerging research at the Cranfield School of Management, the authors question the means by which we currently measure service quality on the basis that it fails to measure that which truly builds brands in a service-dominated world. The authors offer the concept of Experience Quality, which incorporates service quality but extends to aspects of customer experience not related directly to service that we believe better predict consumer behaviour with respect to brands.