1. Introduction

Consumption experience is not a new topic on the marketing agenda: since the 1960s, marketing scholars have been dedicated to this content, with a progressive evolution of the issues, concerns, epistemologies, methodologies, and results covered by this body of knowledge (^{Jain et al., 2017}; ^{Lemon & Verhoef, 2016}). Traditionally understood as a synonym for purchase, research on consumption experience has proved there is much more to know about the customer and the company/brand interaction besides the moment of the commercial transaction (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016), demanding from academics the investigation of the multiple and interdependent dimensions of the consumption experience phenomenon (^{Scussel et al., 2021}).

Research on this field had a major shift with the publication of the seminal article of ^{Holbrook and Hirshman (1982}), who introduced the subjectivity of the consumer to the traditional objective perspective on consumption experience and its focus on firms and their outcomes. These scholars admitted important experiential aspects of consumption - fantasies, feelings, and fun - have been neglected so far by the models of information processing and economic theories that hegemonically conducted consumer research. Thus, in the field of consumer behavior, the experience starts to be conceived as a personal experience, marked by presenting emotional value and based on the interaction with the products or services consumed (Holbrook & Hirshman, 1982). ^{Addis and Holbrook (2001}) proposed that these intangible and emotional elements added a subjective dimension to the traditional concept of consumption experience, broadening such concept beyond the moment of the purchase, encompassing consumers’ feelings before, during, and after the commercial transaction itself.

During the 1990s, the rise of the work of ^{Pine and Gilmore (1999}) gave the experiential paradigm a major attention, particularly on the managerial perspective, based on the premise that developing goods and services was no longer sufficient to maintain the competitiveness of organizations, confirming the need of combining tangible and intangible aspects involved in the experiential context. The emergence of the experiential paradigm promoted an approximation between service and experience marketing literature, a context in which experience is conceived as the provision of a service of excellence (^{Hui & Bateson, 1991}). During this period, several conceptual misunderstandings start to arise, particularly concerning the use of service and experience as synonyms and the confusion between purchase experience and consumption experience (Lemon & Verhoef; ^{Scussel et al., 2021}). Literature also signalizes two research tracks that, although managerially connected. The organizational perspective focus on the design of the experience and the stimuli that will be perceived by consumers. And the consumer perspective emphasizes more contextual, idiosyncratic, social, and cultural aspects that build the meanings of the experience for the consumer (Lemon & Verhoef; Scussel et al., 2021).

In the beginning of this millennium, research witnessed the consolidation of consumer subjectivity and the incorporation of the consumer perspective on the organizational framework (^{Addis & Holbrook, 2001}). This has opened the path for themes such as customer journey and customer experience management, shedding light on the relevance of all elements and interactions involved in the buying processes, including all the moments of interaction between consumer and an organization, broadening the perspective of analysis on consumer experience (^{Lemon & Verhoef, 2016}). Both customer journey and customer experience management are linked to the organizational perspective, highlighting the outcomes of experience such as satisfaction, service quality, and relational benefits, a strong connection with the strategic framework of marketing studies.

More than fully embracing the consumer perspective, literature claims for a unifying perspective, combining elements from both sides, thus outlining the complexity involved in the consumption experience. Although consumers and organizations are paramount elements for the experience to happen (^{Lemon & Verhoef, 2016}; ^{Scussel et al., 2021}), both literature streams were not connected until the decade of 2010. This is not a matter of recognizing consumers’ aspects in order to can create value, influencing companies’ performance and competitiveness (^{Grønholdt et al., 2015}), but an active effort in unveiling consumption acts, the consumers, and their social and cultural contexts (^{Akaka et al., 2015}), an important step into the development of the consumption experience construct. A recent definition of the concept proposes that consumption experience is “an interactive process between consumers and an organization's value propositions, within a given sociocultural structure, capable of generating emotional, cognitive and behavioral responses in the consumer, whose final product is the experiential value, benefiting both consumers and organizations” (Scussel et al., 2021, p. 196).

Despite the increasing interest in consumption experience and the benefits reported for both consumers and organizations, there is an agreement in the literature that this subject is just at its beginning, being the new frontier for consumer and marketing research (^{Jain et al., 2017}; ^{Lemon & Verhoef, 2016}). Furthermore, the proposition from ^{Akaka, Vargo, and Schau (2015}) about the need to expand the context of experience beyond the duality of consumer-organization, including the effects of the social and cultural elements that structure the experiential setting, set researchers the need for rethinking the roots of our works. On that basis, we see the rise of the necessity of understanding the future avenues, challenges, and possibilities of knowledge production in the consumption experience scientific field. From this discussion, a few questions emerge: how is this body of knowledge currently organized? In addition, what are the paths for future research?

To address these questions, the primary objective of this article is to develop a literature review on consumption experience, drawing its social and intellectual structure. Following ^{Paul and Criado’s (2020}) statement that the main outcome of a literature review should be to point directions for future research, we aim to propose a research agenda as a secondary objective. Considering such intentions, we designed a hybrid study (Paul & Criado, 2020) combining systematic review and bibliometric analysis. Systematic reviews help researchers to comprehend the development of concepts, themes, and phenomena, accessing a broad comprehension of a specific topic based on the analysis of primary works (^{Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart, 2003}). The bibliometric analysis, in turn, enables the study of how a scientific field is socially structured, highlighting the most influential journals, authors, and papers, along with an analysis of the intellectual structure of the field and the possibilities of exploring the main researched topics and the emerging and promising fields of work (^{Zupic & Carter, 2015}). These analyses enable us to understand state of the art in the consumption experience scientific field, thus, setting future avenues of research.

2. Method

Considering the relevance of mapping the diversity of knowledge in management research, ^{Tranfield et al. (2003}) proposed a literature review process for management and management-related areas based on the evidence-based movement from medical science. Considering the Cochrane Reviewers’ Handbook, Tranfield et al. (2003) recommend literature reviews to follow three stages: planning the review, conducting a review, and reporting and dissemination.

In planning the review, we decided for a multimethod approach, following the guidance of ^{Paul and Criado (2020}), who state that hybrid reviews integrating structured and bibliometric reviews can provide a broader comprehension of a scientific field. On that basis, we resorted to a systematic review in order to map and organize the knowledge on consumption experience in a more subjective and qualitative approach and a bibliometric study, a quantitative approach that enables researchers to reach results based on bibliographic data and conclusions about the structure of a field, such as social and intellectual networks and major topics of interest (^{Zupic & Carter, 2015}).

As postulated by ^{Tranfield et al. (2003}), in this panning stage, we must identify the need for a review, which was covered in the introduction section of the article, followed by the development of a review protocol. We selected the protocol of ^{Templier and Paré (2015}), comprising six procedures: (i) formulating the problem, (ii) searching literature, (iii) screening for inclusion, (iv) assessing quality, (v) extracting data, and (vi) analyzing and synthesizing data.

The second stage proposed by ^{Tranfield et al. (2003}) concerns conducting the review. In this stage, we developed the protocol of ^{Templier and Paré (2015}). The formulation of the problem concerns this paper's objectives, which are to develop a literature review on consumption experience, draw its social and intellectual structure, and propose a research agenda. The literature search phase concerns the selection of the primary studies in the Web of Science database due to its greater temporal coverage and relevance (^{Chadegani et al., 2013}). We used the keywords “consumer experience” OR “customer experience” OR “consumption experience”. The analyzed period comprised publications in the last five-year period, 2016-2020, in order to design the state of the art, which means the most recent development in the thematic, considering the five-years range indicated by ^{Zupic and Carter (2015}). In this phase, we identified 960 papers.

In the screening for inclusion, we selected only papers on consumption experience in the Business and Management area, reaching 537 articles. To access the quality of the papers, we followed the recommendation of ^{Aguinis et al. (2020}) in keeping only the articles from the top 50 journals according to the 2019 Journal Citation Report - JCR, with a resulting corpus of 129 papers. We added another analysis through the 129 papers, reading the title, abstract, and keywords to identify the convergence with the thematic of the review, that is, if the consumption experience was really the focus of the paper. The final corpus was composed of 90 articles. We accessed authorship, journal, country of publication, keywords, and references during the data extraction step. We also examined the citations of the papers from Google Scholar in April 2021.

The final step is analyzing and synthesizing data. To perform the bibliometric analysis, we used the bibliometric software Vosviewer (1.6.11), as recommended by ^{Zupic and Carter (2015}), based on its ability to identify cooperative relationships within a scientific field (^{Van Eck & Waltman, 2017}). The bibliometric analysis enabled us to achieve the primary objective of this paper - to draw the social and intellectual structures of the field. We examine the social structure of consumption experience scientific production by assessing the most productive countries, the networks of knowledge, the most productive authors, the most influential journals, and bibliographic coupling. As stated in Zupic and Carter (2015), bibliographic coupling enables the creation of clusters that bring together similar interests based on the number of shared references, providing a better identification of niche specialties, which indicate research group interests.

The consumption experience intellectual structure analysis was based on the results of the bibliographic coupling, along with the qualitative analysis generated by the full reading of the articles from the research corpus. In turn, the qualitative perspective brought by the systematic review adds a level of subjectivity to the data analysis process (^{Tranfield et al., 2003}), allowing a better comprehension of the phenomenon under investigation. Table 1 illustrates the methodological procedures used in this literature review.

The third stage of the evidence-based approach for management research is reporting and dissemination (^{Tranfield et al., 2003}). For this, in the following section, we review the state of the art on consumption experience and generate a discussion that will provide the research agenda for future studies, thus ensuring the achievement of the objectives of this study.

3. Findings

The Social Structure of the Consumption Experience Field

We first analyze the social structure of the consumption experience scientific field, regarding the most productive countries, the networks of knowledge on the theme, the most productive scholars, and the most influential journals. The analysis of this data provides evidence of collaboration, revealing how the field is socially formed (^{Zupic & Carter, 2015}).

Concerning the most productive countries on consumption experience, Figure 1 shows that the United States leads the ranking with 20 papers - 10 of them published by North-American scholars and 10 in co-authorship with other countries. In the second position, the United Kingdom has 14 publications, followed by China (8), France (7), Australia (5), Spain (5), Italy (4), Belgium, Finland, and Germany (3 papers each).

Figure 1 Top 10 countries 

From these findings, we note that the development of consumption experience knowledge is based on the international partnership between scholars from different countries. To understand how these partnerships are set, we analyzed the international co-authorship based on the country of origin of the papers. We followed the guidance of ^{Zupic and Carter (2015}), who affirm that the analysis of the institutional affiliation and the geographical location can lead researchers to understand the networks of knowledge. Figure 2 illustrates the results.

Figure 2 Networks of knowledge 

The red network is formed by England, Italy, Australia, and China; the green network encompasses the United States, Netherlands, Belgium, and France; and the blue network is composed of Finland, Germany, and Sweden. The United States and England (UK) stand out in the international co-authorship, being the connection between the three identified networks. We understand that the protagonism of the United States is due to the seminal papers published by ^{Holbrook and Hirshman (1982}), both North-American scholars and the popularization of the concept in the managerial perspective with the work of ^{Pine and Gilmore (1999}) in the United States, fostering a tradition on experiential marketing.

The next step was to identify the most productive scholars, considering the publication of at least three papers during the analyzed period. Four researchers arise in this analysis, all with three publications. At the top of the rank is Katherine Lemon (841 citations), from the United States, who focused on consumption experience as a key driver of firm growth. T. C. Melewar (103 citations), from England, appears second, with interest in strategic marketing management and international marketing. Finally, with 30 citations each, Dhruv Grewal and Anne Roggeveen, both from the United States, focused on customer experience from an organizational perspective.

Of the most influential journals, the Journal of Business Research leads the ranking with 29 published papers, being the most relevant source of consumption experience knowledge in the last five years. With a scope dedicated to connecting theory development to actual business situations, the journal is in line with the main perspectives of the consumption experience, as its research traditions reunite the consumer and the organizational perspectives in order to create experiential benefits for all the involved actors (^{Scussel et al., 2021}).

Second, with 19 papers, the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management is dedicated to developing management knowledge in the tourism and hospitality industry, addressing the role of consumption experience in hotels, destinations, and restaurant businesses. Third, the Journal of Retailing has eight papers focused on retailing, encompassing products and services, producing knowledge in shopping experience, experience design, and the role of technologies in the experiential context (^{Grewal et al., 2017}).

The fourth most influential journal is the Journal of Service Research, with seven papers dedicated to the service-based economy perspective, in which consumption experience emerges in studies on the touchpoints during customer service experience, the experiential context, and the main elements of customer experience (^{Keyser et al., 2020}). Lastly, with six papers, the Journal of Marketing focuses on the production of marketing knowledge to the benefit of scholars, educators, practitioners, consumers, and societal stakeholders, with a particular emphasis on the managerial perspective of consumption experience and the role of the customer journey (^{Lemon & Verhoef, 2016}).

The current research on consumption experience shows the prevalence of a Eurocentric approach focused on developing firm-based knowledge, emphasizing the creation of competitive advantage, and reinforcing the path established by the theoretical foundations of marketing literature. Thus, because consumption experiences must respect the contextual dimension in which it takes place (^{Scussel et al., 2021}), we expect future works to embrace the context elements, proposing an analysis of how much the social and cultural factors are affecting the experiential context. In this perspective, we also suggest the consideration of cross-cultural studies. In addition, given the influence of the United States and European countries in the consumption experience body of knowledge, we suggest scholars to look into non-American and non-Eurocentric works, addressing the differences in consumption experience in different cultural backgrounds. This could be particularly relevant for works dedicated to global brands and international companies and the ones interested in the tourism and hospitality industry.

The Intellectual Structure of the Consumption Experience Field

We performed a bibliographic coupling to analyze the intellectual structure, a visual representation that reveals the main themes developed under a specific subject (^{Zupic & Carter, 2015}). The purpose of such analysis, as these authors explain, is to track research networks and shared interests. Figure 3 illustrates the findings.

Figure 3 Bibliographic Coupling 

The red cluster encompasses 25 papers addressing escape experiences, a hedonic consumption experience in which the consumers seek getaways, escaping from routine and the norms and obligations of daily life. In this perspective, works focus on the emotional customer experience (^{Wu & Gao, 2019}), consumers’ needs for socialization (^{McLeay, Lichy, & Major, 2019}), and authentic experiences (^{Kraak & Holmqvist, 2017}). Additionally, we identified articles about the tourism and hospitality industry, particularly on the role of service in providing superior experiences (^{Hollebeek & Rather, 2019}); the design of accommodation experience (^{Harkison, Hemmington, & Hyde, 2018}), and the co-creation of the tourism experience (^{Sugathan & Ranjan, 2019}).

The green cluster is formed by 25 papers about virtual experiences, addressing the interaction between consumers and companies/brands in the online environment. The creation of a research track focused on the digital context lies in the need to explore the role of digital information and communication technologies in delivering better consumer experiences. More than looking into the technology as a competitive advantage for companies, research on experience in the digital environment seeks to explore the role of consumers in such environments. For example, we observe the role of augmented reality in the online experience (^{Dacko, 2017}), the use of human enhancement technologies to provide better online service (^{Grewal et al., 2020}), and the relationship between branding and virtual reality (^{Pizzi et al., 2020}), and the role of social media in fostering consumer experience (^{Pelet et al., 2017}).

The purple cluster presents ten papers on the customer journey regarding the multiple points of interaction between customers and firms during the experience - before, during, and after purchase (^{Lemon & Verhoef, 2016}). Before purchase, articles focus on experience as a driver of consumers’ choice (^{Maggioni et al., 2019}). During purchase, authors have been dedicated to the role of technology on the customer journey (^{McLean et al., 2018}; ^{Wei et al., 201}) and the different stages of the omnichannel strategy (^{Valentini et al., 2020}; ^{Von Briel, 2018}). After purchase, scholars explore the role of experiences’ remembrance (^{Flacandji & Krey, 2020}; ^{Kim et al., 2020}) and the effects of the experience on loyalty (^{Foroudi et al., 2016}).

The 17 articles creating the blue cluster focus on consumption experience innovation. We observed papers about e-service innovation and its effects on the experience (^{Ciuchita et al., 2019}); customer experience with e-commerce (Vakulento et al., 2019); integrative innovation strategies (^{Grenha Teixeira et al., 2017}; ^{Thomas et al., 2020}; ^{Witell et al., 2020}), the rise of user-experience (^{Story et al., 2020}), the internet of things (^{Novak & Hoffman, 2019}), and the role of big data in customer experience management (^{Holmlund et al., 2020}).

The yellow cluster covers 11 papers on service experience, concentrating attention on the effects of service experience on consumers’ responses and the impact of the service environment on customer engagement. The articles address customers’ responses to the experience, focusing on the subjective side of the experience (^{Bravo et al., 2019}; ^{Dion & Borraz, 2017}), consumer engagement (^{Grewal et al., 2017}), the effects post-purchase on consumers’ perception (^{Klein et al., 2016}), the effects of the environment on the experience (^{Roschk & Hosseinpour, 2020}; Krishna et al., 2017; ^{Lee et al., 2019}; ^{Roggeveen et al., 2020}), and the focus on the specific experience consumers engage with brands (^{Zha et al., 2020}; ^{Zheng et al., 2019}). It is paramount to point out that the expression “service experience” for a long time was used as a synonym for consumption experience (^{Sundbo, 2015}). Nowadays, it covers a large set of constructs, concepts, and observable variables, such as the interaction between consumers and organizations, the role of social media in fostering online services, needs of socialization during experiential encounters, and the role of service in experiences, most of them included in other clusters. On that basis, we note that there is an overlapping between the clusters, possibly a consequence of the lack of a proper definition for the consumption experience construct until the recent publication of the unifying concept by ^{Scussel et al. (2021}).

Lastly, two papers engender the light blue cluster dedicated to customer experience management. The first paper focuses on customer experience management in the hospitality industry, setting the proper management of experiences as the main driver of customer loyalty and an important source of sustainable competitive advantages (^{Kandampully et al., 2018}). The authors show that these benefits arise from a combination of organizational resources, meaning the collaboration between marketing, human resources, operations, technology, and social media management. The second article in this cluster addresses the need to manage consumer subjectivity to promote a memorable experience, demanding firms attention on elements such as fun, discovery, and inspiration, which are connected to a higher satisfaction (^{Liu et al., 2017}). In short, the articles under this group explore the entire purchase process and the factors that constitute the experience, encompassing the consumer and the organizational perspectives, including the focus on how to increase the value of such experience.

The exam of the intellectual structure of consumption experience’s scientific field shows that, regardless of the interest in the consumer perspective, there is not much attention to the outcomes of consumption experiences to the consumer, particularly concerning the value of experiences for consumers, how they evaluate their experiences, how they feel about them or the impact of such experiences in other spheres of their lives. We must consider as well the lack of integration of the organizational and the consumer perspectives on research, as the studies are dedicated to one or another, with the dominance of the organizational side. This becomes the main step to be pursued in future studies: the integration of firms’ and consumers’ resources in the generation of the consumption experience, opening opportunities to address the antecedents and the consequences of such phenomenon for both consumers and organizations.

To help scholars develop such integration, we foresee the need to surpass the strong connection with the economic and psychological approaches and perspectives linked to the strategic perspective of marketing and consumer behavior research. There is a lack of intersection with other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy and cultural studies, which could shed light on the consumers’ perspective, exploring the role of consumption experience for consumers, not only in the eyes of competitive advantage. Furthermore, the assessment of other research traditions could be an effective path to operationalize the concept recently proposed by ^{Scussel et al. (2021}), particularly regarding understanding the dimensions of the consumption experience.

4. Research Agenda Proposition

Over the past four decades, since the publication of ^{Holbrook and Hirshman’s seminal paper (1982}), consumption experience research has generated a diverse body of knowledge, although connected to the managerial and strategic perspective that is characteristic of concepts and constructs under the marketing discipline (Scussel, 2017). Regardless of the amount of work on consumption experience, this is still an incipient concept, a notion that validated our purpose in mapping and discussing its roots and current state of the art in order to generate insights for future developments.

After analyzing the state of the art of consumption experience research, we advanced by grouping the identified gaps according to their similarities to propose directions for future research. We have reached four categories from which our research agenda is built.

The first category is escape experiences, comprising the need of consumers for hedonic and authentic experiences, in line with ^{Holbrook and Hirshman (1982}) and the adoption of consumer subjectivity in experiential marketing research. This is one of the main topics investigated in the consumption experience literature (Figure 3), a subject of growing interest for marketing and consumer behavior scholars, dedicated to the intense and emotional experiences in which consumers engage to escape routine (^{Cova, 2020}; ^{Scott et al., 2017}) and find self-renewal and transformation through consumption experiences (^{Cova & Cova, 2019}; ^{Husemann & Eckhardt, 2019}).

Despite the growing interest in such a topic (^{Cova, 2020}), a few gaps were identified. For many years, scholars have been dedicated to the romanticized perspective on these adventures (Cova, 2020), leaving the commercial perspective aside, particularly the interaction between consumers and service providers. In this sense, we recommend investigating the creation of escape experiences, exploring sensations through sensorial marketing, and using the five senses' stimulus to provide a unique experience. New research possibilities must address the drivers of such experiences, how brands/companies design these experiences, and how value and satisfaction arise in such experiences. Lastly, we suggest focusing on the co-creation of such experiences, meaning the way consumers and marketers interact to generate escapism. We also foresee the possibility of investigating the social and cultural motivations that promote the need to escape routine, addressing the influence of lifestyles, ideologies, and institutional structures that conform to the context of the experience, surpassing the duality between consumer and service provider. We suggest that scholars also explore what happens to consumers after these escape experiences, their feelings, and the impact on themselves and the consumption society as a whole. This could be a path to embracing consumers’ subjectivity and an opportunity to meet other disciplines such as sociology and anthropology.

Considering the connection between escape experiences and the tourism and hospitality industry, we recommend works that explore how consumers choose their escape destinations and what are the elements of the tourist experience. This is an opportunity to investigate experience with cities and destinations and the experience with brands such as hotels and restaurants. Since consumers are looking more and more to collect different and memorable experiences, it seems reasonable to look into touristic destinations and the possibilities of adventures and new sensations abroad and/or exotic places. Promoting escape experiences can also drive consumer satisfaction and loyalty to the tourism and hospitality organizations, suggesting investigation of the power of escapism in competitive advantage.

The second category is online customer experience. The emergence of technology and the fast speed of its innovation strategies have changed the way customers interact with firms, brands, and products, becoming a driver, facilitator, mediator of consumption experience, and experiential context.

In this scenario, we consider the need to explore consumers' shift from passive to active actors in the digital environment, building their own experience with brands, companies, and consumption communities easier and faster than we have ever seen. This demands organizations' online presence with constant and effective monitoring of consumers' interactions with other consumers, the brand, and competitors online. In this sense, researchers can develop works on how consumers and companies/brands co-create their online consumption experience, revealing the elements of such interaction and the resources that each part - consumer and brand/company - must bring to the online context. Therefore, we recommend future research on the online positioning for brands and organizations, considering the role of an online presence as a part of the consumer experience. We also suggest the need to study the digital environment as a partner of customer and companies/brands relationship. This is paramount for big companies and an important resource for small and medium-sized companies to assess consumers, create brand awareness, attract consumers, and develop a relationship with them based on the online experience. Additionally, we foresee possibilities addressing the role of technology adoption, intention, and frequency of use in customer experience, besides understanding the constructs of value and satisfaction with online experiences.

Concerning the rise of the omnichannel in the past few years (^{Shi et al., 2020}), we suggest scholars to investigate the experience generated by this context, considering the multiple actors involved in the delivery of customer experience. In this sense, we suggest the evaluation of the customer journey and the touchpoint in which consumers, companies, and/or their partners interact in an attempt to understand the drivers and consequences of the omnichannel experience. We also advocate for experience research to map the differences between showrooming and webrooming and the impact of such strategies on consumer experience. We see promising possibilities concerning consumption experience with apps, streaming platforms, and social media. Lastly, we propose investigations on the impact of the online environment in the dynamics between consumers, marketers, and emotional experiences. In this sense, we can explore the escapism promoted by online gaming, the creation of real-life escape rooms, and consumers’ preference for escaping routine through virtual reality. Despite the economic value and the promotion of brand experience brought by social media, we must also address the sociocultural motivations and their consequences and reflection on society of the relationship between consumers, technology, and escapism.

The third category is service experience, considering the role of the service perspective in the creation of consumption experience. The first suggestion we propose under this topic is developing a conceptual framework for service experience to avoid misunderstandings with the consumption experience definition, respecting their differences, and enabling the proper operationalization of each concept. In addition, as we understand that service can be a part of the experience and/or the experience itself, we invite future research to understand the antecedents and consequents of service experience, particularly considering the impact of service experience on customer satisfaction preference and loyalty. Moreover, considering the role of the context of the experience (^{Akaka et al., 2015}), we anticipate the need to understand the elements of the service context, such as cultures, ideologies, type of industry, organizational culture, and the role of employees in co-constructing with customers their experiences.

We must also cross the service experience investigation with the other topics of consumption experiences, especially the role of technology and innovation in service experience design, the effects of social media on service experience, and the possibilities of escape experience through service. We foresee possibilities of exploring the customer journey in the service experience context, providing information about the interaction between consumers and firms/brands during the several points of the service encounter. Finally, the tourism and hospitality industry can particularly benefit from research in this area, addressing the provision of superior service.

The fourth category is customer experience management, encompassing the organizational perspective on consumption experience and the need to consider the impact of consumption experience on organizational outcomes. In this sense, we suggest researchers to study the creation of experiential benefits for both consumers and companies through the test of structural models relating consumer experience to other variables such as value, quality, customer-brand relationship, trust, loyalty, and profitability indicators. Such models can unveil how companies/brands can manage customers’ experiences in the long turn, creating and promoting new and authentic experiences for them. We also visualize possibilities around organizational practices and the impact of other departments besides the marketing department, for instance, the role of the human resources department in training employees to manage customer experiences.

Research under this perspective must encompass the customer journey and the interactions between consumers and firms during the different phases of consumption experience, analyzing and optimizing the resources involved in each step of such a process, enabling a more accurate customer experience management. This is a critical path to be followed by academics dedicated to omnichannel strategies due to the recent rise of this subject, its growing managerial relevance, and its interaction with technology, innovation, and service provision. Table 2 summarizes our future research directions and a proposition of research questions to be explored.

Table 2 Future research directions 

5. Conclusion

This paper aimed to develop a literature review on consumption experience, draw its social and intellectual structure, and propose a research agenda. Considering the purpose of understanding the social and the intellectual structure of consumption experience, we observe an increasing combination of the consumers' and the organizational perspectives, motivated by an attempt to understand consumption experience as a process in which consumers and companies/brands interact in order to generate experiential value for both parties. It can be clearly stated that the concept of consumption experience has evolved from the traditional commercial perspective from the 1960s, encompassing consumers’ subjectivity as a paramount aspect in accessing and achieving the consumer experience. Currently, the body of knowledge in consumption experience comprises six research interests: escape experiences, virtual experiences, customer journey, customer experience innovation, service experience, and customer experience management. From these categories, we have drawn a research agenda to guide future efforts in this subject, indicating new avenues revealing different nuances from which the consumption experience can be explored and better understood.

The future of this literature must consider developments in escape experiences, online customer experience, service experience, customer experience management, and the intersection between these themes. This is our main academic contribution. As managerial implications, we understand that a leading and prominent position in the competitive environment requires companies to co-create the consumption experience with the public, whether face-to-face or virtual. The effective management of the consumption experience includes all contact points where the customer interacts with the company, brand, product, or service, representing a strategy that results in a win-win value exchange between companies and consumers.