Happiness and Well-Being in Customer Experience: Transformative Research in the Time of AI

Happiness and Well-Being in Customer Experience introduces a comprehensive framework for studying, designing, and assessing customer experiences that foster happiness and well-being. These experiences are being reshaped by artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies, transforming both their conception and their study. Building on advances in customer experience, transformative service and consumer research, and AI-enhanced marketing, the book presents an integrated model connecting theory, design, and method through two key dimensions. The first, the value dimension, examines how experiences create and express value, either through value generation, by designing for happiness, or through value delivery, by assessing how happiness is achieved. The second, relational engagement, captures the intensity and reciprocity of interaction between researchers, organizations, and participants, ranging from indirect and data-driven to immersive and participatory approaches. The intersection of these dimensions generates four methodological categories that span transformative research: Analytical and AI-Assisted Design, Participatory and Qualitative Design, Quantitative and Experimental Evaluation, and Participatory Evaluation and Transformative Assessment. By combining interpretive and data-driven techniques, the book provides a coherent framework for supporting scholars, practitioners, and graduate students’ understanding of what drives happiness in customer experience and offers scholars and practitioners a guide to creating more human-centered, empathetic, and well-being-oriented markets.