Customer experience within retail environments: An embodied, spatial approach

In: Marketing theory, Band 15, Heft 4, S. 545-564

Abstract

Although the literature on customer experience within retail environments spontaneously invokes the sensuous, affective and emotional aspects of experience, the body – which is the locus of these – is conspicuous by its absence. In these terms, researchers have relied on a theory of mind. This article seeks to suggest an embodied, spatial approach to customer experience, arguing that it is thanks to the body that we sense the environment, and that likewise, it is thanks to the environment that we can sense and experience our body. The reciprocity between body and world implies an inter-corporeality that extends or retracts the spatiality of the body as a result of its motility. This article emphasizes the bodily, spatial character of customer experience, concluding with implications and suggestions for future studies.