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Toward a goal-oriented view A goal-oriented

view of
of customer journeys customer
journeys
Larissa Becker, Elina Jaakkola and Aino Halinen
Department of Marketing and International Business,
Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Turku, Finland 767
Received 4 November 2019
Abstract Revised 16 April 2020
Purpose – Customer experience research predominantly anchors the customer journey on a specific offering, 3 June 2020
implying an inherently firm-centric perspective. Attending calls for a more customer-centric approach, this 4 June 2020
Accepted 11 June 2020
study aims to develop a goal-oriented view of customer journeys.
Design/methodology/approach – This study interprets the results of a phenomenological study of a
transformative journey toward a sober life with the self-regulation model of behavior to advance understanding
of customer journeys.
Findings – The consumer’s journey toward a higher-order goal encompasses various customer journeys
toward subordinate goals, through which consumers engage in iterative cognitive and behavioral processes to
adjust or maintain their experienced situation vis-
a-vis the goal. Experiences drive behavior toward the goal.
It follows that negative experiences may contribute to goal attainment.
Research limitations/implications – This study highlights the importance of looking at the consumers’
higher-order goals to obtain a more holistic understanding of the customer journey.
Practical implications – Companies and organizations should extend their view beyond the immediate
goals of their customers to identify relevant touchpoints and other customer journeys that affect the customer
experience.
Originality/value – This study proposes conceptualization of the customer journey, comprising goal-oriented
processes at different hierarchical levels, and it demonstrates how positive and negative customer experiences
spur behaviors toward the higher-order consumer goal. This conceptualization enables a more customer-
centric perspective on journeys.
Keywords Customer experience, Customer journey, Consumer journey, Self-regulation model, Goals
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The customer journey has become one of the key concepts for service and marketing research
(e.g. Becker and Jaakkola, 2020; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). Customer journeys are commonly
defined as a series of touchpoints that customers go through before, during and after
purchase (Kranzb€ uhler et al., 2018; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Patrıcio et al., 2011).
Practitioners’ and academics’ increasing interest in the concept is largely attributable to the
notion that journeys give rise to customer experience, which is considered a key source of
competitive advantage in today’s markets (e.g. Kranzb€ uhler et al., 2018). Customer experience
refers to the customer’s sensorial, affective, cognitive, relational and behavioral responses
and reactions to various stimuli along the customer journey (Følstad and Kvale, 2018; Lemon
and Verhoef, 2016). Hence, understanding customer journeys is a prerequisite for developing
superior customer experiences (Følstad and Kvale, 2018; Kuehnl et al., 2019).

© Larissa Becker, Elina Jaakkola and Aino Halinen. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This
article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may
reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-
commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of
this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode. Journal of Service Management
Vol. 31 No. 4, 2020
The authors thank Associate Professor Lia Patrıcio, Professor Emma Macdonald, two anonymous pp. 767-790
Reviewers as well as the Editor and the Guest Editor for their valuable comments to this article. Emerald Publishing Limited
1757-5818
Funding: This project was funded by the Foundation for Economic Education (Liikesivistysrahasto). DOI 10.1108/JOSM-11-2019-0329
JOSM Extant research nevertheless offers a limited view on customer journeys. Most studies
31,4 anchor the customer journey on a specific product or service, implying an inherently firm-
centric perspective that offers little insight into touchpoints beyond the firm’s influence.
Recently, there have been calls for a more customer-centric perspective. Heinonen and
Strandvik (2015) argued that, in order to understand value creation, the focus should shift
from how providers involve customers in their processes to how consumers engage with
different types of actors in their lifeworld. Lipkin (2016) suggested adopting a perspective
768 that highlights the consumer’s goals, activities and tasks to provide a holistic view of the
customer experience. Hamilton and Price (2019) noted that true customer orientation
necessitates an understanding of the journeys toward large and small life goals and
suggested focusing on the consumer (as opposed to customer) journey to break free from a
firm-centric focus.
These suggestions point out the need to examine journeys focused on consumers’ goals
rather than on a particular purchase or service. Therefore, this study aims to develop a goal-
oriented view of the customer journey. This view departs from what consumers want to
achieve in their lifeworlds and illuminates the consumers’ processes toward their higher-
order goals, acknowledging that consumers draw on multiple market and nonmarket
resources to accomplish them (Epp and Price, 2011; Hamilton and Price, 2019). A goal-
oriented view thus provides a more customer-centric perspective that has been strongly
advocated in service research (e.g. Gr€onroos and Ravald, 2011; Heinonen et al., 2010; Vargo
and Lusch, 2008).
A goal-oriented view on customer journeys could also benefit service practice. It offers a
holistic picture of the consumers’ processes toward the goal, which likely involve interactions
with a range of actors. Through this holistic view, a firm can better understand how its
offering fits into these processes, how distinct customer journeys are connected and what
elements outside its direct control affect the customer experience. A goal-oriented view of the
customer journey can offer firms opportunities to develop compelling solutions (Epp and
Price, 2011) and innovations (Patrıcio et al., 2011) that help their customers achieve their goals,
thus facilitating value creation (Hamilton and Price, 2019; Heinonen et al., 2010; Macdonald
et al., 2016).
This study poses three specific research questions. First, what is the structure of a goal-
oriented customer journey? As customer experience research has focused predominantly on
the firm or product rather than on consumer goals, the customer journey is typically
structured as a series of touchpoints related to the customer’s purchase process (Lemon and
Verhoef, 2016). Focusing on consumers’ higher- and lower-order goals can reveal a more
complex, multileveled structure of the journey.
The second research question inquires what processes does a goal-oriented customer
journey comprise? So far, the customer journey literature has mainly focused on mapping
customer buying behaviors such as information search, consideration, choice and usage (e.g.
Edelman and Singer, 2015; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). However, extant research has not
considered the more general goal-related processes that can offer a new understanding of the
mechanisms underlying a customer’s behaviors during a goal-oriented journey.
Third, what is the relationship between customer experience and consumer goals within
the goal-oriented customer journey? The customer experience literature has treated customer
experience mainly as a response to stimuli, focusing on its evaluative outcomes vis-
a-vis the
firm or the brand (e.g. Brakus et al., 2009; Kuehnl et al., 2019; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016).
Investigating experiences in relation to the consumer goal pursuit offers a novel, more holistic
perspective that has recently been called for (e.g. McColl-Kennedy et al., 2015).
To address these questions, a phenomenological study was conducted to describe
consumers’ lived experiences as they emerge in a particular context (Thompson et al., 1989).
The empirical study focuses on a transformative journey that aims at a significant life
change: recovery from alcoholism. Both practical relevance and theoretical potential directed A goal-oriented
this choice. Consumer goals related to health and well-being are of particular importance for view of
both the individual and society. Recovery from alcoholism represents an extreme context that
can unveil a rich picture of goal-oriented customer journeys, thus enabling conceptual
customer
development. journeys
The phenomenological findings were interpreted using the self-regulation model of
behavior (Carver and Scheier, 1998) to offer a new understanding of customer journeys in
three major ways. First, furthering the ideas proposed by Hamilton and Price (2019), this 769
study presents a goal-oriented and hierarchical view of journeys that highlights how
customer journeys toward lower-order goals involving market, organizational and social
actors are embedded into broader consumer journeys toward higher-order goals. Second, this
study identifies iterative cognitive and behavioral processes that relate to how consumers set
goals and seek to change or maintain the experienced situation in relation to their goals
during the journey. Third, the model offers a novel explanation of how the customer
experience operates in the customer journey, not merely as an outcome but as a driving force
toward the consumer’s higher-order goals.
The next section briefly outlines the conceptual background for the study. The
subsequent sections present the empirical phenomenological research study and its findings
on how recovering alcoholics experience their journey toward a sober life. These findings are
next interpreted using the self-regulation model of behavior, followed by a conceptualization
of goal-oriented customer journeys explicating their structure, processes and the role of the
customer experience. The final section of the paper discusses theoretical and practical
implications as well as the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research studies.

2. Theoretical foundations
2.1 Customer journey and customer experience: toward a goal-oriented view
The customer experience literature usually portrays the customer journey as a series of
touchpoints that customers interact with during their purchase process (Lemon and Verhoef,
2016). The customer journey consists of prepurchase, purchase and post-purchase phases
(Lemon and Verhoef, 2016), comprising various provider-designed touchpoints such as
communication and service encounters with the focal firm and its partners, which give rise to
the customer experience (Følstad and Kvale, 2018). The current literature also acknowledges
customer-owned touchpoints (i.e. customer activities related to an offering beyond the firm’s
control) and the influence of external actors in a customer’s experience with the firm or the
offering (Jaakkola et al., 2015; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). Still, the focus remains largely on
how these interactions function as stimuli regarding a particular offering, implying a firm-
centric view of the customer journey.
Nonetheless, some studies in the customer experience literature provide a more customer-
centric perspective that can contribute to a goal-oriented view of customer journeys (Table 1).
These studies highlight that a customer’s interactions with a firm are not isolated but they are
connected to a broader service system. Tax et al. (2013) presented the concept of the service
delivery network to capture the multiple firms that, from the customer’s perspective, provide
an overall and connected service. Similarly, Baron and Harris (2010) offered a method to
identify multiple actors that are part of an experience domain. Patrıcio et al. (2011) and
Teixeira et al. (2012) stated that the customer experience can emerge from interactions at
three levels: (1) the service encounter or touchpoint; (2) the service system, referring to a
customer’s journey with a single firm; and (3) the value constellation, referring to a network of
service providers that enables a consumer’s activity. While these approaches provide a view
of the customer journey embedded into the broader service system, they do not explicitly
address the consumer’s higher-order goals.
JOSM Contributions to a customer-centric
31,4 Study perspective of customer journey How the study differs from the present one

Baron and The study offers a method to identify (1) The study does not incorporate the
Harris (2010) customer interactions with multiple actors concept of the customer journey
(vs isolated interactions with a focal firm) in (2) The study does not analyze the role of
an experience domain the customer experience in the journey
770 (3) The study does not explicitly address the
consumer’s higher-order goals
Patrıcio et al. The study uses an activity-based (1) The activity-based perspective reveals
(2011) perspective of customer experience that different aspects (e.g. multiple actors that
highlights the embeddedness of customer enable a customer’s activity) compared
journeys – referred to as the service system to a goal-based perspective (e.g.
– into the customer’s value constellation, cognitive and behavioral processes
formed by multiple service organizations toward a higher-order goal)
that enable a customer’s activity (2) The study focuses on service design for
the customer experience
(3) The study does not analyze the role of
the customer experience in the journey
(4) The study does not explicitly address the
consumer’s higher-order goals
Teixeira et al. The study considers the embeddedness of (1) The activity-based perspective reveals
(2012) the customer journey into the customer’s different aspects compared to a goal-
value constellation. The study also based perspective
broadens the customer experience context (2) The study does not analyze the role of
to include technology-enabled systems, the customer experience in the journey
artifacts and multiple actors beyond (3) The study does not explicitly address the
service providers consumer’s higher-order goals
Tax et al. The study acknowledges the (1) The study focuses on an overall and
(2013) embeddedness of interactions with a single connected service as an anchor for the
firm into the service delivery network, journey, not the consumer goal(s)
defined as the organizations responsible for (2) The study does not analyze the role of
Table 1. the provision of an overall and connected the customer experience in the journey
Studies that have service from the customer’s perspective
contributed to a Hamilton and The editorial suggests that the customer (1) The study does not analyze the role of
customer-centric Price (2019) journey is embedded into consumer the customer experience in the journey
perspective of journeys toward higher-order goals (2) It does not fully conceptualize customer
customer journeys or consumer journeys

Hamilton and Price (2019) directed attention toward what customers are trying to accomplish
with their purchases. The authors suggest that the broader consumer journey can be
understood through the customer’s lower- and higher-order goals: for example, a consumer
journey where the goal is to recover from illness (i.e. a higher-order goal) may encompass a
customer journey focusing on getting a medication (i.e. a lower-order goal). Combining these
perspectives suggests that a goal-oriented customer journey can be viewed as multilayered,
comprising superordinate and subordinate journeys toward various goals.
As the customer experience literature has tended to focus on the customer journey
(cf. Patrıcio et al., 2011), the processes that consumers go through are described mainly at this
level as well. Lemon and Verhoef (2016), for instance, based their conceptualization of the
customer journey on consumer purchase and usage processes: they described consumers’
behaviors such as need recognition, payment and usage of a product. Patrıcio et al. (2011) and
Teixeira et al. (2012) expanded their focus beyond the customer journey and recognized the
consumer’s overall activity, which was decomposed into smaller activities, operations and
tasks. For instance, at a higher level, buying a house relates to obtaining information and
getting a mortgage. These activities can be decomposed into smaller ones (e.g. searching for A goal-oriented
information about mortgages), which, in turn, can be decomposed into even smaller tasks (e.g. view of
accessing Internet banking) (Patrıcio et al., 2011). To conclude, the existing journey
conceptualizations predominantly focus on specific activities and behaviors related to a
customer
purchase, usage process or an overall activity. The underlying, more general goal-related journeys
processes and behaviors have not been scrutinized.
Viewing customer journeys from a consumer goals perspective is bound to provide new
insights into the customer experience. Extant research mainly studies experiences in terms of 771
the firm or the brand, contributing to customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions (e.g.
Brakus et al., 2009; Kuehnl et al., 2019). Some studies take a more customer-centric view and
consider actors and activities beyond the customer–firm dyad (e.g. Patrıcio et al., 2011;
Teixeira et al., 2012; Tax et al., 2013). These studies recognize that the customer experience
emerges as the customer’s responses to versatile stimuli in the consumer’s lifeworld, but they
do not elaborate on how these experiences relate to the consumer’s higher-order goals. As
goals are central to the approach of the journeys outlined here, the study discusses this
literature next.

2.2 Goals and the self-regulation model of behavior

Goals are desired states that individuals intend to attain or avoid through action (Austin and
Vancouver, 1996). They are not perceived as static end states but as continuously changing
(Carver and Scheier, 1982). Many models try to explain how individuals behave when trying
to achieve their goals. One useful model is the self-regulation model of behavior (Carver and
Scheier, 1982, 1998), which is suitable for developing a goal-oriented view of the customer
journey because it describes the process through which individuals pursue a goal.
The self-regulation model of behavior contains four elements – input function, reference
value, comparator and output function – that form the basic unit of the model: the feedback
loop (Figure 1) (Carver and Scheier, 1982, 1998). According to Carver and Scheier (1990),
individuals manifest the functions of this model as a repeating process when they move
toward a goal. The input function refers to the sensor through which individuals perceive
their current situation. Adapted to the customer journey context, the input refers to the
consumer’s perception of his/her present situation where customer experience is one of the

Figure 1.
The feedback loop of
the self-regulation
model of behavior
(adapted from Carver
and Scheier,
1982, 1998)
JOSM sources of information about the situation. This perception is compared against a reference
31,4 value – the consumer’s goal, in this context – through a comparator, a mechanism that
compares input and the reference value. If there is a discrepancy between the consumer’s
perception about the current state and the goal, the individual adjusts his/her behavior (output
function) to minimize this discrepancy. This change in behavior affects the individual’s
environment, leading to a new perception of the current situation, compared again with the
goal in a repeating fashion. The model also recognizes other influencing factors in an
772 individual’s environment (Carver and Scheier, 1982). This means that, even without adjusting
their behavior, consumers may experience changes that affect how they perceive their current
situation, leading them to behave in a way that counters these disturbances.
This model assumes that goals are organized hierarchically, meaning that lower-level
goals are subordinate to higher-order goals (Carver and Scheier, 1982; Powers, 1973). For
example, a consumer with the goal of getting healthy (higher-order goal) might have a
subordinate goal of buying a medication (lower-level goal) (cf. Hamilton and Price, 2019).
These goals vary in their levels of abstraction, from abstract goals at higher levels (“to-be”
goals) to more concrete ones at lower levels (“to-do” goals). To move down in the hierarchy,
one has to ask “how” to achieve the goal; to move up, one asks “why” (Powers, 1973). The
hierarchy does not mean that one achieves a goal on one level to go up or down to another but
lower-level goals are ingredients of a higher-level goal (Carver and Scheier, 1998).
In this model, the outputs of higher-order feedback loops provide reference values (i.e.
goals) for feedback loops at lower levels (Carver and Scheier, 1982, 1990; Powers, 1973).
Feedback loops exist at several levels of the hierarchy – one for each goal (Carver and Scheier,
1982, 1998; Powers, 1973). In this way, this model is also useful for understanding the structure
of a goal-oriented customer journey, considering that it is possible to look at different levels
of the journey as different feedback loops directed at different levels of goal abstraction.

3. Methodology
This study applies a phenomenological research methodology, especially an interpretive (or
hermeneutic) tradition that draws on Heidegger’s philosophy (e.g. Creswell, 2013; Horrigan-
Kelly et al., 2016). Phenomenology “seeks to describe experience as it emerges in some
context(s) or . . . as it is lived” (Thompson et al., 1989, p. 135), revealing what people experience
and how they experience it (Creswell, 2013). Phenomenological research aims to discover the
essential, invariant features of conscious, immediate experiences (Creswell, 2013; Goulding,
2005). Following this tradition, the study posits that a phenomenon has to be understood from
the first-person subjective experience and that experiences have to be situated in a context, in
the customer’s lifeworld (Thompson et al., 1989). Further, it is assumed that theory can be
inductively generated based on the phenomenological data, but a researcher’s interpretation
always involves reflections from theoretical literature (Goulding, 2005; Horrigan-Kelly
et al., 2016).

3.1 Data collection [1]

To develop a goal-oriented view of customer journeys, the study empirically examines a
transformative journey: a journey toward a sober life. It involves a clear higher-order goal and
allows the study of customer journeys with different service providers, organizations and
products, as well as interactions with various social actors. It also represents an extreme case
of a journey toward a higher-order goal, a complex social setting and a long-term process that
assists in unveiling the hierarchy of goals and the dynamics therein.
The study was conducted in Brazil over a period of eight months in 2017, employing three
complementary data collection methods: observation, phenomenological interviews and a
diary method (see Table 2).
Method Contribution of the method Examples of questions/data Volume of data
A goal-oriented
view of
Observation Creating a pre-understanding “They talk like the meeting was a 13 AA meetings customer
of participants’ experiences way of venting their everyday seven pages of
and the context of the problems. Some of them talk notes journeys
journeys (e.g. terminology about how it was when they were
and interactions among drunk. They have the serenity
members) prayer, which is a way of 773
conducting life and they apply it
to everyday problems. In sum,
my perception is that AA is not
directed at not drinking but the
12 steps involve a completely
different way of life” (notes from
the meeting on February 13th).
Phenomenological Gaining an understanding of “To start, I would like you to talk 18 interviews
interview participants’ backgrounds a little bit about yourself: who 351 pages of text
(e.g. what they do, who they you are, what do you do, your
live with) and their histories family.”
with alcohol; gaining an “Do you remember the moment
understanding of the you realized you had a problem?”
emergence of experiences “Besides going to AA, what else
along the participants’ do you do to stay sober?”
journeys through their “How do you feel after going to
retrospective accounts (key church?”
events, activities, “Can you give me an example of
organizations, social actors a moment you sought out your
and feelings, thoughts and sponsor?”
general reactions to these)
Diary method Deepening the understanding “In this diary, you should Ten diaries
of the journey as a real-time describe things related to your between 15 days
experience; capturing micro recovery process and the search and two months
events as they happen in the for the goal of sobriety. Here are in length
participant’s everyday life; some examples: 100 pages of text
detailed descriptions of
events (1) Activities: These activities
are related to things you do
or stop doing to achieve
your goal . . .
(2) Events . . .
(3) Interactions with other
people, companies,
organizations . . .
(4) Interactions with products
or objects . . . Table 2.
(5) Responses and reactions Use of data collection
. . ..” methods

Observations contributed to the pre-understanding of the phenomenon and its context (e.g.
used terminology) and the confirmation of thematic findings as participants’ stories were
heard. The first author, a native Brazilian, participated in 13 Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)
meetings with three different groups; she listened to participants’ stories while observing the
settings and interactions among group members and recorded notes on how a meeting
worked, what actions were taken during the meeting and how the participants interacted
with each other and with their observer.
JOSM For the interviews and diaries, the researcher recruited voluntary participants from the
31,4 AA meetings. No restrictions were set in relation to personal characteristics or length of
sobriety and participants could choose to what extent they wanted to contribute to the study.
A small monetary incentive was offered for participation. A total of 18 participants agreed to
give interviews and ten of them reported experiences in a diary. Table 3 provides key
information about the participants (pseudonyms are used to protect their identities), and its
data cover a wide array of experiences and phases along recovery journeys.
774 For the interviews, a convenient place (e.g. the participant’s home or a free AA space) was
used. Bevan’s (2014) guidelines for phenomenological interviews were followed. To
contextualize the phenomenon, the interviewer asked questions about participants’
backgrounds and histories with alcohol. To apprehend the phenomenon, the interviewer
asked each participant about his/her journey toward sobriety – key events, activities,
interactions with organizations and other actors – as well as his/her feelings, thoughts and
general reactions to these elements. Finally, to clarify the phenomenological description, the
interviewer posed more specific questions related to the experience and its context.
Participants gave rich descriptions of their journeys, detailing histories from the moment
they started drinking until the moment of the interview.
Diaries offer an effective way of capturing human experiences of everyday life, including
experiences as a customer (e.g. Car
u and Cova, 2008). To record the diary, written and spoken
instructions were given and participants were asked to report anything related to their
recovery process without editing their initial descriptions. Three participants used audio
recordings and the rest reported their experiences in a notebook. In the diaries, participants
described events and problems as they experienced them during everyday life. For example,

Recovery time, from Total Length of Member

Participant Age last drink or use recovery time interview (min) Diary period check

George 68 37 years 37 years 45 Two months U

Larry 62 35 years 35 years 89 –
Steven 66 34 years 34 years 64 Two months U
David 69 34 years 34 years 67 – U
Mark 59 25 years 26 years 80 – U
Anthony 66 25 years 25 years 146 Two months U
Timothy 53 18 years 20 years 58 20 days U
Scott 54 Two years 20 years* 94 –
Charles 48 Five days ∼16 years* 135 –
Joseph 65 One year 13 years 51 Two months U
Michael 43 12 years 13 years 99 –
Paul 27 Two years Nine years 82 –
James 44 Six years Eight and a 78 Two months U
half years
Jacob 47 Two months ∼ Eight 53 15 days
years*
Robert 38 Five years Five and a 72 – U
half years
Thomas 65 2.3 years Three and a 104 Two months U
half years
John 40 One and a half years One and a half 79 One and a U
years half months
Frank 56 One year One year 90 One and a
Table 3. half months
List of participants Note(s): * multiple relapses
someone might state in their interview that anger is “a poison for alcoholics”; in the diaries, A goal-oriented
they would describe events that made them angry, thoughts about relapse and what they did view of
to overcome the situation.
customer
3.2 Data analysis journeys
Systematic procedures grounded in interpretive phenomenology and the idea of a
hermeneutic circle were followed during the data analysis. The analysis advanced in two
stages following the iterative process of interpretation between parts of the textual material 775
and the whole, first for the individual stories and then for the whole set of stories (Thompson
et al., 1989). In the first stage, the researcher read all available material for each participant as
a whole. Significant statements in vivo were then coded and noted in a separate notebook.
Emerging themes related to (1) the nature of the customer experience, (2) the interactions with
other actors and (3) the elements of an overall consumer journey toward sober life were
subsequently identified and described.
In the second stage, a new part-to-whole procedure was completed. The researcher reviewed
all the theme notes related to individual stories in order to gain a comprehensive understanding
of the data. Themes were integrated based on their similarities, identifying global patterns in
the data (i.e. the essential features or general structure of the phenomenon). The textual material
was then revisited to corroborate the interpretation and member checks were conducted
to ascertain that it was acceptable and meaningful to the participants. Following the ideals
of interpretative phenomenological research (Horrigan-Kelly et al., 2016; Thompson et al.,
1989), primacy was given to subjective experience over prior research knowledge and an emic
(rather than an etic) approach was used to label the phenomenological categories presented in
the results. The role of the literature only became visible in a later stage.

4. Findings of the empirical study

The phenomenological analysis resulted in the identification of three iterative processes that
described the recovering alcoholics’ journeys toward a sober life: (1) recognizing the problem
and setting the goals, (2) changing habits and behaviors and (3) overcoming obstacles and
temptations. The following subsections describe the nature of a transformative journey and
its associated experiences, structured according to these key processes.

4.1 Recognizing the problem and setting the goals

Our findings indicate that, for the recovering alcoholic, recognizing and accepting the
problem and setting goals are dynamic and ongoing processes, making it difficult to pinpoint
when such a journey begins. The study participants’ stories revealed that the goal evolved
from reducing alcohol consumption to stopping consumption to changing one’s life or
becoming a new person. Many participants described starting this process by admitting that
they were drinking too much and recognizing the need to reduce consumption, often
prompted by family members and friends who pointed out the problems the alcohol was
causing. Recognizing and accepting the problem appeared to be an iterative process
characterized by many new beginnings and a gradually broadening goal:
When it was dawn, I would promise myself, “So, today, until noon, I will not drink,” and sometimes I
did not, but then from the afternoon to the night, I used to consume the quantity that I did not
consume in the previous day, or even more (Thomas, interview).
After realizing they were unable to reduce consumption, their goal evolved to stopping
drinking altogether. Some of the participants explained that their initial goal was to stop
drinking for a while until their problems were reduced or until they had disappeared.
However, as they proceeded on their journey, they accepted that they had a disease and could
JOSM not consume even a sip of alcohol. One informant explained the difference between
31,4 recognizing and accepting one’s problem:
While the person does not accept that he is sick, he remains reluctant. While he can work here or
there, he keeps working and drinking, drinking and working; he keeps slacking. It’s only when he is
losing everything or almost everything that he gives up. “No, wait, I am sick.” . . .. Then, I accepted;
before, I only used to admit, “Wait, I admit that I am drinking too much; I admit that I need to stop for
a while, give it a break.” . . .. Then things eased for me, and my suffering also softened, “I am sick.”
776 Then I went to the meeting. . . (George, interview).
It was common for the participants to accept their addictions after enduring an extremely
negative experience (what recovering alcoholics call reaching rock bottom), when they
received a “spiritual awakening.” For instance, Charles’ first real decision to stop drinking
came after he and his friends got drunk and had a car accident in which his best friend died.
For Robert and Anthony, the decision came after they heard their doctors talking about their
risk of dying, which made them extremely fearful. Timothy talks about hitting rock bottom:
Then I got into a physical fight with this person and entered my father-in-law’s house. Then he hit me
in the head with a wood stick. . . .. Then I passed out and went to the hospital. Then in the hospital . . .
28 stitches. I stayed alone there. . . .. “Oh, now everything is lost.” . . .. I felt like human waste. From
the hospital, I was admitted to a clinic (Timothy, interview).
Many of the participants explained that their goal evolved from stopping drinking to
becoming a sober person, which involved making changes beyond abstinence. The goal
became something bigger: a change of life and becoming a new man. As Larry explained:
The key is not only stopping drinking; it is the real change of character. . . .. Because if there is not a
change of character, one will continue drinking, simple as that. Stopping [drinking] is easy . . .. To
stay stopped, there needs to be a change of character. . . .. There is a key expression that says. . .: “the
man that I was drank, and the man that I was will drink” (Larry).
This goal is often supported by seeking help from clinics, treatment centers or AA, where
alcoholics learn that abstinence will not last if they remain whom they were, behaving as they
had when drinking. Participants who underwent detoxification often relapsed if this
continuation of treatment (through the 12-step program) was missing or if they thought they
were cured and could continue drinking. Many participants described how these programs
made them face their problems and identify behaviors that needed to be changed. For
instance, the 12-step program recommends that recovering alcoholics amend their past
mistakes by asking forgiveness from people they hurt when drinking. This was described as
a distressing but necessary experience for those wanting to stay sober. Paul described how
having his defects of character yelled to his face helped him accept his problem:
And after the third month [of treatment on the farm], we go through the confrontation, where the
older guys of the . . . farm . . . can see your defects of character. . . .. It is very tense because it . . .
shakes your feelings very much. . . .. We were 51 [people], so we sat in a circle, from the oldest to the
newest, and then it goes, and one sits in front of you, eye-to-eye, opens their arms and [yells]: “You’re a
bum, . . . you do not read, you do not seek [help], you stole from your family, you’re arrogant!” . . ..
Then your mask falls . . ., and it was a shock to me, I cried and everything, but I got a shock of reality
and started facing [my problems] (Paul).
During recovery, the goal evolved to maintain sobriety as the desire to drink was reduced or
removed. To attain the new goal, recovering alcoholics still needed to become the new person
they wanted to be while being aware of their defects of character, behaviors, traps and
temptations. In the participants’ words, they had to “stay alert.” Recovering alcoholics keep
going to AA meetings, which they call daily maintenance, so that they can keep convincing
themselves that they are alcoholics:
 Being convinced that we are alcoholics is also progressive. It does not happen overnight. . . .. I, for A goal-oriented
instance, am not hit by doubt because I have regular attendance at the meetings, but I cannot
guarantee you that, if I interrupted this regular attendance at the meetings, this conviction that I have view of
a problem with alcohol would start to fade. I saw it happen countless times (Larry). customer
journeys
4.2 Changing habits and behaviors
The participants highlighted that setting goals prompted them to change their habits and
behaviors to stay sober. Some of the necessary changes related to abandoning existing 777
behaviors, where the key change obviously related to stop drinking. Many participants
attended clinics and hospitals for detoxification, and they sought help from the AA and self-
help groups, where they would typically receive medical treatment and counseling. The
participants described detoxification from alcohol caused extremely negative experiences
such as shaking, sweating, pain, nervousness and anxiety. However, these experiences
derived from a lack of alcohol had a tendency to weaken and vanish over time. Beyond giving
up drinking, the participants explained that they also needed to abandon habits that were
associated with alcohol: they could no longer go to bars, engage in activities associated with
alcohol such as games and dances or consume products that might contain or be associated
with alcohol. The participants stated that they tried to keep the disease quiet.
This monster that is alcoholism is asleep inside me and I cannot wake it up. And what awakens a
monster inside me? . . .. It is the smell of alcohol. I cannot even put aftershave lotion with the smell of
alcohol. . . .. I [also] do not mix in my food alcohol vinegar (Anthony, interview).
The participants also described taking on new behaviors that supported sobriety, for
example, attending AA meetings and church. Going to church and praying were new habits
that gave recovering alcoholics the strength to face obstacles, helping them deal with
negative emotions and feelings while overcoming defects of character and imperfections.
Some participants described the relief they felt when sharing their stories and how they
experienced insightful moments when listening to other recovering alcoholics’ stories at AA
meetings:
Our medicine is the attendance to the meetings; it is in the listening and talking. This is our medicine,
what enters through the ear and leaves through the mouth (George, interview).
Many participants noted that filling their time with new activities, even those unrelated to
sobriety, was very important in their journeys. According to Anthony, idleness is the
recovering alcoholic’s enemy. New habits and activities were described as therapeutic,
anxiety-reducing and pleasurable. For Michael, meditation made him feel pure. For Timothy,
making crafts at home reduced hyperactivity. Joseph, who practices gardening, and Larry,
who practices physical activities, detailed the importance of filling their idle time:
Every weed I remove is like a cup of alcohol that I do not drink (Joseph, diary).
This idle time that was spent in the bar—and it was a considerate amount of time, about 4 or 5 h a
day. . .—started to be vacant. And I was 29 years old, stopping drinking . . ., there was energy left. I
went biking, swimming . . .. One, because I had to fill the time, and two, because anxiety came in, and
the physical activity removed anxiety. I would pedal 50 km and would come back calm (Larry).
Just as recovering alcoholics replaced habits and activities, they also needed to replace people
in their lives; they needed to avoid old friends who drank because those friends would
insistently invite them to drink, something commonly described by the participants. Self-help
groups offered opportunities to socialize with peers undergoing the same journey. Recovering
alcoholics believed it was important to interact with people on the same path because they
could show the way to a sober life:
JOSM If it was that agony from the first days . . . it is humanly impossible to support. So, there it comes, one
of the advantages of the group is this: the mates are there during those first days to say, “It is going to
31,4 pass. It is going to pass” . . ., and that one who is starting [the journey] has to have faith . . .. A doctor
can advise, “Look, it is going to pass,” but there will be always that argument: “But that did not
happen to you, you did not go through this” (Larry).
Other recovering alcoholics then became friends, “second family,” or “brothers.” They offered
social activities outside the group and enjoyable meetings and conversations not necessarily
778 related to their disease. In short, they replaced the social relationships they used to have, helping
them avoid “old friends,” which is fundamental to recovery considering that, for many of the
recovering alcoholics, there were no friendships beyond their circle of “drinking buddies.”
Anthony’s words exemplify the social aspect of interacting with other AA members:
The first [important event] was in the afternoon when I went to the [AA] office to receive the mate
returning to be on duty . . .. There I found, beyond the pertinent service, [mates having chimarr~ao
(local tea)] with peanut butter. It looked like a child’s birthday party: four grown men eating candy
and chatting. . . .. For me, that was a recovery meeting. Duty ends at 5 p.m. [Then] we realized it was
5:40 p.m. . . .. No doubt that being together with mates is what keeps us sober (Anthony, diary).
The informants also describe a range of behaviors related to changing their lives and
becoming new men. These include no longer deceiving people and not being egocentric, for
example. For Paul not being egocentric translates on a more concrete level into not playing
music, while for John not deceiving people translates into returning money to someone who
lost it, something he would not have done in the past:
Why [did I stop doing] music? Because it is going to inflate my ego. . . .. It hurts. I feel sad. . . .. I’m a
poet, and my poetry comes naturally, sometimes inspiration comes. The other day, I was alone at
home and inspiration came. I started writing something and left it on the table. My girlfriend asked,
“Are you going to start with this again?” . . .. That gave me a bad feeling, you know, “Dude, I cannot
write,” you know?! I felt like arguing with her, but instead I took the sheet [with the music] and threw
it away, in pain (Paul).
On Saturday, I came across a situation here in my workplace, where I found an amount of money
inside a car. . . .. A proof of change, it is to deliver to the owner . . . knowing that it does not belong to
me, right? It is a thing that I do, and it makes me joyful: the habit of change (John, diary).
The positive experiences derived from changing habits and behaviors enhance the recovering
alcoholics’ commitment to the goal and keep them motivated to continue their journey, such as
when John feels joy when he does the right thing. However, this journey is also marked by the
negative experiences derived from the adoption of new behaviors and habits (e.g. asking
someone for forgiveness is distressing) as well as the abandonment of behaviors, habits and
people (e.g. the side effects of abstinence from alcohol). However, sometimes these negative
experiences also increase recovering alcoholics’ commitment to their goals, such as how
having his defects of character yelled in his face helped Paul face his problems.
Finally, replacing behaviors and social connections characterize the beginning of the
recovering alcoholics’ journey. As they continue, the new behaviors they adopt become habits
that help them maintain their path toward a sober life. As seen in section 4.1, their goal
evolves to maintain a sober life when they do not feel the desire to drink anymore.
Nonetheless, the participants believe that, if they abandon these habits and behaviors they
acquired at the beginning of their journey, relapse becomes a threat.

4.3 Overcoming obstacles and temptations

The third key process evident in the data relates to overcoming obstacles and temptations
to avoid slipping in the journey toward recovery. Some temptations can be avoided by
changing habits and behaviors, yet many triggers emerge in everyday life. The
respondents described that their desire to drink could emerge when viewing a television A goal-oriented
advertisement with an ice-cold beer, having a dream about drinking or even when cooking a view of
particular dish. Scott describes an episode where he could taste alcohol by accidently
smelling it:
customer
journeys
I had entered AA 30 days earlier . . .. I sat on the seashore, beside a kiosk, and in that kiosk, they were
preparing caipira [a traditional Brazilian cocktail] . . .. And that big cachaça smell came . . .. The
feeling I had was that I was drinking, that that cachaça was going down my throat. I feel its taste. I 779
have to get away (Scott).
The participants described several ways of overcoming obstacles and temptations that they
learned from AA meetings, literature, sponsors and other recovering alcoholics. The AA offers
them the most important trick for staying sober: “Avoid the first sip every 24 h.” This reminds them
that abstinence is possible. Many informants explained that, to overcome the desire to drink, they
can substitute the drinking with other things, such as eating candy or drinking coffee. Support
from friends or fellow AA members also plays an important role in overcoming temptation.
I had stopped for less than three months. I was in a neighbor’s apartment, and he had gone out, and I
was talking to his wife. . . .. Then, he entered the apartment, he arrived with wine and opened that big
bottle of wine, and I was not prepared. And I smelled that wine, and that disturbed me. For three
days, I had the desire to drink . . .. I used to use the trick of having soda and eating candy, and going
to the groups to have coffee, have chimarr~ao, talk. During those three days, nothing worked. The
desire did not go away, but [the AA members] told me, “No, desire comes and goes” (Mark).
Obstacles for maintaining a sober life and the temptation to relapse can also emerge indirectly
through negative life experiences. When recovering alcoholics face problems in their
everyday lives, negative experiences such as anger, irritation or sadness function as triggers
that activate the desire to drink. For example, Charles described that he relapsed when things
went wrong in his marriage or professional life and caused him extreme negative experiences.
Scott shares the idea that these negative feelings are a significant obstacle for maintaining
sobriety:
Resentment . . . to us it is a poison. . . .. Resentment and anger inside an alcoholic, at least with me,
annihilates me. I cannot feed this (Scott).
Participants described that they learned how to deal with their negative experiences in AA,
whether in meetings or in the literature. For example, Thomas says that he learned how to
react to conflicts and problems in AA. For Joseph, AA taught him how to have patience:
I went in the morning to schedule an appointment [with an ophthalmologist] and then he scheduled
another for the afternoon. I went in the afternoon and he rescheduled to the next Wednesday
afternoon. If I were active [drinking], I would have thrown everything in the air and gone to have my
cachaça. But now, AA has taught me to have patience (Joseph, diary).
When these negative life experiences appear, recovering alcoholics can apply the learned
tools (e.g. reading reflections, talking to mates, doing the serenity prayer or going to meetings)
or they can do something that helps them distract their minds. Anthony and Joseph reported
in their diaries what they do when they “lack serenity” or think about a relapse:
Every time I lack serenity, I run to the group, which is 200 m away from my house. Because I have the
key, I make the group my safe haven; I believe there is a spiritual aura or something blessed by the
Superior Power in this space (Anthony, diary).
I woke up somewhat thoughtful. . . .. I even thought about a relapse, but I came to the conclusion that
it would not be any good to fall back at this point. I went down to my flowerbeds to take care of my
vegetables, and I calmed down. My thoughts went elsewhere, and I thought that if I had drunk, I
would be lost (Joseph, diary).
JOSM Some informants explained that another way of overcoming obstacles and temptations is to
31,4 compare their current life to their drinking life, thinking about everything they sacrificed to stop
drinking and what they would lose if they drank again. Undergoing a negative experience
makes the recovering alcoholic compare himself to others or to his “old-self,” thus rationalizing
and reducing this negative experience to a neutral state. All participants reported the benefits
of a sober life: they were happier with their new family life, they felt healthier and more disposed
to physical activities, they had new relationships and less desire to drink. These positive
780 experiences, derived from staying sober, motivated them to overcome temptations.

5. Interpreting the journey toward a sober life with the self-regulation model of
behavior
The phenomenological findings regarding the recovering alcoholics’ journey toward a sober life
were interpreted using the self-regulation model of behavior (Carver and Scheier, 1998). The model
is useful to analyze goal-oriented journeys as it shifts the emphasis from the purchase process to
understanding the processes through which consumers pursue higher-order goals. It also helps
make sense of the evolution as well as the hierarchy of goals evident in the recovering alcoholics’
behavior and the role that experiences play in the process. Figure 2 presents an abstracted
framework of the consumer’s cognitive and behavioral processes that describe how consumers set
goals and seek to change or maintain their experienced situations with regard to their goal. These
processes are repeated in an iterative fashion throughout the journey toward the goal.

5.1 Setting goals

In the phenomenological study, recognizing the problem and setting the goal was identified as a
key process in the recovering alcoholics’ journey. In the abstracted framework, this is labeled as
“Setting goals,” referring to the consumer’s iterative cognitive processes of identifying the
higher-order goal, relevant subordinate goals and revising these goals throughout the journey.
According to the self-regulation model, the consumer’s goal is the reference value against which
the consumer evaluates his/her situation and seeks to adjust his/her behavior accordingly. In

Figure 2.
Iterative cognitive and
behavioral processes
along a goal-oriented
customer journey
the model, the output of feedback loops operating at higher levels of the hierarchy provides the A goal-oriented
goals for those feedback loops operating at lower levels (Carver and Scheier, 1998; Powers, view of
1973). In a similar vein, pursuing a sober life as a higher-order, superordinate goal subsumes
the subordinate goals necessary for its attainment. This also implies that the iterative process
customer
presented in Figure 2 happens at multiple levels of goal abstraction. journeys
In the findings, the higher-order goal evolved from reducing drinking to living a sober life.
Recovering alcoholics identify the subordinate goals necessary for this to happen, such as
changing their habits, working on their defects of character, building new social contacts and 781
learning tricks to overcome temptations. For each of these goals, they identify further
subordinate goals. For example, to live a sober life (higher-order goal), recovering alcoholics
need to get rid of defects of character (subordinate goal). To rid themselves of defects of
character (higher-order goal), recovering alcoholics adopt several new reference values
prescribed by the 12 steps of AA (subordinate goals).
Goals at lower levels can be seen as a means to achieve goals at higher levels (Carver and
Scheier, 1998). Hence, consumers continuously set subordinate goals that help them achieve
their higher-order goals. Therefore, while all recovering alcoholics share the same higher-
order goal (living a sober life), the subordinate goals can differ between them. While some
recovering alcoholics cannot have alcohol at their house, others are not tempted by it. In the
same vein, consumers can set new subordinate goals when they realize that the ones guiding
them in the moment are not reducing the discrepancy between their current situation and
their higher-order goal. The goals then continuously evolve until effective goals that reduce
the discrepancy between the current situation and the higher-order goal are set. For example,
in the empirical study, a few participants thought they were able to go to bars in the
beginning of their recovery but, as they proceeded in their journey, they set a new goal of
staying away from bars because they realized they needed to do so to live a sober life.

5.2 Experiences as a means of perceiving a consumer’s situation

The self-regulation model of behavior describes that individuals compare their goals with
their perception about the current situation (the input function) (Carver and Scheier, 1982,
1998). The findings indicate that experiences play an important role in the formation of this
perception. For recovering alcoholics, the desired situation is feeling free of temptations and
other negative experiences that might trigger them. The findings indicate how consumers
often use sensorial (e.g. the desire to drink) and emotional experiences (e.g. anger and sadness)
to create a perception about their current situation (i.e. input), which then spurs behavior,
such as going to an AA meeting.
Experiences can therefore be considered as drivers of behavior in goal-oriented journeys.
Recovering alcoholics can adjust their behavior when there is a discrepancy between their
current experiences and goals or they can maintain their behavior when they do not perceive
this discrepancy. It follows that negative experiences can be beneficial when considering the
attainment of a higher-order goal as they signal the need to change or maintain behavior.

5.3 Behavioral processes to change or maintain experienced situations

This study describes how recovering alcoholics seek to change their habits and behaviors in
order to pursue their goal of a sober life and how they try to overcome obstacles and
temptations to avoid slipping from their path. According to the self-regulation model, the
consumer adjusts his/her behavior (the output function) to minimize a discrepancy between
his/her perception about the current situation and his/her goal. As recovering alcoholics use
experiences to form a perception about their current situation, when they feel a discrepancy
between their experiences and their goals, they try to adjust their behavior to reduce it. The
adjustment affects the consumer’s situation, which leads to a new experienced situation.
JOSM In the phenomenological findings, changing habits and behaviors appeared to be
31,4 significant in the early stages of recovery: when recovering alcoholics feel the desire to drink,
they have to replace earlier behaviors and get rid of habits to reduce this temptation, such as
giving up games, bars and friends. The empirical findings demonstrate that obstacles and
temptations may emerge throughout their journey, such as when recovering alcoholics
accidently smell alcohol. Such external factors can emerge at any point and change the
perceived present situation (Carver and Scheier, 1982, 1998). In these cases, recovering
782 alcoholics engage in behaviors to overcome obstacles and temptations, such as praying, going
to a meeting or calling their sponsor. These behaviors then mitigate the negative experiences,
shifting recovering alcoholics’ perceptions about their situation closer to the goal.
Not all behaviors in the recovery journey are directed at changing the experienced
situation. Once consumers achieve a desired situation in their journey and no longer feel an
overwhelming desire to drink (i.e. there is not a significant discrepancy between their
experiences and goals), they engage in behaviors directed at maintaining this experiential
state. The feedback loop functions as a process of keeping the goal by keeping the
experienced situation close to the goal (Carver and Scheier, 1982; Powers, 1973). In the data
herein, this was illustrated by recovering alcoholics who were sober for many years and
remained engaged in certain behaviors (e.g. going to meetings), while remained disengaged
from others (e.g. continuing to avoid bars), so that the desire to drink did not return.

5.4 The influence of other actors

The study also demonstrates how a range of actors can influence the recovering alcoholics’
processes in pursuit of their goals. Family and friends as well as the AA organization and its
members play a crucial role in helping recovering alcoholics set their goals. The AA, for
instance, through the 12-step program, offers several standards for behavior that affect the
alcoholic’s goal setting. Other recovering alcoholics are also trusted to help in identifying
these goals as they know the path to living a sober life.
The self-regulation model recognizes that external and social influences can affect the
situation against which the consumer compares his/her goal (Carver and Scheier, 1990). The
findings also demonstrate that other actors can influence the recovering alcoholics’
experiences positively or negatively. When old friends make fun of recovering alcoholics for
going to AA or when they drink in front of them or offer them drinks, the experiences can be
negative, causing negative sensations, emotions and thoughts. Alternately, other actors can
influence recovering alcoholics’ experiences positively, for example, by praising their
recovery and having normal conversations with them.
The behaviors consumers engage in throughout their journeys can involve interactions
with market, organizational and/or social actors. Individual behaviors are those that
consumers perform utilizing only their own means, but they typically need complementary
resources from external actors to bring their experienced situations close to their goals. For
instance, recovering alcoholics may engage in customer journeys with market (e.g. health-
care service providers) or organizational actors (e.g. self-help groups) in which other social
actors (e.g. recovering alcoholics, friends and relatives) also play an important role. Therefore,
the consumers’ behavioral processes in pursuit of their goal involve engaging in various
touchpoints with market and organizational actors in which consumers aim to approximate
their experienced situations to their goals. These findings highlight the embeddedness of
touchpoints and customer journeys in consumer journeys toward higher-order goals.

6. A goal-oriented view of customer journeys

The interpretation of the phenomenological findings with the self-regulation model of
behavior provides a new understanding of customer journeys. This section answers the
research questions concerning the structure of the goal-oriented journey, its processes and A goal-oriented
the role of the customer experience (Figure 3). view of
6.1 The structure of the goal-oriented customer journey
customer
Aligned with the self-regulation model of behavior (Carver and Scheier, 1982, 1998) and the journeys
phenomenological findings, this study portrays journeys as goal-oriented and hierarchical.
Assuming that goals are organized in hierarchies with superordinate and subordinate goals
(Carver and Scheier, 1982, 1998; Powers, 1973), the goal-oriented customer journey depicts 783
multiple levels of journeys directed at different levels of goal abstraction. Aligning this idea
with previous research on the customer experience and journeys, this study proposes three
key levels: the consumer journey, the customer journey and touchpoints (cf. Hamilton and
Price, 2019), as illustrated in Figure 3.
The consumer journey represents the journey consumers engage in when pursuing
higher-order goals (Hamilton and Price, 2019) and includes multiple customer journeys,
interactions with market, organizational and social actors and consumers’ individual
behaviors. The consumer journey therefore represents a superordinate journey to the
customer journey level, which, according to Patrıcio et al. (2011), is the level the customer
experience literature typically focuses on. For recovering alcoholics, the consumer journey is
the journey toward a sober life, and it involves taking on customer journeys with health-care
centers, AA, medications and self-help books while disengaging from customer journeys with
bars or products that trigger their temptation to drink. Hence, a consumer journey
encompasses many complementary customer journeys.
Customer journeys represent the journeys consumers engage in with market and
organizational actors in pursuit of subordinate goals. The customer journey is subordinate to,
and embedded in, the consumer journey. A single customer journey may help a consumer
achieve one or multiple subordinate goals but it is insufficient to achieve a higher-order goal.
The customer journey with AA, for instance, involves all interactions recovering alcoholics
have with the organization, including meetings, events and literature. Such a customer
journey helps recovering alcoholics achieve several subordinate goals that work in function
of living a sober life, such as staying away from bars, overcoming temptations and learning
how to stay sober. Interestingly, the AA also offers services for other actors (i.e. social
touchpoints) in the consumer’s environment that might influence recovering alcoholics’
experiences (e.g. meetings for relatives to learn how to deal with the recovering alcoholic).
Each customer journey consists of multiple touchpoints (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016;
Patrıcio et al., 2011) that focus on goals further down the level of abstraction (e.g. getting a
specific task done). Touchpoints refer to the episodes where a consumer directly or indirectly
“touches,” contacts or interacts with a market or organizational actor to achieve a concrete
goal (cf. Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010). Interactions in a specific touchpoint are embedded in the
customer and consumer journeys. In the findings, touchpoints refer, for example, to specific
moments where recovering alcoholics interact with AA through meetings, literature and
WhatsApp groups to achieve an immediate goal.
It is important to note that these processes happen simultaneously at all levels. Therefore,
if a consumer is interacting with a particular touchpoint to achieve a concrete goal, this
consumer is simultaneously engaged in a consumer journey to achieve a higher-order goal.

6.2 Processes within the goal-oriented customer journey

This study identified cognitive and behavioral processes that relate to how consumers set
goals and seek to change or maintain their experienced situations regarding their goal
(Figure 2). In other words, consumers set the higher-order and subordinate goals at different
levels of abstraction, compare their situations – sensed through affective, cognitive, sensorial,
social and physical experiences – with these goals (cognitive processes) and act to change or
 31,4

784

journey
JOSM

Figure 3.
Theframework for the
goal-oriented customer
Consumer-journey level
• Higher-order goal in the consumer’s lifeworld (e.g.,
living a sober life)
• Consumers compare their experiences with their
higher-order goals and set subordinate goals to
achieve them

Customer-journey level
• Subordinate goals to achieve higher-order goals (e.g.,
learning how to overcome temptaons, detoxing from
alcohol)
• Consumers compare their experiences with the goals
and set subordinate, more concrete goals

Touchpoint level
• Subordinate, concrete goals to achieve customer
journey goals (e.g., learning concrete tricks to
overcome temptaons, managing the effects of
detoxing)
• Consumers compare their experiences with the goals
and behave to reduce the discrepancy between them
(e.g., listening carefully at an AA meeng, interacng
with sponsor, geng a doctor’s appointment, using
medicine)
maintain these experienced situations (behavioral processes), as represented by the iterative A goal-oriented
process within the journeys in Figure 3. Consumers are thereby constantly trying to reduce view of
the discrepancy between their experienced situations and their goals.
As the goal-oriented customer journey presents a hierarchical structure and consumers set
customer
several subordinate goals, consumers manifest this iterative process for each goal. For example, to journeys
live a sober life (higher-order goal), Paul compares his experienced situations with this goal. As the
output at this level, Paul sets subordinate, more concrete goals that help reaching this higher-order
goal, such as working on his ego (subordinate goal). Consumers repeat these processes of 785
comparing their experienced situations with their goals and setting subordinate goals at several
levels until concrete goals are established and then engage in behavioral processes to maintain or
adjusttheirsituationsvis-
a-visthegoal.Forexample,PaulmanageshisegobygoingtoAA,reading
and no longer writing music. Therefore, while the cognitive processes of comparing experienced
situations with goals happen at all levels (consumer and customer journeys and touchpoints), the
behavioral processes involved in a consumer journey happen at the touchpoint level.

6.3 The role of the customer experience during the goal-oriented customer journey
This study indicates that experiences can contribute to consumer goal attainment by serving as
an input to the process of comparing a consumer’s present situation and goal, which ultimately
directs consumer behavior (cf. Carver and Scheier, 1982, 1998). Creating the input (i.e. perceiving
the current situation) is a complex process that involves various sources of information (Carver
and Scheier, 1998). The results indicate how the customer experience functions as a source of
information about the consumer’s situation and how the consumer then compares the
experienced situation with his/her goals before engaging in subsequent behavior. Therefore,
experiences not only emerge as responses to stimuli but also drive behavior toward the goals.
Negative experiences can thus play a positive role in reaching consumer goals within
goal-oriented customer journeys and may contribute to positive experiences at higher levels of
the journey. This happens, for example, when a recovering alcoholic uses endured pain as
motivation to remain sober. In other cases, however, negative experiences are just unavoidable
consequences of necessary discrepancy-reducing behaviors, such as the physical pain felt
after going to the gym for the first time. In these cases, negative experiences do not contribute
to the consumer’s goal per se but the stimulus that triggers those experiences does. Hence,
maximizing the positive customer experience might not be the consumer’s priority, at least in
the case of transformative consumer journeys. This study also shows that negative
experiences may play an important role in the process of setting or adjusting the goals.
Viewing journeys from multiple analytical levels allows for analysis of the emergence of
experiences at multiple levels as well. Experiences emerge as responses and reactions to specific
stimuli in lower journey levels (e.g. touchpoints) but consumers can also describe overall
experiences that emerge in a customer or consumer journey. The literature on customer experience
suggests that the experiences at lower levels combine to form dynamic experiences that evolve
over time at higher levels (Kranzb€uhler et al., 2018), although it is not clear how this higher-level
formation occurs. The results indicate that experiences emerging at lower journey levels do not
necessarily have a cumulative effect on experiences described at higher levels (i.e. negative
experiences do not necessarily detract from an overall positive experience) but it depends on how
the experience contributes to the consumer goal. Figure 3 illustrates the main findings.

7. Conclusions
7.1 Theoretical contributions
This study develops a goal-oriented view of customer journeys that is customer-centric and
describes consumers’ cognitive and behavioral processes and the role of experience in
JOSM relation to their goal. This study highlights the importance of looking at the consumers’
31,4 higher-order goals to obtain a goal-oriented view of the customer journey. Such an approach
answers the recent calls for a more holistic view of the customer experience (Kranzb€ uhler
et al., 2018), revealing theoretical insights into the structure of customer journeys, their
processes and the role of experience.
This study contributes to the customer experience literature by depicting the customer
journey as goal-oriented and hierarchical, extending the ideas proposed by Hamilton and
786 Price (2019). A few studies have conceptualized the customer journey as goal-oriented (e.g.
Halvorsrud et al., 2016) but they have focused on the customer’s immediate, concrete goals. By
considering the consumer’s hierarchy of goals, this study highlights the embeddedness of
touchpoints and customer journeys into the broader goal-oriented consumer journey. This is
important to avoid a myopic view that focuses on immediate, lower-order goals and creates a
risk of losing sight of obvious opportunities to improve customer experience.
This study presents three key levels of the customer journey – the consumer journey, the
customer journey and touchpoints – attending calls for research about its multilevel structure
(Patrıcio et al., 2011). The conceptualization of the consumer journey as a superordinate level
of the customer journey contributes to the current knowledge geared toward the level of
customer journeys, firms and offerings. Understanding the consumer journey toward higher-
order goals helps in the development of a broader, more customer-centric understanding of
the customer journey that views customer experience as embedded into the customer’s
lifeworld (cf. Akaka and Vargo, 2015). It is important to highlight that the consumer journey
differs from related concepts such as the customer’s value constellation (Patrıcio et al., 2011),
the service delivery network (Tax et al., 2013) and the experience domain (Baron and Harris,
2010) because these concepts tend to focus on the network of actors who contribute to an
overall and connected service (Tax et al., 2013) or activity, such as entertainment (Patrıcio
et al., 2011). The consumer journey focuses on a consumer’s processes toward a higher-order
goal and likely involves several distinct services and activities. The goal-oriented view hence
complements existing customer-centric approaches by offering a novel view that can
facilitate understanding of customer value creation in their lifeworld (cf. Heinonen and
Strandvik, 2015).
This paper also describes the iterative cognitive and behavioral processes that relate to
how consumers set goals and seek to change or maintain their experienced situation with
regard to their goal. Existing customer experience literature has provided insight into specific
consumer behaviors and activities related to a service or overall activity (e.g. recognizing a
need and searching for information) (e.g. Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Patrıcio et al., 2011). This
study identifies more general processes underlying customer journeys anchored on
consumers’ goals. This perspective has remained missing in extant literature.
The study also describes the important role of the customer experience on the goal-
oriented customer journey. With the self-regulation model of behavior, this study proposes a
closed loop system as an alternative approach to the role of the customer experience, viewing
it not only as responses to stimuli but also as a driver of behavior (cf. Powers, 1973). Although
the customer experience literature recognizes that previous experiences influence future
expectations (e.g. Lemon and Verhoef, 2016), most studies have restricted their view to the
outcomes that customer experiences have for the firm, such as customer brand perceptions or
customer loyalty (e.g. Brakus et al., 2009), giving less consideration to how experiences can
influence the course of the journey.
By considering the customer experience as a behavioral driver, this study also finds that
negative experiences can contribute to a positive overall experience that emerges in the
process of pursuing a higher-order goal, something that the literature has not addressed so
far. Therefore, calculating averages for individual experiences at touchpoints is misleading
as a measure of overall experience; the emergence of experience is a complex and dynamic
process. The results indicate that experience does not emerge in a cumulative manner but the A goal-oriented
impact of individual experiences depends on their contribution to the consumer’s goals. view of
These findings contribute to the customer experience research study that has tended to
measure customer experience either in one touchpoint or as an aggregate evaluation of the
customer
brand, as shown in a recent review by Becker and Jaakkola (2020). journeys

7.2 Practical implications 787

Focusing on the consumers’ higher-order goals and obtaining a holistic picture of the journey
toward them highlight many opportunities for firms and organizations to help consumers
achieve their goals. Firms and organizations should strive to understand and map the
customer journey on all levels, including the consumer journey. Mapping the consumer
journey goes beyond identifying touchpoints in a customer journey; it involves identifying
multiple customer journeys and consumer behaviors that are part of the consumer’s higher-
goal pursuit. In addition, it involves understanding how distinct customer journeys relate to
each other. As there are several ways to achieve a higher-order goal (Carver and Scheier,
1982), it is important that firms and organizations consider how their offerings fit in the
broader configuration of journeys undertaken by consumers. For example, it would have
been helpful for clinics to identify customer journeys with self-help groups as complementary
and sequential to detoxification, facilitating the transition to them.
After obtaining this holistic map, firms and organizations can act to influence the customer
experience and help customers keep it close to their goals. As consumers proceed in their
journeys by trying to approximate their experiences to their goals, firms and organizations can
offer resources that help consumers in this process and collaborate with other actors that offer
complementary resources. Additionally, firms and organizations can extend their services to
social actors that interfere in the consumer’s experiences. The AA, for example, recognizes the
role of families in the recovery journey, so it offers Al-Anon, a service that helps relatives
facilitate the recovery journey. In this way, it is hoped that firms and organizations can offer
superior value propositions that help customers achieve their goals (Epp and Price, 2011).
Finally, firms and organizations need to recognize that, when considering the consumer’s
higher-order goals, negative experiences can be beneficial for the consumer’s goal pursuit since
they can drive behavior. Thinking about how the customer experience influences the goal
pursuit – instead of simply trying to offer positive experiences – offers a new, more complex
perspective for firms and organizations. For example, clinics and treatment centers might offer
better services if they help their customers face their problems. This process invariably involves
negative experiences that are beneficial when considering the consumer’s higher-order goal.

7.3 Limitations and suggestions for future research

This paper’s main limitation is that the phenomenological study was restricted to a specific
case of a transformative journey. While the extreme context enables conceptual development,
its characteristics might delimit generalizing the results to other service contexts. These
results might generalize easily to other cases of transformative journeys, such as smoking
cessation and adoption of a healthier lifestyle. However, it is expected that the developed
model and its implications can be useful for analyzing other types of goal-oriented journeys
as each journey comprises cognitive and behavioral processes related to how consumers
pursue their goals, be it higher-order goals such as health or lower-order goals such as buying
groceries. As Carver and Scheier (1998, p. 63) noted, “life is a continual process of establishing
goals and adjusting patterns of behavior to match those goals more closely, using
informational feedback as a guide.” Future studies should assess the applicability of these
findings to other contexts, such as a pregnancy journey, dealing with a disease or a journey
toward a successful career.
JOSM The second limitation relates to how participants were recruited. As all participants were
31,4 AA members, the findings may overestimate the importance of self-help groups and the 12-
step program. In future studies, researchers might investigate a goal-oriented journey that
relies less on engaging with one particular type of service.
In terms of future research avenues, the positive effect of some negative experiences in
relation to the goal is a counterintuitive finding that warrants further attention. Future
research should examine the extent to which negative experiences drive long-term positive
788 outcomes or represent a form of cognitive dissonance. Future studies should also seek to
clarify the relationship between the customer experience and value-in-use, defined as the
perceived consequences of goal achievement (Macdonald et al., 2016) as the existing literature
tends to treat these variables as being positively correlated (e.g. Sandstr€om et al., 2008). From
the findings, this relationship appears more complex in the case of transformative journeys,
where negative experiences possibly contribute to value-in-use.
The goal-oriented view also highlights the importance of examining interrelations between
different customer journeys: a particular customer journey might be significantly affected by
another journey that can provide obstacles or support in terms of the higher-order goal. The
multilayered view depicted in Figure 3 brings a broader perspective to relevant contextual
factors, explaining why customers might respond differently to stimuli at individual
touchpoints (cf. Becker and Jaakkola, 2020). Extant literature has predominantly focused on
customer journeys with a single offering, but viewing touchpoints as embedded in the broader
context of consumer journeys could help identify new antecedents and contingencies for the
customer experience and its evaluative outcomes.
Note
1. A detailed account of data collection and analysis is provided in a web appendix.

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Supplementary material
Supplementary material is available for this article.

About the authors

Dr. Larissa Becker is a postdoctoral researcher in marketing at the Turku School of Economics,
University of Turku, Finland. Her research interests are customer experience, customer and consumer
journeys, service-dominant logic and compulsive consumption. She has published articles in journals
such as Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Qualitative Market Research: An International
Journal, Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing and Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.
Larissa Becker is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Dr. Elina Jaakkola is Professor of Marketing at the Turku School of Economics, University of Turku,
Finland. Her research interests focus on value creation, customer/actor engagement, customer
experience, service innovation and knowledge-intensive business services and solutions. Her research
articles have been published in a wide range of journals and book chapters, for example, Journal of the
Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Service Research,
Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Service Management and
Marketing Theory.
Dr. Aino Halinen is Professor of Marketing at the Turku School of Economics, University of Turku,
Finland. She has published articles on professional service marketing, relationship management,
business network dynamics and qualitative methods, especially process and case research, in a number
of journals such as Journal of Management Studies, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of
Business Research and Journal of Service Management. Her current research work focuses on research
paradigms in business-to-business (B2B) marketing and visioning in business networks.

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