The role of autobiographical memory in the relationship between customer experience and customer engagement by creating an intergenerational customer journey map: An application in the banking sector

This thesis examines how customer journey maps are created and the mediating effect of autobiographical memory on the relationship between customer experience and customer engagement in the banking sector. The methodology of the research consists of two parts. In the first part, qualitative research based on Complexity Theory was conducted. The qualitative study is divided into two parts. In the first part, interviews were conducted with the 8 authorized person of bank's customer experience team about point campaigns and experience. According to the answers given, the second part of the qualitative research was conducted with the 24 customers of the bank belonging to generations X(9), Y(10) and Z(5). According to the results of the qualitative research, sub-headings emerged as the area of responsibility of the team, the expectations of the ages, the topics of the experience, the delivery of the experience by the customers and how the journey map is formed. According to these results, the customer journey map was created by adding the justice variable to the variables of the quantitative research and the second part of the research was started. In the second part of the methodology, a research model that based on S-O-R (Stimulus, Organism, and Response) and Customer Loss and Complaint Theories is developed to test the mediating effect of autobiographical memory and the moderating effect of perceived justice between customer experience and customer engagement. In line with the model, 928 customers of a bank which operating in Türkiye constitute the sample. In the analyses of the quantitative research, normality and reliability tests, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation tests, boostrap method, and the mediating and moderating roles of the variables were tested respectively. According to the results of the quantitative research, it was found that the impact and repetition dimension of autobiographical memory had a mediating role in the relationship between customer experience and the sub-dimensions of customer engagement. In the relationship between customer experience and customer engagement, the sub-dimensions of perceived justice have a moderating effect. Generations have no significant effect on the variables