Improving Customers’ Experiences in Pre-Purchase Interaction Points: Graph Theory- ‎Matrix Permanents Approach to Identify and Analyze the Relationships of Influential ‎Factors

In recent decades, consumer markets have faced the challenges of increasing brand convergence, a lack of understanding of the differences between competing offerings, and the reduction of switching costs. This has revised traditional customer-oriented practices inevitably and forces organizations to struggle to find and implement a component beyond technical requirements. Customer experience as one of the most promising management approaches is a new solution to facing these challenges. The purpose of this study is to identify factors on the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral experiences in pre-purchase touch points and determine which of the experimental strategies leads to exceeding the standards and expectations of customers. The current research is planned with a mixed approach and in the form of two consecutive processes. In the first phase, the factors affecting the pre-purchase experiences of customers have been identified through the synthesis of existing literature and studies. For this purpose, 1268 articles focusing on customer experience were reduced to 26 final studies in the screening process. In the second phase, relying on the combined approach of graph theory (matrix permanents), the governing internal relationships between the research components and measuring their importance levels were determined. To achieve this purpose, according to the value judgment of the evaluator group (selected from the statistical population of handicrafts customers), the type of governing relationships between the research components at the sub-system level has been determined and then, the hypothetical values and the degree of proximity of each factor to the limit is evaluated. The results indicate that the five main components of promotional actions, information, product, brand, and social interactions can effectively guide customers' pre-purchase experiences. The results of the analysis of the internal relations of the graphs show that among the mentioned components, social interactions (with a coefficient of 0.482 close to the ideal hypothetical value) have the highest level of importance in the industry of traditional and handicraft arts.