Management Research in Iran

Abstract The purpose of the current study is to identify the effective factors in improving the emotional, cognitive and behavioral experiences of customers at the most critical touch points before purchase. In this regard, a mixed exploratory design has been used in the form of two consecutive studies. In the first study, the factors affecting the pre-purchase experiences of customers have been extracted through Sandelowski's 7-step approach for qualitative meta-synthesis of studies. This means that 1268 primary studies were included in the screening process (title, abstract and content) and were reduced to 48 final studies related to the content and valid according to the critical skills evaluation checklist. In the second study, all the identified effective factors were gradually introduced during 16 experimental scenarios to evaluate and test the effect of manipulating these factors on the dependent variable (customer experience). The research sample in this study was 480 customers of Shiraz arts and crafts who were selected through non-probability sampling method. The results of multi-factor variance analysis and marginal mean estimation of the data show that the component of recommendations and social references with the acquisition of the largest effect size is the most important factor in shaping customers' pre-purchase experiences, and other factors are the level of customer familiarity with the brand, the perceived value of the product. , the type of media selected in promotional activities, the level of information access, the level of personalization of benefits and offers are placed in the next priorities respectively.