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Due to structural changes in the environment of modern retailing, the maintenance of economic power is getting increasingly challenging. These developments partially raise the need for reshaping of vendors’ business plans that are struggling to keep their competitive strength. One opportunity for a possible consolidation can be the concept of “Customer Experience Management”. The aim of this concept is to address customers at every single point, consumers are interacting with a given enterprise. Accordingly, firms must shape these customer touchpoints towards the creation of impactful as well as relevant experiences for people. The following thesis aims to give a deeper investigation of “Customer Experience Management” for vendors in the fashion industry. Critical aspects of modern fashion retailing such as trends and characteristics are clarified beforehand and afterwards, major customer touchpoints in the retailing sector and their importance for consumers are examined, before the concept of “Customer Experience Management” is presented. This includes the different ways of experience creation, moderating factors in the construct and finally a reusable concept for effective experience management. In the practical section, respective concept is elaborated for the company Peek & Cloppenburg, a large fashion retailer with subsidiaries in whole central Europe. Hereby, three essential markets, namely Austria, Slovenia, and Slovakia were targeted. Firstly, a large-scaled research with local distribution of questionnaires in the countries was executed to reveal critical customer preferences and market insights. Consequently, findings were processed and integrated into the concept. A systematic approach towards experience management with special regard to Peek & Cloppenburg’s market characteristics was executed. Results show that unlike numerous findings in literature, fashion customers in all three countries are highly practical-oriented, meaning people are looking for increased efficiency and convenience rather than excitement at the point of purchase. As a result, the current experience policy with special regard to the most impactful touchpoints of Peek & Cloppenburg is processed. The holistic targeting of utilitarian consumer motives including defined measures at all customer touchpoints therefore should finally contribute to increased consistency, shaping of the company image, and addressing of consumer needs that truly matter in Peek & Cloppenburg’s modern retailing environment.
