Reviewing Experiential Value in the Arts

Martina G. Gallarza, Raquel Sánchez-Fernández, Manuel Cuadrado-García

Martina G. Gallarza is Full Professor in the Marketing Department at the University of Valencia, Spain. She has formerly taught at the Catholic University of Valencia, where she was Dean of the Business Faculty.
Raquel Sánchez-Fernández is Full Professor in the Department of Economics and Business at the University of Almería, Spain.
Manuel Cuadrado-García is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Valencia, Spain.

ABSTRACT
Initially developed to approach art and cultural services as consumption acts, the experiential paradigm has been deeply developed in business-oriented fields, especially through the concept of customer value. But paradoxically, this application has been less systematic in the arts. This paper presents a review of how experiential value has been studied in the context of arts and culture. It first depicts, with quotations from the last 40 years, a challenge for researching customer experiences, as it is critical for marketing research and management but difficult to apprehend conceptually and empirically. Second, a literature review is made in two stages: quantitative with a bibliometric study on the Web of Science database and qualitative with a diachronic analysis of existing empirical studies of the main conceptual frameworks of customer experience. Finally, several considerations are presented as conclusions, and new research avenues are signaled to continue the inquiry on the experiential value of arts.
KEYWORDS
Experiential Value; Arts; Culture; Literature Review; Bibliometric Study; Diachronic Analysis