The impact of synchronicity and contiguity on the customer service-encounter process

This conceptual paper addresses the various ‘states’ that a customer goes through during the cyclical purchasing process in a consumer setting. Previous work from a face-to-face service encounter scenario (that is, synchronous and contiguous) is modified to address the purchasing process using the internet. The paper presents a five-phase model specifically for an internet purchase and identifies the main customer variables for each of the five states. The face-to-face encounter scenario is modified to account for the asynchronous and non-contiguous nature of an internet purchase, thus providing theorists and practitioners with a new model for evaluation of the process that a customer goes through when purchasing on the internet.