Background and Purpose: The rapid growth of Chinese automotive brands in the Iranian market has shifted the competitive landscape from a traditional product-based approach toward experience-driven competition. As the number of importers increases and product similarity among brands rises, merely offering a product can no longer serve as a sustainable source of competitive advantage. Commercial evidence suggests that the most important intangible asset in this market is the quality of the experience that customers receive throughout the entire brand contact cycle. However, many industry players allocate resources without a precise understanding of the constituent dimensions of customer experience and without awareness of customers' real priorities. This issue often leads to a significant gap between the importance of each dimension from the customer's perspective and the performance delivered by the brand. Such a gap not only reduces the effectiveness of marketing investments but also disrupts the desired experience. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to identify a customer experience management framework specifically for importers of Chinese cars in Iran, followed by a quantitative assessment of the gap between importance and performance for each dimension.
Methodology: The present study adopts a pragmatist philosophy and an inductive-deductive approach within a mixed-method (qualitative-quantitative), cross-sectional case study design. In the qualitative phase, the customer experience management framework was developed using a meta-synthesis of existing models and semi-structured interviews with experts. In the quantitative phase, this framework was evaluated using data from 389 employees of companies importing Chinese cars (convenience sampling).
Findings: The overall status of customer experience management in the organization is neither critical nor fully satisfactory; rather, it falls within a moderate‑to‑weak range. Several indicators are positioned in the “Maintain and Strengthen” quadrant, reflecting areas of strength and proper alignment between importance and performance. However, a large number of indicators in the “Need Improvement” and “Wasted Resources” quadrants indicate that the organization still faces significant challenges in resource allocation and performance enhancement in key areas.
Results: Overall, importers of Chinese cars need to reallocate their infrastructural investments toward service personalization and establishing emotional connections with customers. Although customer satisfaction and touchpoint management are in a favorable state, these strengths alone do not create a sustainable competitive advantage. On the other hand, neglecting the psychological, cultural, and social variables of the Iranian customer will, in the long term, lead to a deep gap between actual expectations and organizational performance. Therefore, revising priorities and shifting from an infrastructure-oriented approach to deep customer centricity is an unavoidable necessity.
Innovation and Originality: The main innovation of the present study lies in the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, identifying customer-centric gaps, using managerial tools to translate results into action, distinguishing multi-layered consequences, and focusing on the automotive market. These features make the current study both more comprehensive and more practical compared to previous research.