Supervisors: Sascha Steinmann & Polymeros Chrysochou
Discussants: John Thøgersen & Marija Banovic

Abstract
The paradigm shift towards omnichannel approaches represents an ongoing fundamental change taking place within the fields of retail marketing and management today. The intertwining of commerce and content across channels and touchpoints requires retailers to reconfigure their strategies and manifests new challenges for grasping concepts like customer experience and customer journeys. In response to these developments, this thematic review of the literature addresses customer experiences in omnichannel retail environments, integrating central concepts and approaches and thereby contributing to the body of literature exploring new and alternative approaches and theories to customer experiences along technology-driven omnichannel customer journeys.

This paper is part of a PhD project aiming to examine and advance impactful marketing strategies for offline-, online-, and omnichannel retailing by placing its focus on narratives as a way of sense-making along customer journeys. Thus, the overall work is underpinned by a narrative-based understanding of the phenomenon of omnichannel customer journeys building on post-structural literary theory. In doing so, it offers a novel way of viewing brand content dispersed across different channels and touchpoints. In collaboration with major Danish retailers, a multi-method study represents an attempt at grasping this phenomenon as comprehensively as possible. As such, this research seeks to examine and conceptualise a highly complex process within an ever-evolving environment based on one of humanity’s oldest, most inherent, and therefore most effective practices - storytelling.

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