Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 72 (2023) 103290 Available online 20 February 2023 0969-6989/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Memorable customer experiences and autobiographical memories: From service experience to word of mouth Miguel A. Moliner-Tena * , Diego Monferrer-Tirado, Marta Estrada-Guillen, Lidia Vidal-Meli´ a Universitat Jaume I, (Spain) A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Service experience Memorable customer experience Customer satisfaction Positive WOM eWOM Memory theory ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to study the relationship between customer experience and word of mouth (WOM) through two mediating variables: customer satisfaction and memorable characteristics of service experience (MCSE). Memory theory is adopted as a theoretical background, with emphasis on the key role of episodic or autobiographical memory. Memorable customer experience (MCE) is defned from this perspective, thereby enabling the connection between human memory theory and service-dominant (S-D) logic. As for the impact of the internet on WOM, two types of WOM behaviours are examined: positive WOM (pWOM) and eWOM. A methodology was designed from a survey that used a questionnaire based on measurement scales validated by the literature. The sample is of 1476 tourists who visited seven Spanish tourism destinations. The results show service experience precedes customer satisfaction and MCSE. Both pWOM and eWOM are signifcantly infuenced by customer satisfaction and MCSE. Various scenarios are put forward in which several combinations of customer satisfaction and MCSE give rise to different intensities and valence of pWOM and eWOM. 1. Introduction In the last decade, memorable customer experience (MCE) has deserved the attention of services researchers (Kim et al., 2012, 2022; Flacandji and Krey, 2020; Stone et al., 2022; Prentice et al., 2022; Sharma et al., 2022; Roggeveen and Rosengren, 2022). Identifying as- pects that result in a service experience being vividly memorised by the customer and subsequently relived is important for service businesses because it infuences consumer behaviours such as WOM and repeat purchasing (Kim et al., 2022; Sharma et al., 2022). Hosany et al. (2022) analyze more than half a hundred published research on MCE in tourism between 2012 and 2020, and conclude that research has been fragmented and dispersed. Different theoretical frameworks from the feld of psychology (savoring, theory of planned behavior, script theory, place attachment, human experience) and so- ciology (interaction, ritual theory, affect control theory, stakeholder theroy) have been used, but there is no unifying theory to explain MCE (Hosany et al., 2022; Roggeveen and Rosengren, 2022; Prentice et al., 2022). Research on MCE has mainly focused on the design of mea- surement scales and the identifcation of characteristics that make an experience memorable (Kim et al., 2012; BustamanteRubio, 2017; Flacandji and Krey, 2020; Stone et al., 2022). Klaus and Kuppelwieser (2021) identify four future research di- rections on customer experience: time, the role of emotions, methods and personal experience vicinity (Manthiou et al., 2020; Verhulst et al., 2020; Babin et al., 2020; Akire et al., 2020; Khan et al., 2020; Lecoeuvre et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2020; Rosenbaum et al., 2020). They conclude that customer experience dynamic nature is an important research challenge, which implies knowing the causes of customer experience memorability, because in the present time consumers seek to buy experiences that are memorable (Pekovic and Rolland, 2020). Then, there is still no adequate conceptual framework to explain service experience dynamics and MCE. The dispersion of theories leads Hosany et al. (2022) and Stone et al. (2022) to propose the need to build a unifying theory of MCE, which they consider should be based on memory theory. A unifying theory must be able to explain the nature of MCE, its antecedents and consequences. There is a common opinion that more research is needed in the consequences of MCE (Williams et al., 2020; Sharma et al., 2022; Roggeveen and Rosengren, 2022). According to the meta-analysis carried out by Donthu et al. (2021) on eWOM, no research cluster has examined the relationship between customer experience and WOM behaviours. The relationship between service * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: amoliner@uji.es (M.A. Moliner-Tena), dmonferr@uji.es (D. Monferrer-Tirado), estrada@uji.es (M. Estrada-Guillen), lvidal@uji.es (L. Vidal- Meli´ a). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2023.103290 Received 9 December 2022; Received in revised form 17 January 2023; Accepted 3 February 2023