A consumer perspective on Moments of Truth

Moment of Truth is a concept which enjoys a range of different definitions and uses in services management and consumer goods marketing. All of those uses address the consumer’s evaluation based on the provider’s perspective. This work takes the consumer perspective and uses a grounded theory approach to examine how those moments are used and how the consumers’ view differs. Some alignment is found between the two perspectives but the two differ substantially; the role of those moments is more definitional than evaluative, the selection is not necessarily based on aspects of greatest importance and the evaluation does not align with the exchange basis of Moments of Truth. A complementary construct; Moments of Reference is presented as a way of describing the consumer perspective.