According to Gale (1994 p. 26), “companies succeed by providing superior customer value” -
yet the nature of customer value remains a topic of debate. Various authors have sought to
enumerate the categories of customer value. These include Zeithaml (1988) who describes
four forms of value – (1) low price; (2) whatever the consumer wants in a product; (3) the
quality I get for the price I pay; and (4) what I get for what I give. Woodall’s comprehensive
deconstruction of the concept of “value for the customer” outlines five primary forms of
customer value: net value, marketing value, sale value, rational value and derived value (2003
p. 7). Woodall also provides a longitudinal perspective on value which highlights the
temporal, cumulative nature of the concept over four stages that loosely correspond with
Arnould’s four stages of experience – ex ante (anticipated) value, transaction (purchase)
value, ex post (consumption) value and disposition (remembered) value.