Purpose This study conceptualizes key moments within the customer journey—innovation, truth, meaning and experience—and examines how these moments contribute to customer experience (CX) of co-creation and/or co-destruction.

Design/methodology/approach The data were collected from customers with over three years of retail buying experience who had interacted with technology-enabled platforms in physical retail environments. Qualitative methods, along with thematic analysis, were used to develop five conceptual propositions that deepen the understanding of CX, particularly regarding co-creation versus co-destruction, through key moments that shape the customer journey.

Findings The findings identified four key moments that emerge through various interactions with touchpoints across different retail settings. These insights highlight the subjective, context-specific nature of meaning-making in service interactions, which can vary from customer to customer. As a result, CX is revealed as a dynamic process, shaped by co-creation and co-destruction, depending on specific situations and contexts within retail environments.

Originality/value This study is among the few to investigate the conceptual relationships between different moments in retailing. Retailers could adopt an experience-centric approach to capture unique and exciting customer moments by taking CX as the central consideration to mark competitive advantage in the market.