Author(s): Atul Gupta, Akash Agarwal, Rajendra Kumar
Purpose- This systematic literature review (SLR) interrogates the conceptual and empirical corpus surrounding Customer Experience Quality (CEQ) as a higher-order relational mechanism through which retail banks in emerging markets cultivate durable customer loyalty. Departing from prevailing direct-effect formulations, the review reconceptualises CEQ as an architectural stimulus that activates differentiated organismic states- satisfaction (evaluative cognition) and trust (relational capital)-which, in serial sequence, generate loyalty as a relationally anchored behavioural response. Design/Methodology- Following PRISMA 2020 reporting standards (Page et al., 2021), the review synthesises 96 peer-reviewed studies retrieved from Scopus-indexed sources between 2007 and 2026 (till April 2026), predominantly from leading service management, bank marketing, and retailing journals. Thematic-analytic synthesis is complemented by descriptive bibliometric mapping and methodological auditing. Findings- The synthesis surfaces three architectural insights. First, CEQ functions not as a discrete antecedent but as an experiential architecture generated through process integration and relational warmth. Second, satisfaction and trust perform theoretically differentiated organismic roles- evaluative-cognitive and relational-capital, respectively, warranting their serial rather than parallel modelling. Third, emerging-market retail banking-particularly the Indian institutional context-constitutes a theoretical site of relational dependency, trust sensitivity, and ecosystem complexity, rather than a mere geographic sample. Originality/Value - The manuscript advances theory through an integrated dual-paradigm framework that bridges the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) tradition and Relationship Marketing Theory. Three contributions follow: (i) conceptual - reframing CEQ as an architectural stimulus rather than aggregate input; (ii) mechanistic - clarifying the differentiated organismic transmission roles of satisfaction and trust; and (iii) contextual - institutionally theorising emerging-market banking ecosystems as conditions under which the trust pathway dominates.