Where does journey collide?

Campbell's 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces named the monomyth, a recurring story pattern in which a hero leaves the ordinary world, is initiated through trials in a strange one, and returns transformed with something to bring back. Vogler's 1998 The Writer's Journey recast that departure, initiation, and return arc into a practical template used by screenwriters and novelists. Here the journey is a shape found in or imposed on a story, an ordered set of narrative stages a protagonist moves through, and it is not a shopper's path to purchase or a patient's passage through a health system.[1][2]

Unit

One narrative described as an ordered set of story stages, from departure to return

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Identified by close reading and by coding a text against the stages of the departure, initiation, and return arc

Corbin and Strauss's 1991 A Nursing Model for Chronic Illness Management Based Upon the Trajectory Framework described the course of a chronic illness as a trajectory, the unfolding path of a disease together with all the work patients and clinicians do to manage it over time. Trebble and colleagues' 2010 Process mapping the patient journey gave that idea its now common name and showed how to chart each contact a patient has with a health service, from referral through treatment. Here the journey is a real person's passage through stages of illness and care, tracked in appointments, transfers, and outcomes, and it is not a mythic story arc or a shopper's path to purchase.[3][4]

Unit

One patient's passage through an illness and its care, from first contact to outcome

Recovery means

Clinical recovery is one possible endpoint of the path, alongside stability, decline, or death

Measured by

Charted by process mapping each contact, with the times, transfers, and outcomes recorded at every stage

Court, Elzinga, Mulder, and Vetvik's 2009 The Consumer Decision Journey replaced the older funnel picture with a looping path of consideration, evaluation, purchase, and post-purchase advocacy. Lemon and Verhoef's 2016 Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey made this the organizing frame for customer experience research, defining the journey as the full set of contacts a customer has with a brand before, during, and after buying. Here the journey is the ordered set of touchpoints between a buyer and a firm, mapped one contact at a time, and it is not a mythic story arc or a patient's passage through a health system.[5][6]

Unit

One customer's ordered set of touchpoints with a brand across a purchase cycle

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Reconstructed by journey mapping and by tracking touchpoints across channels and purchase stages