Sep15
Welcome to the Experience Economy. Are You Ready?
When my mother grew up and it was her birthday, her mother went to the store and bought flour, sugar, milk, and eggs; came home and baked a birthday cake. When it was my birthday, my mom went to the store, bought a cake mix and baked me a birthday cake.
When my kids’ birthday came, I did neither of those things. For about ten bucks I went to the store and bought a pre-made cake complete with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on top. However when parents prepare for their children’s birthday today, a cake is not enough. There must be a party with games, prizes, balloons, and a magician.
This is what Harvard researchers Joseph Pine and James Gilmore call The Experience Economy. It’s a fundamental shift in the marketplace where “work is theater and every business a stage.”
In other words, people come to businesses today with dramatically different expectations than they did even a few years ago. They don’t want an ordinary product or run-of-the-mill service, a mere transactional exchange. They want an experience. And it’s the experience that keeps customers coming back again and again, or the lack of it that drives them away.
A client of mine who sells a product primarily for women recently decided that the experience she wants to provide is helping women feel better about themselves. She arrived at this decision after hours of conversation, and it was a big breakthrough. Helping women feel better about themselves is now her central focus, her compelling benefit, her consuming cause.
And it’s not enough.
Our next step is examining everything—and I mean everything—that takes place in her business, making absolutely sure it contributes to helping women feel better about themselves. Only then will the experience be real.
What’s the emotional experience you bring to the marketplace? Now deliver that experience at every touch point with your customer. That’s how you’ll thrive in this experience economy.
