The Experience Economy
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By accessing this password protected document, you are verifying that you are enrolled in this course and are using this document for coursework. The complete text of the U.S. copyright law is on Reserve at both the Main Library and Science Library Reserve Desks. C H A P T E R :11. Welcome to the Experience Economy OMMODITIZED. No company wants that word Capplied to its goods or services. Merely mentioning commoditization sends shivers down the spines of executives and entrepreneurs alike. Differentiation disappears, margins fall through the floor, and customers buy solely on the basis of price, pnce,pnce. Consider, however, a true commodity: the coffee bean. Com panies that harvest coffee or trade it on the futures market receive-at the time of this writing-a little more than 75 cents per pound, which translates into 1 or 2 cents a cup. When a man ufacturer roasts, grinds, packages, and sells those same beans in a grocery store, turning them into a good, the price to a consumer jumps to between 5 and 25 cents a cup (depending on brand and package size). Brew the ground beans in a run-of-the-mill diner, quick-serve restaurant, or bodega, and that coffee-making service now sells for 50 cents to a dollar or so per cup. So depending on what a business does with it, coffee can be any of three economic offerings-commodity, good, or service-with three distinct ranges of value customers attach to the offering. 2 * The Experience Economy Welcome to the Experience Economy * 3 FIGURE 1-1 World cities. More than an hour later, our friend received the bill Price of coffee offerings and discovered the experience had cost more than $15 a cup. "Was the coffee worth it?" we asked. "Assolutamente!" ~.00,--------------------------. ANew Source of Value $5.00 ·····················································································..-----, Experiences are a fourth economic offering, as distinct from $4.00 ..................................................................................... services as services are from goods, but one that has until now gone largely unrecognized. Experiences have always been around, $3.00 .................................................................................... but consumers, businesses, and economists lumped them into the service sector along with such uneventful activities as dry clean $2.00 ..................................................................................... .1..----....J. ing, auto repair, wholesale distribution, and telephone access. When a person buys a service, he purchases a set of intangible $1.00 ····························· .. ··········--............... ................................ activities carried out on his behalf. But when he buys an experi 0 ence, he pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events = that a company stages--as in a theatrical play--to engage him in Commodity Good Service Experience an inherently personal way. Experiences have always been at the heart of entertainment But wait: serve that same coffee in a five-star restaurant or a cafe offerings, from plays and concerts to movies and TV shows. Over such as Starbucks--where the ordering, creation, and consumption the past few decades, however, the number of entertainment of the cup embody a heightened ambience or sense of theatre- options has exploded to encompass many, many new experiences. and consumers gladly pay $2 to $5 a cup. Businesses that ascend to We trace the beginnings of this experience expansion to one man this fourth level of value (see figure 1-1) establish a distinctive and the company he founded: Walt Disney. After making his name experience that envelops the purchase of coffee, increasing its by continually layering new levels of experiential effects on to car value (and therefore its price) by two orders of magnitude over toons (he innovated synchronized sound, color animation, three the original commodity. dimensional backgrounds, stereophonic sound, audio-animatronics, Or more. Immediately upon arriving in Venice, a friend of ours and so forth), Disney capped his career in 1955 by opening asked a hotel concierge where he and his wife could go to enjoy Disneyland--a living, immersive cartoon world--in California. the city's best. Without hesitation he directed them to the Caffe Before his death in 1966, Disney had also envisioned Walt Disney Florian in St. Mark's Square. The two of them were soon at the World, which opened in Florida in 1971. Rather than create cafe in the crisp morning air, sipping cups of steaming coffee, fully another amusement park, Disney created the world's first theme immersed in the sights and sounds of the most remarkable of Old parks, which immerse guests (never "customers" or "clients") in 4 * The Experience Economy Welcome to the Experience Economy * 5 rides that not only entertain but also involve them in an unfolding (sometimes called "entertailing," or what The Mills Corp. trade story. For every guest, cast members (never "employees") stage a marked as "shoppertainment"). complete production of sights, sounds, tastes, aromas, and textures But this doesn't mean that experiences rely exclusively on to create a unique experience. 1 Today, The Walt Disney Company entertainment; as we explain fully in chapter 2, entertainment is carries on its founder's heritage by continually "imagineering" only one aspect of an experience. Rather, companies stage an new offerings to apply its experiential expertise, from TV shows experience whenever they engage customers, connecting with on the Disney Channel to "character worlds" at Disney.com, from them in a personal, memorable way. Many dining experiences Broadway shows to the Disney Cruise Line, complete with its own have less to do with the entertainment motif than with the merg Caribbean island. ing of dining with comedy, art, history, or nature, as happens at Whereas Disney used to be the only theme park proprietor, it such restaurants as Teatro ZinZanni, Cafe Ti Tu Tango, Medieval now faces scores of competitors in every line of business, both Times, and the Rainforest Cafe, respectively. 2 In each place, the traditional and experimental. New technologies encourage whole food service provides a stage for layering on a larger feast of sensa new genres of experience, such as video games, online games, tions that resonate with consumers. Retailers such as Jungle Jim's motion-based attractions, 3-D movies, virtual worlds, and aug International Market, The Home Depot, and the Viking Cooking mented reality. Desire for ever greater processing power to render School offer tours, workshops, and classes that combine shopping ever more immersive experiences drives demand for the goods and education in ways that we can rightly describe as "edutailing" and services of the computer industry. Former Intel chairman or "shopperscapism." (now senior adviser) Andrew Grove anticipated the explosion of The "commodity mindset," according to former British Airways technology-enabled offerings in a mid-1990s speech at the chairman Sir Colin Marshall, means mistakenly thinking "that a COMDEX computer show (itself an experience), when he business is merely performing a function-in our case, transport declared, "We need to look at our business as more than simply ing people from point A to point B on time and at the lowest pos the building and selling of personal computers [that is, goods). sible price." What British Airways does, he continued, "is to go Our business is the delivery of information [that is, services) and beyond the function and compete on the basis of providing an lifelike interactive experiences." Exactly. experience."3 The company uses its base service (the travel itself) Many traditional service indu.stries, now competing for the as a stage for a distinctive en route experience,