What Is Experience Economy and Why should you Care
Millennials have been accused - often wrongly - of "killing" various businesses. Those born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s are said to be causing the disappearance of things ranging from cloth napkins and motorcycles to products like diamonds, beer, and designer handbags. While most of the time, this isn't true - businesses are dying because they fail to adapt to the changing demands of their customer base - there is a trend that's been present since the late 1990s that might be one of the explanations for a recent shift in the economy: people now value possessions less than experiences.
What is "experience"?
We all know what "experience" means - but what does it mean from an economic point of view? Well, in authors B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore's point of view, an experience is a memorable event for the customer that transforms into a memory. Thus, the experience - and the memory - become the product, something that's intangible, as opposed to "possession".
"Experience economy" is, according to the authors, the next phase of the economy, following the agrarian one, the industrial one, and the more recent service one. In laymen's terms, it's like not buying a roulette set for home use, and playing a few rounds of online roulette at the Platinum Play.
Satisfy me!Daniel Newman, CEO of Broadsuite Media Group, principal analyst at Futurum and author of Futureproof, and Forbes contributor has described the endgame of the choices made and actions taken by today's consumer as the desire to be satisfied - and as fast as possible. "Give me the answer to my search question. Give me a platform to reach out to those around me. Give me a way to share and explore. Oh, and do all those things immediately, if you don't mind," he wrote. Brands can today create added value by making their interactions with their customers more memorable and "at hand". The author shows us the example of Dominos Pizza, the pizza chain that offers its users the possibility to order via email, text, or Twitter. Having to wait in line for a long time is certainly not the most pleasurable thing to do - and not the memory Dominos wants its customers to associate with it. But shooting a quick email to the pizza joint and getting your product in a short time is.
Give people what they want
Newman advises marketers to keep one thing in mind in our modern economy: give the people what they want. And what they want is not the same thing they wanted a few decades ago: instead of a product, customers now want an experience - something to remember, something that makes them feel like a participant rather than a payer. And a satisfied customer is likely to share his or her experience with others.
sources:
1 - https://hbr.org/1998/07/welcome-to-the-experience-economy
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