The Experience Economy

November 22, 2003

A book I talk about incessantly but have yet to read and have finally read. The progression of the economy: Commodity -> Product -> Service -> Experience -> Transformation.

We are currently transitioning from service to experience; I am interested in designing for transformations.

  1. MY kind of "experience economy" - May 22, 2003
  2. Price your Name - Mar 04, 2003

Comments

  1. Bob:

    Article in Fast Company about the thinkAbout conference, hosted by Pine and Gilmore in New York in late September: Experience This!

  2. Bob:

    Bob, the experience of using this site on a handheld is truly cool—bravo, XHTML!

  3. Bob:

    The movie Strange Days reminded me of this book; it too predicts the emergence of an “experience economy”, but one mediated by technology, specifically virtual reality.

    Lenny Nero: See … I can get you what you want, I can. I can get you anything, you just have to talk to me, you have to trust me. You can trust me, ‘cause I’m your priest, I’m your shrink … I am you main connection to the switchboard of he soul. I’m the magic man … Santa Claus of the subconscious. You say it, you think it, you can have it.

  4. Bob:

    A HBS Working Knowledge paper explores something mentioned by Pine and Gilmore—that frequent-buyer programs are rarely a good idea:

    Conventional wisdom says that loyalty programs are best utilized to reward your best customers. This is not true in the grocery retail business. Loyalty programs do not affect the behavior of best customers. By using rewards programs, retailers give away things for free that their best customers would have bought anyway. Retailers thereby begin to lose money on the program…

    The Experience Economy doesn’t like them for another reason, that of it causing commoditization, stated on page 98:

    Designed to foster customer loyalty, these programs in fact have a fatal flaw: they encourage customers to expect free goods and services…Customers are simply not engaged on a personal level, and over time, they take the benefits for granted…Like rebates, this serves merely to commoditize a company’s offerings

  5. Bob:

    The SpringWise New Business Idea this month is Experience Stores:

    With consumers continuously befuddled by the sheer overload of mass goods, desperately on the look out for riveting and unique experiences, this is a perfect business idea, whether developed as an urban gift outlet or as a well-designed website.

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