brands and retailers need to sell experiences

Influx Insights — 2007-05-09T05:47:15Z

In 1999, when Pine and Gilmore wrote the “Experience Economy”, marketers rushed to bring more experience to their brands and especially their retail environments.

NikeTown’s evolution exemplified the movement, starting off as celebration of the brand, more like a museum and then shifting emphasis to become more of a traditional retailer, with specks of experience.

Brands moved into retail experiences because they liked the idea of control and they saw an opportunity to immerse consumers in the brand.

Today, the concept appears to have evolved into two strains.

a.    Pure branded retail- Apple Stores- are the best example and in fact deliver the highest sales/sqft of any retailer in the US. These are stores; they don’t deliver much in the way of experience or celebrating the legacy and history of the brand. Apple is very much about the latest and the now, its stores don’t need to dwell on the past.

b.    Museums-Brands that have equity in the past are using brand experiences as an additional arm of their brand communication strategies. Mercedes is a great example of a brand that’s building museums to communicate its history and heritage.

Yesterday, Sharper Image announced it was selling flights with the Zero Gravity Corp.

“The experience starts with a brief training session followed by a 90-minute flight aboard G-Force One, a Boeing 727, during which parabolic maneuvers are performed. The controlled ascent and descent of the plane allows flyers to experience apparent Martian gravity (1/3 Earth's gravity), Lunar gravity (1/6 Earth's gravity), and weightlessness.

ZERO-G flights depart from Las Vegas and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.”

This announcement moves Sharper Image into the experience selling game.

Yankelovich has been telling us for years that consumers value experiences more than material possessions, but it’s taken ages for retailers and traditional brands to get in on the act.

However, the potential is boundless for those that get it right, just imagine:

-    The Container Store should be selling “life simplification” courses and consulting
-    BevMo could sell wine tours and wine tasting classes
-    Pottery Barn could package interior design courses
-    Car dealers should be aggressively selling courses for performance racetrack driving and rallying
-    PF Chang’s could be selling cooking experience tours to China
-    Target could sell overseas trips to accompany their buyers

Consumers want to these things, if only brands and retailers could find a way to sell them. Beyond the obvious revenue benefits, these experiences would generate greater loyalty for brands.

Influx believes we are likely to see a shift towards “experience selling” that will demand imagination and ingenuity. It offers an interesting opportunity for retailers and brands that are bold enough to make the leap and prepared to experiment and develop new ways to sell experience.

Eight years on, the “Experience Economy” is finally becoming a reality.

Influx Insights Tag Feed: niketown

brands and retailers need to sell experiences