The Cheerless Consumer Experience
Experiential marketing has devoted a lot of attention to create extraordinary consumer experience in individuals. The idea is that firms, in order to differentiate, must evolve from the production of goods and services toward the creation of exceptional, unforgettable experiences. Companies have increasingly become receptive to this idea, as web sites and temporary stores are more and more geared toward sensory and emotional stimulation.
What is being overlooked, is that sometimes such contexts do not generate the exceptional customer experience which had been expected. The reason is that it takes consumer skills to live the experience: it's not about understanding needs, but to assess and work with the skills mastered by the consumers.
We have conducted a research study on the art industry, which is by nature experiential, and interesting findings have emerged with respect to more traditional markets as well. It's about the exhibit organized at Milano Triennale in 2008, "Anni '70: il decennio lungo del secolo breve" [The Seventies: The Long Decade of the Short Century], which was designed with the intent of being able to experience those years, as stated in the presentation by the curator, irrespective of having lived through that time directly.
The exhibit revolved around more than 20 rooms, each linked to a theme of the 1970s. In the research study it emerged that those who have more knowledge and cultural references about those years (typically middle-aged people who lived through them) were able to totally immerse themselves in the context. Others, typically young people, found it hard to do so, describing a sense of inability to fully experience it. In particular, all visitors were able to recognize elements linked to the 70s (such as Moro's cell, or Fiorucci's creations), but the younger ones were unable to locate enough references to reconstruct the red thread running through that decade.Generally speaking, the necessary condition for people to have access to experience designed by them is the mastery of adequate knowledge and skills, something that is usually considered implicit or not considered at all.
So it is possible envisage a process which can guide firms in the management of customer management based on skills. The first step is given by the identification of consumer knowledge, by adopting the mental patterns used by customers, not firms. For this, the ethnographic analysis and listening to customers are useful. It is also necessary to understand how to mobilize consumers' tacit knowledge, so that it is used in the experiential process: companies should use language and references that consumers can easily relate to and decode the associated symbolic elements. Lastly companies should equip consumers with facilitation tools (such as smart phone apps).
And the relation with customer knowledge can be pushed further. Companies are increasingly making use of the ideas of consumers not only in process and product innovation (such as MyStarbucksIdeas.com), but also in the design of marketing campaigns. Alfa Romeo, for instance, created a platform for alfisti where they could interact to jointly flesh out the event celebrating the centennial of the brand, which was held in Milano in June 2010.