The Marketing of Experience

[Excerpt] In their provocative and prescient Harvard Business Review article, Pine and Gilmore (1998) declared, Welcome to the Experience Economy. Indeed, experience has become essential to market exchange in many contexts, with consumers desiring an experience from even mundane service offerings (e.g., quick service restaurants [QSRs] and coffee shops; think Chipotle and Starbucks) and marketers striving to deliver novel experiences as a means to differentiate from the competition and, ultimately, attain customer loyalty (Pullman & Gross, 2003). So strong is the experience wave that a major U.S. legacy airline recently announced a search for a new position—VP of customer experience. Even formerly engineering-driven manufacturing firms like Hewlett Packard are focusing on the total customer experience as key to their competitive future (Hosford, 2006). Arguably, the leaders in experiential marketing are hospitality firms, from the Walt Disney Company\u27s themed fantasy experience to the Ritz-Carlton\u27s orchestrated pampering. But is experiential marketing necessary for hospitality firms to be successful? I address this question by examining the ideas advanced by LeBel, Dubé, Sears, and Renaghan in Chapter 21 on strategic experiential branding, and I extend their thinking with the findings from the chapters on customer loyalty. Though a focus on customer experience is important to most services, I argue that strategic experiential branding does not require memorable experiences and emotional bonding between customer and company to drive loyalty. Depending upon customers\u27 needs and the service context, emotional bonding may be difficult to achieve—and unnecessary. Instead, hospitality providers can follow an alternative path that focuses the service promise on benefits customers seek, which are more instrumental than hedonic or emotional. In this commentary, I contribute to the discourse on experiential marketing by describing this less heralded route to customer loyalty

Carnival Cruise Lines: Burnishing the Brand

The case of Carnival Cruise Lines chronicles the company’s birth and development as it redefined the leisure cruise industry. With a theme of “Fun Ships” and low pricing, Carnival appealed to a diverse market. Under the pressure of increasing competition, Carnival was challenged to refine its Fun Ships brand without damaging the considerable equity contained in that brand. In particular, as cruise lines became less differentiated in the customers’ view, Carnival sought to set itself apart with upgraded product features, service, and other guest amenities, as well as a more sophisticated brand message

The Mobile Revolution Is Here: Are You Ready?

With the rise of smartphones and tablets, travelers now have remarkable connectivity that allows them to make travel arrangements and share information before, during, and after their trips. A 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of adults in the United States owned a smartphone.1 With that rapid expansion of mobile devices, one concern is that the hospitality industry might not be ready for the level of mobile accessibility and functionality that customers expect. In that regard, an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that although most travel companies recognize that mobile is increasing in importance, they do not yet understand its full reach and impact.2 Compared to PCs, mobile use patterns, behaviors, and expectations are different, and each phase of the travel cycle requires a distinctive approach for mobile

Building and Managing Your Brand

[Excerpt] Have you eaten at Zoup!, Smashburger, or Big Al\u27s Steaks? Have you stayed at Andaz, Aloft, or Element? If you haven\u27t yet experienced one of these products, let alone heard of them, it\u27s probably because they are brands that are still in the building process. Each of these brands is relatively new in their industry sector, but they may someday be as familiar as Taco Bell or Marriott. From Andaz to Zoup!, these companies were built with a simple but powerful promise to guests that they will receive specific benefits from patronizing that brand. Smashburger\u27s promise, for instance, is to be THE place for burger lovers…Where smash, sizzle, savor, means a dedication to creating the best-tasting \u27cooked-to-order\u27 burger. Building a brand is not a new idea, but the process has become increasingly sophisticated and supported by marketing research. This chapter helps you to think like a brand marketer. Even as an independent operator, you can borrow from the playbook of the established brands and take a strategic approach to brand building and management. If you do work for an established brand—or are thinking about affiliating with one, this chapter helps you to understand the importance of branding in a crowded marketplace. The approach to brand strategy I introduce in this chapter is derived in part from a course on Service Experience Management that I teach at Cornell University\u27s School of Hotel Administration, as well as lessons I\u27ve learned while providing brand-strategy consulting to hotel companies, cruise lines, and tourism destinations. The centerpiece of the approach is a Process Framework for Strategic Branding that serves as a guide for diagnosing brand problems and opportunities and for building successful brand experiences

Positioning a Place: Developing a Compelling Destination Brand

The process of building a brand begins with a clear understanding of what consumers desire from a particular product or service. This understanding is then translated into a promise, which is the basis of the brand and tells consumers what they will receive. This report details a methodical six-step process for brand building, the “Process Framework for Strategic Brand Development,” using the case of Zambia. That nation’s tourism officials engaged a team of graduate students from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration to develop a new destination brand. Using data from potential visitors to the country, the team first identified the motivational factors for Zambia tourism. They next evaluated the nation’s value proposition and assessed its competitive brand position, as compared to the nearby African nations that constitute its competitive set. The next step was to develop core brand elements, based on the traveler motivations. With the brand elements in place, the group created possible brand promises and tested them with key suppliers and sponsors in Zambia. A refined set of potential brand concepts was tested with potential customers. Finally, a set of symbolic brand touch points was developed to become part of brand messages and images. The method used by the Cornell “Brand Zambia” team is applicable to any tourism destination—and to hospitality products that aim to create an emotion-inducing, memorable guest experience

Unifying Services Marketing and Operations with Service Experience Management

One of the pioneer firms in the leisure cruise industry embarked on a bold idea in 2000 to offer an unregimented experience unlike most cruises. Despite the appeal of the concept from a marketing perspective, the service innovation posed operational challenges, many of which continue to undermine the firm’s competitive position. Using a multi-method empirical approach and interdisciplinary views that draw on research from marketing and operations management, the authors analyze this business case to identify challenges that service firms face when services are developed and managed from siloed functional perspectives. Based on their research findings and guided by the literature, the authors derive a service-systems model to aid service planning and management. The authors further highlight a new organizational form and function for services under the domain of service experience management that is positioned as a means to unify service operations and marketing for delivering on service promises. The authors offer direction for further research on service operations systems and service experience management

Driving Demand for the Quarterdeck: A Case Study

The Quarterdeck Beachside Villas and Grill is a small property that faces an all too common set of challenges, most of them stemming from steep seasonality. Located on Nova Scotia\u27s south shore, the Quarterdeck sells out during the summer months but is nearly empty during the winter. This case study examines the Quarterdeck\u27s marketing approach and outlines strategies for driving off-season demand by focusing specifically on identifying guests\u27 needs and desires to develop new product bundles and marketing communications. Although these ideas emerge from the Quarterdeck\u27s particular circumstances, the strategies are applicable to many small hospitality companies that face seasonal demand

Usage-Based versus Measure-Based Unit Pricing: Is There a Better Index of Value?

In many product categories, unit prices facilitate price comparisons across brands and package sizes; this enables consumers to identify those products that provide the greatest value. However in other product categories, unit prices may be confusing. This is because there are two types of unit pricing, measure-based and usage-based. Measure-based unit prices are what the name implies; price is expressed in cents or dollars per unit of measure (e.g. ounce). Usage-based unit prices, on the other hand, are expressed in terms of cents or dollars per use (e.g., wash load or serving). The results of this study show that in two different product categories (i.e., laundry detergent and dry breakfast cereal), measure-based unit prices reduced consumers’ ability to identify higher value products, but when a usage-based unit price was provided, their ability to identify product value was increased. When provided with both a measure-based and a usage-based unit price, respondents did not perform as well as when they were provided only a usage-based unit price, additional evidence that the measure-based unit price hindered consumers’ comparisons. Finally, the presence of two potential moderators, education about the meaning of the two measures and having to rank order the options in the choice set in terms of value before choosing, did not eliminate these effects

Lexical Interference in Semantic Processing of Simple Words: Implications for Brand Names

This study provides evidence for a Stroop-like interference effect in word recognition. Based on phonologic and semantic properties of simple words, participants who performed a same/different word-recognition task exhibited a significant response latency increase when word pairs (e.g., POLL, ROD) featured a comparison word (POLL) that was a homonym of a synonym (pole) of the target word (ROD). These results support a parallel-processing framework of lexical decision making, in which activation of the pathways to word recognition may occur at different levels automatically and in parallel. A subset of simple words that are also brand names was examined and exhibited this same interference. Implications for word recognition theory and practical implications for strategic marketing are discussed

Buyer Monitoring: A Means to Insure Personalized Service

Marketing scholars propose that service employees play a primary role in delivering service quality. However, the question of how to motivate service employees to enhance service production has received little research attention. The authors address this gap by advocating a control mechanism first discussed in the economics literature—buyer monitoring. The authors focus on a pervasive form of buyer monitoring, voluntary tipping, and examine the effectiveness of this control mechanism as a means of improving service in two different contexts: leisure cruises and restaurant dining. Despite a substantial interdisciplinary literature reporting a weak relationship between customer perceptions of service and their tipping behavior, results show that a policy of voluntary tipping has positive effects on the motivation and behavior of service workers and on customers’ perceptions of the service those workers provide. These findings call attention to buyer monitoring as both a topic for academic research and a practical mechanism for motivating service employees. The findings also call into question trends away from tipping in service contexts such as the cruise industry and suggest that many service businesses for which tipping is not viable may benefit from alternative forms of buyer monitoring