April Fast Company Article by Carol Thesing

Is Your Business a Show Business by Daniel H. Pink, April 1999, pg., 84-86.

The article begins by recapping American commerce. It divides our last 200 years into four parts. They are extracting resources from the earth, fashioning resources into consumer goods, turning goods into service and now turning service into an experience.

According to B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, who co-authored the book The Experience Economy, when a person buys an experience, he pays to spend time enjoying a series of events to engage him in a personal way. An example would be paying three to four dollars for a latte to enjoy the experience of drinking the coffee in an entertaining environment.

Now people stroll through a store enjoying music, vibrate in a massage chair, trying on exquisite clothing and often not buy a thing. Pine and Gilmore suggest charging for that experience would force the company to stage a better experience to attract guests and therefore sell merchandise. The merchandise mix would need to be changed more regularly. Adding attractions, contests, and demonstrations would result in selling more.

Pine and Gilmore say in the experience economy work is theater. Disney is a master of work theatre proposition. This idea is spreading to industry and less obvious performance orientated businesses.

Experience type of marketing requires creativity and ingenuity. It also separates the competitors, giving the showier one the edge.

I am not sure I want this is to be the way of the future. Life already seems too much like a video game. I have found students now want teaching to be entertaining and provided for them instead of taking responsibility for their learning. I think the experience type of marketing will only help magnify the problem. I want to see a quieter, calmer, slower environment. Why cant that be a new experience of the future? Would it sell? Would you buy it?

Some of the people I talked with agreed with me but many saw the idea of Pine and Gilmores experience marketing as a great idea. They saw it as inexpensive entertainment and thought it would be more constructive for children than just hanging at the mall. The only experience I would really like to see is experiencing great service. Outstanding service still has my dollar.

-- Anonymous, April 27, 1999