Change is inevitable; as an economy matures, ages, and ultimately evolves into something new, adjustments must be made to our business development, marketing and branding. Failure to adapt to new realities results in potentially unwanted dramatic consequences.
We are all aware of how modern economies have grown from agricultural, to industrial, and on to the information-based, but where do we stand now? Is the information economy dead and if so what's replaced it?
We need look no further than Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to see parallels between personal and economic growth in a sophisticated modern economy. The agrarian economy satisfied the first level of Maslow's hierarchy by fulfilling basic physical needs like food, while the industrial age provided the goods necessary to satisfy a variety of concerns ranging from safety to social acceptance and status; the information economy provided answers to our cognitive needs, the desire for knowledge, but things have changed. The Web has disrupted business as usual: the effects on the music, film, television, newspaper, book publishing, and software industries, just to mention a few, has been not just dramatic, but traumatic. The adage, 'adapt or die,' has never been truer for business. So where are we now on the personal and economic pyramid?
Be All You Can Be
At the top of this pyramid is 'self-actualization' the desire to make the most of our existence and as the US Army's slogan states to 'Be All You Can Be.' This is the central defining issue of the new economic reality, the Experience Economy.
Authors B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore state the issue of what business needs to focus on in this new economic era: "While commodities are fungible, goods are tangible, services are intangible, experiences are memorable and transformations are effectual. All other economic offerings have no lasting consequence beyond their consumption." - 'The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage.'
Experiences are memorable and transformations effectual, this should be your new marketing mantra, your marching orders to fulfill what the market demands: to be all you can be.
Experiences Are Memorable, Transformations Effectual
What then does this mean: experiences are memorable and transformations effectual. In order to effect change: to turn website audiences into customers, marketers must deliver something more than commodities that are replaceable for a price, goods that are made irrelevant by technology, and services that are mere conveniences. The businesses that will succeed in this new experience economy are the businesses that will provide an experience and not just goods and services.
We are surrounded by examples of the experience economy both online and off. The growth of coffee giant, Starbucks, was not a result of great coffee but of the experience it provided to patrons, while online, iTunes satisfied the ignored needs of music buyers and Amazon did the same for book lovers. The Macintosh is finally gaining market share because the experience consumers have had with iPods has been so satisfying that they are now ready to bring that same satisfying experience to their desktops. The key to business survival is not a new feature or even a lower price, but rather an experience that satisfies the soul.
Experiences Satisfy The Soul
Traditional business thinking has lagged far behind the sophisticated psychological desires of the experience-economy consumer. Business schools have produced a cadre of bean counters and statistical idiot savants whose grasp of this new experience-driven economic reality has been outpaced by Web-savvy mavericks bent on delivering the essential emotional need of consumers to gain some measure of satisfaction in a hectic, demanding, frustrating world.
The We