The experience economy – B. Joseph Pine II & James H. Gilmore

I read the experience economy twice, not that it was so absolutely mind boggling, but it wasn’t easy to keep track of the book and it just wouldn’t stick in my head. The experience economy is a book of how we can achieve and create experience, what the differences are between selling goods and selling experiences etc. Experience in it’s self can be an intriguing subject and that was partially why I started reading this book that and of course my coach Janne Roiha had a say in it. The book is also full of different kinds of example stories that I think are to engage the reader more but overall I think the book was not as captivating as one may have thought.

The book can be divided into four main subjects: education, escapism, esthetics and entertainment

Education should consistently engage your customer, the more he is engaged the better the customer will remember. The more the customer is active the more he will learn. I know if I’m interested in a subject I will ask questions myself as a customer.

Escapism is probably most known on the internet. It is hard to bring in to reality yet alone into a business. Different kinds of escape rooms, movie theaters etc. are the best example of escapism. I know that if you really find an interesting service like an online casino which I unfortunately dive into to from time to time. It is very time consuming and time can really get away from you playing those, this is what the company providing the service wants, the more time you play the more they make. Books and movies are probably the most recognizable in escapism.

Esthetics I guess the definition could be described as beauty and taste. Keeping the customers satisfied with pleasing knickknacks and visual objects to help remember the service or good. I know for a fact that when we bought a nice banner for our tire changing project it was a nice visual add to the place. Our station being located in a parking garage where there is a lot that does not please the eye such as dirt and cigarette stumps trash and other things found in indoor parking garages. We didn’t have the banner during our first season changing tires and it was kind of lame without it looking back at it, it has the same logo we have on the website it brings a certain professionality to the place.

Entertainment should always be provided during an experience with a customer. The more the customer is entertained the better he/she will remember the experience. I think the biggest problem is how to personally entertain different types of customers, everyone has a different taste and its hard to find the right way to do this. There where many examples in the book one being giving doorknobs in a hotel as souvenirs rather than selling them. One thing that we have managed to do in our three seasons now during our tire changing project, is collect different kind of data. The data is mostly about who are customers are and what the platform was finding us. I think even though this is basic level data of our existing customers it will still help us grow and provide better service for our existing customers. I can’t remember which hotel it was the book described, but they collected data from each individual customer of what their preferences were regarding their room. By doing this the increased the customers enjoyability during that stay.

This book was full of valuable information regarding just the basics of customer needs and different ways on how to grow your company with the 4E mentioned above. Right now I only have one project where I could see the most use out of this book. Luckily for me I have 6-8 eight other enthusiastic frisbeegolfers that want to see the company grow. This is definitely a book to come back to and like I said it was hard to grasp all of the information from one or even two reads. Definitely goes in my top 5 books.