The 21st MARUG Marketing Conference introduces you to the world of experiences created by brands, products or services. Experience Marketing: Welcome to My World!
Experience Marketing is already part of marketing strategies around the world since the late nineties. It focuses on the creation of experiences around brands with help of entertainment and information technology. Main purpose of Experience Marketing is to encourage events that involve personally and mentally and thereby creating memorable experiences. A trip in the Python of the Efteling, a concert of Symphonica in Rosso, drinking a cup of coffee in a Douwe Egberts shop or visiting the Coca Cola Museum in the United States are examples of experiences which can involve emotionally, physically, intellectually or even spiritually.
The popularity and expectations of Experience Marketing were especially high on the beginning of the 21st century. There was much experimenting with the creation of diverse experiences, with an emphasis on gaining as much attention of the consumer as possible. The Coca Cola museum mentioned above is a clear example. Due to the ever changing economic perspective, the context of marketing is changed in the last couple of years; because of limited resources, marketeers are required to handle the marketing budgets creatively. Alongside the economic aspect there have been changes within the field of consumers; nowadays they have a lot of knowledge about the market and the products offered there. Their requirements increase, especially in case of the expressions of brands, products and services. On top of the demanding consumer, there is the fact of reduced purchasing power; as a consequence of less money available, the loyalty of customers is reduced. Due of the growing offer of nearly identical products and services, the availability, price and quality of products or services aren’t a sufficient reason for buying anymore. The modern customer is making choices on a basis of symbolic values such as status, appreciation, attention, imagination and development of the self.
By making use of Experience Marketing, brands are trying to respond to these symbolic values and are making an attempt to involve the customer in a personal and memorable way with their brand, product or service. More than ever it’s the customer that is playing a central role. Everything around that customer is created to fit individual desires and needs. In case of this modern customer, currently there’s the appeal to pay more attention to specific experiences with a brand, product or service. Experience Marketing is turned into account here, as a purpose to optimize the experience of the customer. These attempts to optimize the experiences of customers are apprehended in the theme of customer experience. What’s been trying for within the customer experience, is to involve emotional desires alongside the rational ones with the intention to reach more customer loyalty and eventually a greater profitability. Within the processes surrounding brands, products and services, the customer experience is about providing the optimal service and communication during the whole journey a customer goes through. The customer journey is not about one specific moment of experience but a sequence of diverse moments of contact between customer and organization. All together, these contact moments and experiences, are the experience of a brand, product or service; they are shaping the customer journey. The most optimal sequence of contact moments or the most optimal customer journey is resulting in a consistent implementation of the customer experience throughout the organization.
A stronger relationship between customer and organization is especially important in the current context, which was mentioned above. Differentiating on a basis of price and quality is quite difficult for organizations nowadays. What they can do, is taking advantage by creating experiences within the customer. Besides that, it is well-know that reaching new customers is gaining much more time, effort and money than maintaining existing ones. Therefore marketing strategies that are assuming the experiences of existing customers as a starting-point are able to achieve greater profitability. Finally, the results of a large scale research in October 2009 show that organizations with a higher score on customer experience, achieve better results than organizations that are less customer driven; thus creating superior customer experiences is nowadays a great strategy to achieve success.
In order to achieve a consistent implementation of customer experience within the customer journey, there is a diversity of means and channels that are playing a significant role. Social media such as Hyves, Viral and Word-of-Mouth Marketing are examples that are useful; it is self-evident that especially interactive media are an important factor in implementing Experience Marketing within the customer experience. Besides means to imply the customer experience consistently, there are also means that make it possible for organizations to get a more accurate and up-to-date notion of the experiences of customers.
During the 21st MARUG Marketing Conference on the 25th of March 2010, there will be given a substance to the ways in which Experience Marketing can contribute to the customer experience and the manner in which both concepts can be used within marketing strategies. The conference will be set by one central question:
To what extent is it possible to apply the lessons already learned from Experience Marketing within the area of the customer experience and what kind of role can this approach play in future marketingstrategies?