Download A 9S Model Approach for Experience Marketing Implementation

A 9S Model Approach for Experience Marketing Implementation
ZHENG Ruihong, YAN Lin
Department of Business Management, Guangdong College of Industry and Commerce, Guangzhou,
510510, China
[email protected]
Abstract: By reviewing the studies on experience marketing, this paper, which is based on B.H.
Schmitt’s theory of experience marketing theatre, firstly discussed the normal implementation methods
and successful factors of experience marketing in details, then constructed a 9S model of how to
implement experience marketing. In the end, we put forward the principles of how to implement
Experience marketing and expose the extended thoughts of it.
Keywords: Experience marketing; Experience Theatre; Experience Implementation; Successful; Factors
Since 21 century, experience marketing is springing up among all kinds of fields; many enterprises
are increasingly becoming the practitioners and operators of modern experience marketing. Experience
marketing will replace the traditional marketing and become the mainstream of the future marketing.
However, each enterprise had a different understanding of experience marketing, which resulted in
different implementation methods, and the standardized model has not yet formed. After studying the
experience marketing theoretically and practicably, this paper summarized the normal methods of
implementing experience marketing and analyzed the successful factors of it.
1 Review of the Research on Experience Marheting
At first, experience was put forward by American famous futurologist Toffler (in 1970, Future
Shock), Toffler considered experience as economic value and the product of goods and services to be
psychological. However, Pine II and Gilmore (1998) thought, experience is essentially that people spend
some time in a personalization way and the series of unforgettable events derived from it. That is to say,
experience makes everyone to be part of it in a personalization way. LaSalle and Britton( 2003 )
believed that customer experience is the interaction between a customer or many customers and
products, companies, and stakeholders, and those interactions will cause some reaction; If the response
is positive, it will enable customers recognized the value of a product or service.
On Experience marketing, Schmitt (1999) considered it as a marketing and management model
driven by experiences, it will completely replace the traditional features and functions marketing of
which the function value is the core. Schmitt (Experience marketing, 2004) further pointed out that
experience marketing is a new marketing which aims at meeting customers’ experience demands. By
culture, arts, and science technology means, enterprises improve product value and meet customers’
emotional and aesthetic experiential demands and so on to the better extent, which shocks people while
promoting product sales. Our domestic scholars, Wang Tao etc, held that Experience marketing mean to
create an atmosphere, a series of events designed to encourage customers into one role and performing
as much as they like. During the performance, the customers will have a profound and memorable
experience for their active participation, so as to transfer value to the enterprise after obtaining the
experience. However, XiuYing Wang and QinXue Deng insisted that "Experience marketing should be a
social and management process which aims at achieving business goals by recognizing and
understanding customers, then creating valuable customer experience."
According to domestic and foreign scholars’ studies on experience marketing, combining with our
practice of experience marketing, we believe that experience marketing means that enterprises design
marketing ideas from senses, emotion, thinking, action and relation, then stimulate and meet customers’
experience demands by products or services, so as to achieve corporate goals.
Domestic and foreign academic not only have defined experience and experience marketing, but
also have made a further study on the implementation of experience marketing. On the study of how to
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implement experience marketing, Schmitt put forward the Strategic Experiential Modules. He believes
that experience is complicated and variable, and it can be divided into different forms, each form has its
own inherent and unique structures and processes. These experience forms created by specific
experience media can get a marketing purpose effectively. These different experience forms are called
Strategic Experiential Modules by Schmitt, then constructed the framework of Experience marketing:
(1)feel (2)sense (3)thinking (4)action (5)relation, and the major strategic implement: Experiential
Grid.
On the study of experience marketing tactics, Schmitt (2003) constructed the framework of
Customer Experience Management. He also thought that the implementation of customer experience
should obey the following steps: analyze customers’ experience, establish the platform of customers’
experience, design a brand experience, construct a good interaction with customers, and constantly make
an innovation, which creates CEM model. However, on how to create the brand experience process,
Smith and Wheeler (2002) established the "customer experience of the brand management model".
Reversing the model can obtain the steps of how to implement customer experience of the brand
management: target the customers – define the customers’ behavior which will contribute to the
enterprise’s growth – determine the customers’ experience which can meet customers’ needs and
expectations - control the factors of experience. LaSalle and Britton (2003) considered that, in order to
create the best experience, we need firstly understand customers’ true aspirations, and what companies
can do for them, thus forming four basic factors of consumers’ behavior: physical, emotion, intellect and
spirit; then, confirm customers’ motives and their situation, as well as their impacts on the interaction
between customers and enterprises; last but not the least, make clear a series of key details during
customers’ decision-making. According to this, they put forward three vital elements of transferring total
value experience: products, services and context.
On the base of Schmitt’s, Smith and Wheeler’s theoretical system, domestic scholars have
discussed the background of brand experience, theory and general implementation strategies. XiuCheng
Fan, etc. (2002) considered that "the core concept of experience marketing is not only to meet customers
with the satisfying products and services, but also to create and provide valuable experience for them",
then, he put forward various implementation methods of experience marketing. WanXin Xie (2002)
summarized eight operational models of experience marketing, BangCai Zhong (2002) established a
model of experience marketing: "Customer Satisfaction =Customer Experience Value - Customer
Expectations".
2 Experience Theatre and Role theory
Pine II and Gilmore (in Experience Economy, 2002) said, "In each level of any enterprise,
employees need to understand that each business is a stage in experience economy, so the work is a
theatre." They have put forward the concept of experience theatre, and even divided the theatre into
stage theatre, street theatre, co-ordination theatre, improvisation theatre by the stability and dynamic
state, they also thought that everyone in this theatre was playing a different role, and the role chosen was
the core all the time, so any successful enterprise obviously depended on the selection of suitable
persons to be appropriate roles. These theories and models subsequently become the base of Schmitt’s
theoretical system and experience theatre model of experience marketing.
Schmitt (in Experience marketing, 2004) stated the philosophy of experience theatre and role in
detail, constructed his own experience theater model, and described the elements of experience
marketing. Schmitt believes that enterprises are performers, the workplace is theatre. Experience likes a
drama, because experience theater model has the same elements with the stage product. During the
services being experienced, customers and marketing personnel/staff play their respective role in the
experience theatre. Meanwhile, playing the roles can be acquired, not innate, and the evaluation of
experience results is associated with the role expectations.
According to Schmitt’s Experience Theatre Model, we know that experience performance depends
on the dynamic interactions between actors, audiences and facilities, the staff’s professional level and
ability, even clothing, demeanor, attitude and behavior will affect customers’ assessment of their
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experiences, and this influence is no less than actors’ dressing and role-playing. Moreover, the scenes,
props, equipments, lighting, temperature, color and so on, of experience facilities, will affect customers’
experience expectations and the evaluation of experience quality; and the success of front performance
must rely on the strong support of the background. Schmitt also divided the experience marketing
elements into facilities, products, services and interactive experience process; he thought it is the four
elements’ organic combination that creates customers’ experience process and the value of customers’
experience.
3 Implementation Model of Experience Marketing
3.1 Basic Assumptions of Experience marketing Implementation
3.1.1 "Emotional" Assumptions: consumers are sentimental, consumers’ traditional characteristics of
"rational consumer", "price-sensitive" are changing, and consumers’ behavior has increasingly affected
by emotion and feeling.
3.1.2 The increasing level of consumers’ mental demands: this is owing to the improvement of
consumers’ culture level and the quality of the material and cultural living. The mental demands are
sensory, emotional, spiritual, mental, and so on.
3.1.3 The aggravated personalization and differences of consumers’ demands: from the consumption
level, the prosperity of social economy and the improvement of people's lives are in fact the personality
and differences of consumers’ demands. However, experience marketing can meet these demands with
customization marketing and one-to-one marketing.
3.1.4 Brutal competition between enterprises: on account of the increasingly fierce competition, the less
survival room, the bigger competition pressure. Enterprises are trying to search for some innovative
strategies in order to remedy the strategies of 4P, 6P, 4C. Experience marketing, a new marketing,
emphasizes on consumers’ soul instead of the traditional marketing strategy 4P.
3.2 The Normal Implementation Methods of Experience marketing
5 Experience Subject
1 Smell
Experience
Demand
2Design
Supply
3Structure
Experience
Scene
4Start
Experience
7Acquire
Sense
8Experience
Realization
9Stretch
Experience
after Sale
6 Experience Spread
Figure 1 The "9S" Model of Experience marketing Implementation
According to the study and research of experience marketing, this paper constructs the "9S" model
of how to implement experience marketing. In the model, the experience demands are not only the
beginning of experience marketing, but also the end of it; we should study and recognize customers’
demands before developing experience products and selecting experience marketing methods; actually,
the arrangement of experience scenes means to structure experience stage; then, with certain subject and
the spreading of experience information , experience products, stage and actors etc can lead to
experience sense; with actors and audiences, experience activities are performances in fact; the formed
experience need to be realized(or released), which is called sales, it is also the purpose of experience
marketing; the realized experience is not the end, we should keep on preserving, maintaining and
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expanding it, so that customers will have new experience demands, which becomes new experience
cycle and innovative experience.
3.3 The Successful Factors of How to Implement Experience marketing
According to the theory of experience theatre and role, experience marketing just like a drama,
which must have script, stage, actors, performance theme, and arrange experience scenes, organize
performances, spread performance information, manage the performance scenes and so on, so as to
attract customers and make them impressive, then achieving enterprises’ marketing objectives.
Successful experience marketing can be started from the following:
3.3.1 Well-done research on consumers’ demands and experience positioning
Modern marketing obeys the theory of "customer-oriented" and emphasizes on "consumer-center",
with this, enterprises develop and launch products according to customers’ demands. So, while
implementing experience marketing, we must be concerned about customers’ experience demands, study
consumers’ experiential psychology and feelings in order to shock them. Only correctly understanding
consumers’ experience demands, can we accurately identify the experience characters of our target
consumers and position experience in personality and design experience product.
3.3.2 Developing experiential products and subjects
Experience products and models are the core values of experience marketing, whether they can
develop products with experiential characteristics and impacting subjects is very important to
enterprises’ experience marketing model. So undoubtedly, we must focus on whether marketing
elements have experiential characters and impaction or not during developing products and designing
subjects, thus attracting consumers.
3.3.3 Creating experience scene and stage with affinity
Experience is a performance, which needs scenes and stage; only with it, can experience marketing
be implemented, can customers enjoy a good time. Experience marketing is trying to create an
unforgettable experience for customers, then, stimulate customers’ buying and forming the brand loyalty.
Therefore, it is good to form customers’ experience sense and improve their experience value that we
should try to create the experience scene and stage with affinity.
3.3.4 Selecting suitable experience media and method
In order to obtain experience purpose, we must spread experience information by certain media and
form experience effect by impacting potential customers. What is the suitable and economic media? The
effectiveness, the economy, the credibility and influences may be the reference, and good reputation is
an effective and economic communication. The effectiveness of communication means to concentrate
on the target consumers or not, the economy is the relationship between the input and output of the
selected media, while the credibility and influences are reputable and authoritative.
3.3.5 Effective organization and implementation of experience marketing
With actors’ performance, experience marketing likes a drama. During the experience, the overall
coordination of planning is necessary, the support of front and background is also very important.
Whether a variety of experience elements (such as, experience products, experience service, experience
stage, staffs’ performance, experience brand, experience culture, experience spreading, etc.) can be
integrated cooperatively is the key. Only successful organization and orderly integration, can make the
entire performances be successful.
3.3.6 Extending the implementation of customers’ experience and customers’ maintenance
According to Pine II and Gilmore’s theory (in Experience Economy), "experience is a supply
derived from services." Experience marketing is the extension of service marketing, so experience must
have the problem of "after-sales service". A perfect experience should be extended after the experience,
even be strengthened constantly, which can make the good existed experience a habit, then forming
customers’ trust and loyalty. Consequently, we must introduce customer relationship management (CRM)
for customer experience process management (CEPM).
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References
[1]LaSalle, D. and Britton, T. A., Priceless: Turning Ordinary Products into Extraordinary Experiences,
Harvard Business School Press, 2003.
[2]Pine , B. J. and Gilmore, J. H., Welcome to Experience Economy, Harvard Business Review,1998,
76(7-8): 97-105.
[3]Schmitt, B. H., Experience Marketing: How to Get Customers to SENSE, FEEL, THINK, ACT,
RELATE to Your Company and Brands, New York: Simon & Schuster Inc,.1999.
[4]Smith, S. and Wheeler, J., Managing the Customer Experience: Turing Customers into Advocates,
London: Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2002.
[5] B • H • Schmidt. Customer Experience Management. Beijing: Machinery Industry Press .2004
[6] B • H • Schmidt, Experience Marketing, Tsinghua University Press, 2004.
[7] B •Joseph • Pinedale, James • H • Gilmore, The Experience Economy, Machinery Industry Press,
2002.
[8] Wang Xiuying, To Experience Economic and Non-economic Experience of the Comparative
Analysis, China's Industrial Economy, 2003 (9): 73-80.
[9] Fan Xiucheng, Ying Yi, Experience Marketing: Enterprise Customers to Win New Thinking,
Economic Management, 2002 (22) :62-67.
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