James H. Gilmore’s scientific contributions

All too often fitness centers, medical providers, colleges, and organizations in many other industries seek to distinguish themselves only on the quality, convenience, and experience of what they sell, say the authors. It’s not that those things aren’t important. But they matter only as means to the ends that people seek. Too many organizations lose sight of this truth. Even when they do promote what they sell in relation to consumers’ aspirations, they rarely design solutions that allow people to realize them. Instead, individuals must cobble together what they think they need to achieve their goals—for example, a trainer, a particular diet, and a support network to lose weight. Enterprises should recognize the economic opportunity offered by a transformation business, in which consumers come to them with a desire to improve some fundamental aspect of their lives. Even though we’re all filled with hopes, aims, and ambitions, significant change is incredibly hard to accomplish on our own. This article offers an approach to designing a transformation business.

Time is limited. Attention is scarce. Are you engaging your customers? Apple Stores, Disney, LEGO, Starbucks. Do these names conjure up images of mere goods and services, or do they evoke something more—something visceral? Welcome to the Experience Economy, where businesses must form unique connections in order to secure their customers’ affections—and ensure their own economic vitality. This seminal book on experience innovation by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore explores how savvy companies excel by offering compelling experiences for their customers, resulting not only in increased customer allegiance but also in a more profitable bottom line. Translated into thirteen languages, The Experience Economy has become a must-read for leaders of enterprises large and small, for-profit and nonprofit, global and local. Now with a brand-new preface, Pine and Gilmore make an even stronger case for experiences as the critical link between a company and its customers in an increasingly distractible and time-starved world. Filled with detailed examples and actionable advice, The Experience Economy helps companies create personal, dramatic, and even transformative experiences, offering the script from which managers can generate value in ways aligned with a strong customer-centric strategy.

Purpose – In little more than a decade, experience thinking has influenced the development of new business models in a wide variety of enterprises. Design/methodology/approach – The authors describe best practices for five approaches Five approaches are noteworthy: Experiential marketing (EM or XM). Digital experiences using the Internet and other electronic platforms to create new technology interfaces focused on the user experience (UX). The application of experience-staging to enhance interactions with customers. Experiences as a distinct economic offering. Designing transformational business models that allows the company to charge for the demonstrated outcomes customers achieve. Findings – Companies can innovate by recognizing trends in customer needs and aspirations that provide opportunities to develop business models that offer high value experiences or even customer transformations. Originality/value – To truly pursue experiences as a distinct form of economic output, companies must design a business model that involves charging for the time customers spend engaging with the business, such as an admission or membership fee of some sort.

Purpose – To succeed in the rapidly evolving experience economy executives must think differently about how they create economic value for their customers. Design/methodology/approach – Five value-creating opportunities are likely to drive further progress in the dynamic experience economy: customizing goods; enhancing services; charging for experiences; fusing digital technology with reality; and transformative experiences, a promising frontier. Findings – For leaders, five insights about the value-creating opportunities are key to achieving success via state-of-the-art experience staging, and they provide tested guidelines for managing in the experience economy, now and into the future. Practical implications – A huge first step in staging more engaging experiences is embracing the principle that work is theatre. So businesses should ask: What acts of theatre would turn our workers' functional activities into memorable events? Originality/value – Three key lessons: innovation to create high-quality experiences that customers will pay for is even more important than goods or service innovation. When you customize an experience, you automatically turn it into a transformation. Companies enabling transformations should charge not merely for time but for the change resulting from that time.

Purpose As more companies wrap their offering with “an experience,” it is important that experience authenticity is understood to be a critical consumer sensibility. This paper aims to address this issue. Design/methodology/approach The authors have studied experience marketing and found that consumers often choose to buy or not buy based on how genuine they perceive an offering to be. The authors warn that fakery, phoniness, or manipulation that becomes associated with your offering will harm your brand. Findings The paper finds that executives must learn to understand, manage, and excel at delivering authenticity. So how can leaders tell the difference between bogus and authentic business opportunities? Research limitations/implications A short case study of the Walt Disney Company shows that authenticity will not result when a company strives for a strategic position that is inimical to its traditions. Practical implications The execution zone is the set of decisions and actions that a company can make and still be perceived as true to self. For companies that try to operate outside their execution zone there is little likelihood that the resultant offerings will be perceived as authentic. Managers can learn to use eight principles to guide them in delineating where exactly your own “execution zone” lies, and thereby stake out viable, powerful, and compelling competitive positions. Originality/value To discover your company's authentic opportunities, use the eight principles to peer into your future until you determine where you should go. And then treat that future not as a destination but as a guide to the path before you.

Marketing flounders at many companies today, as people have become relatively immune to messages broadcast at them. The way to reach customers is to create an experience they can participate in and enjoy, the new offering frontier. To be clear, this article is not about “experiential marketing” – that is, giving marketing promotions more sensory appeal by adding imagery, tactile materials, motion, scents, sounds, or other sensations. Rather, as a key part of their marketing programs companies should create experience places – absorbing, entertaining real or virtual locations – where customers can try out offerings as they immerse themselves in the experience. Companies should not stop at creating just one experience place; marketers should investigate the location hierarchy model to learn how to design a series of related experiences that flow one from another, creating demand up and down at every level. These various real and virtual experiences generate new forms of revenue and drive sales of whatever the company currently offers. When experience places are done well, potential customers can’t help but pay attention – and the leading companies find that customers are willing to pay for the experiences.

By infusing your hospitality operation with a theme—explicitly stated or creatively subtle— you can improve your guests' experience and (not incidentally) your profits.