EXPERIENCE
THEM AN
What customers want is
something different, that is
customized, more than a
basic product or service.
How will you deliver?
It’s all about the experience—how people use your product, how clients feel when they buy your service and what they get out of the time they spend with your
brand. It’s not enough today to simply
make a good or sell a service.
Welcome to the new economy. “We
have entered a new wave of economic
history,” says Jim Gilmore, co-founder of
Strategic Horizons and co-author with B.
Joseph Pine II of The Experience Economy:
Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage.
Gilmore gives us a brief economic
history lesson, beginning with the age
of agrarians, where people grew things
to make a living. Training focused on
botany, and the workday was spent in
the field. As these processes became
automated, and more people went to
work in factories came the rise of goods
manufacturing—the industrial age. We
were producers. “The majority of commerce was the selling of physical things,”
Gilmore relates.
As automation moved into manufacturing processes and essentially took
jobs, more people went to work in the
service industry. In the 1950s, for the first
time, more than 50 percent of the gross
national product was services, Gilmore
shares. “Now that we are automating our
services, we need to shift to experiences,”
he says.
Companies that make things need to
ask: How can I customize this product?
Businesses that provide services must
consider: How can I make our time
valuable to customers, and how can we
enhance the user experience?
Regardless of what business you are in,
or the size of your operation, the key to
gaining market share in today’s economy is
