The Experience Economy Article: Your Competition? The World

Your Competition? The World

By B. Joseph Pine II

In my work with companies, I often make one very simple point: In the Experience Economy, you compete with every other company in the world. The equally simple reason for this:  Customers (whether consumers or businesses) have only so much time,attention, and money to spend.

Money is fungible, meaning if a customer purchases some economic offering (whether a commodity, good, service, experience, or transformation) from some other company, then that’s money they’re not spending with you.  Everyone has finite resources; if your offerings do not provide more value to customers than their other options, you will not get their business. 

That's assuming you get their get their attention first, of course.  But attention is scarce in the Experience Economy.  That’s why you see companies of all stripes staging marketing experiences – physical or virtual places so engaging that current and potential customers can’t help but pay attention, and pay up as a result by buying their offerings. All stripes? Indeed; you can see marketing experiences effectively employed in commodities (Pike Place Fish Market’s fish-throwing experience), goods (American Girl Place’s theater and other experiences), services (the ING Direct Café), experiences (the Fremont Street Experience drawing people to downtown Las Vegas), and transformations (Starizon’s paid sales visits to its Experience Design Place in Keystone, Colorado).

Once you get their attention, then you can get them to spend time with you. Unfortunately, time is limited; there’s only so much time anyone can spend experiencing anything – 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. (And most of us have to fit sleep in there somewhere. But even that can become an experience with, for example, the Heavenly Bed from Westin!) So if your potential customers are spending their time experiencing other places, they can’t possibly spend that time with you.

And the best way to get their time?  Once again, it’s very simple, albeit somewhat paradoxical: Charge for it. Get your customers attention so they pay money for the time they spend with you.B. Joseph Pine II is author of Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition and co-author of the best-selling book The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage.   Mr. Pine's latest release, Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, is now available at booksellers everywhere.