| The Experience Economy—Getting
into the Act: Doing Business in the Age of Experiences
By B. Joseph Pine II & James H. Gilmore
Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999, 254 pp.
Reviewed by Andrea Levy
The metaphor of the theatre takes center stage in the new book,
The Experience Economy, a thought-provoking perspective on what
it takes to earn the equivalent of a standing ovation from today's
sophisticated and discriminating customers.
The book's main premise is that a momentous economic transition
is underway. Historically, each successive wave of economic growth
has been based on a distinct type of economic offering: in the industrial
era it was goods, in our own post-war period services have been
dominant. Now, as we enter the new millennium in a context of technological
advance, affluence and acute competitiveness, the service economy
is peaking, giving way, the authors contend, to the next logical
stage of the value chain: the "experience economy," in
which economic growth is propelled by the consumer's quest for memorable
experiences and the orchestration of those experiences by far-sighted
and inventive companies.
Each chapter contains insight and advice into the techniques of
staging experiences: develop a captivating theme; create cues around
that theme that will leave the customer with a memorable impression;
build in diverse sensory stimuli... Again and again the authors
show that even the most mundane product or service can be enhanced:
"Smart shoeshine operators augment the smell of polish with
crisp snaps of the cloth, scents and sounds that don't make the
shoes any shinier but do make the experience more engaging."
The bottom line of course is the entrance ticket. Businesses are
what they charge for, Pine and Gilmore remind us; and once a company
has staged an experience worth having, it is entitled to exact an
admission fee. Indeed, the authors speculate that in the near future
"experientialized" retail stores will be able to charge
customers a fee just for the pleasure of entering their establishments.
And, for businesses, the mere exercise of considering what they
might do differently if they charged admission can help entrepreneurs
and employees stage more engaging customer experiences.
Of course, not every business can become a rising star in the experience
economy; as with every transitional era, the emerging experience
economy will leave some flops in its wake. However, farsighted companies
will not only espouse the dictum that every business is a stage,
they will ultimately move beyond the experience economy into the
more developed economic phase characterized by Pine and Gilmore
as "eliciting transformations." In this future age of
business, savvy companies will help customers to learn, take action
and, ultimately, change themselves in order to achieve aspirations
and goals.
In the late 20th century, businesses reinvented themselves; in
the 21st century it is customers who will reinvent themselves. And
the companies who can help them do it will be taking the bows in
the new transformational economy.
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