- Email: [email protected]
Designing experiences strategically
Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Research
Designing experiences strategically☆ Enrique Alcántara a,⁎, Miguel A. Artacho b, Natividad Martínez c,1, Tomás Zamora c,1 a b c
Instituto de Biomecánica, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Departamento de Proyectos de Ingeniería, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain Instituto de Biomecánica de Valencia, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 1 November 2011 Received in revised form 1 May 2013 Accepted 1 June 2013 Available online 26 July 2013 Keywords: Experience design Strategic design Environmental design Quality-of-life
a b s t r a c t Companies willing to enter into the experience economy have available procedures for experience design and evaluation but not for strategic decision-making on what experiences to incorporate into their offering. This study presents a procedure for identifying experiences and for assessing their customer value. The fieldwork consists of a logbook technique for experience identification and their subsequent strategic assessment considering people's perceptions of the influence each experience has in their quality-of-life, their interest in living each experience, and their previous knowledge of each experience. The paper focuses on experiences related to environmental design. In that setting, the procedure led to the identification of 13 different experiences. A clustering analysis identified six groups of experiences accordingly to the perception of 142 persons interviewed: experiences that have a ready market, experiences with a market to captivate, experiences with a potential market, experiences indifferent for a given market, experiences with lost clients and experiences that need a better adjustment to the market. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Pine and Gilmore (1999) propose the experience economy as the necessary evolution of a services-based economy. They argue that technology and increasing competition would significantly reduce the costs of services, which together with increasing expectations of consumers, would make it very difficult to add value to services as well as to differentiate them in the market. In that new economy, customer experience appears as the new paradigm for added value and differentiation. The moment of experiences is here. The idea attracts the interest of many industries, and firms offering to customer experiences as diverse as chewing a gum, having a coffee, shopping, staying at a hotel, driving a car, visiting a city, or just taking a shower flood the market. As a consequence, experience design and development are becoming outstanding disciplines. According to Shedroff (2009), the process of creating experiences consists of two main and clearly differentiated phases: strategic design and development of experiences. The first one involves choosing what to develop in detail in the second one. ☆ The authors thank Eckehard Fozzy Moritz, CEO of innovationsmanufaktur, and J. Gámez, Universidad Católica de Valencia and JBR reviewers for reading and constructive comments of an early version of this article. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Instituto de Biomecánica de Valencia, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain. Tel.: +34 649308793. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (E. Alcántara), [email protected] (M.A. Artacho), [email protected] (N. Martínez), [email protected] (T. Zamora). 1 Tel.: +34 649308793. 0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2013.06.004
With this respect, companies willing to enter into the experience economy have available different methods for developing experiences but not for strategic design. Several authors propose procedures for experience design, production and evaluation (Boswijk, Thijssen, & Peelen, 2005; Hayes & MacLeod, 2007; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Shedroff, 2009). Most of these procedures consist of a series of steps with practical recommendations and tools. As an example, Pine and Gilmore (1999) procedure consists of five steps or principles for experience design: first theme the experience, then harmonize impression with positive cues and eliminate negative ones by managing any element issuing sensorial and cognitive information to the user, next mix in memorabilia (goods that convey memories of the experience) and finally engage all five senses. Knowledge from different fields of science can be used in any of the steps. Regarding the last step, the role of senses in experience eliciting attracts the interest of many researchers. A significant number of studies, mainly in retail and hospitality realms, show the influence that sensorial stimulus coming from the physical context have in customer experiences (Carmel-Gilfilen, 2011; Davis, Wang, & Lindridge, 2008; Jang & Namkung, 2009; Machleit & Eroglu, 2000; Morrison & Beverland, 2003; Park & Farr, 2007; Pullman & Gross, 2004; Sherman, Mathur, & Smith, 1997; Summers & Hebert, 2001; Turley & Milliman, 2000; Ward, Davies, & Kooijman, 2003). However, strategic design of experiences receives less attention in the academic field. In this phase, companies have to make strategic decisions to answer crucial questions like; what business should we be in? and what should we make/offer? (Shedroff, 2009). In other words, companies need first to identify experiences potentially interesting for them and then, decide which ones to incorporate into their business.
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
Regarding experience identification, companies may opt for treating experiences as any other product and use traditional methods for strategic orientation and design. Several authors follow this approach applying user-centered techniques as focus groups, questionnaires, scenarios, etc. to identify (Boswijk et al., 2005; Shedroff, 2009) and to design (Boswijk et al., 2005; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Shedroff, 2009) experiences. However, approaches and methods diverge, to a great extent due to the fact that there is not a single and widely accepted definition of experience. Pine and Gilmore (1999), from their marketing approach and services focus, and coinciding with other authors (Cupchik & Hilscher, 2008), define experience as what leaves a print in the person, something memorable and unique. Desmet and Hekkert (2007), issue a more complete definition of product experience as “all possible affective experiences involved in human–product interaction”. This definition is further completed by Hekkert and Schifferstein (2008) as “the awareness of the psychological effects elicited by the interaction with a product, including the degree to which all our senses are stimulated, the meanings and values we attach to the product, and the feelings and emotions that are elicited”. Boswijk et al. (2005) focus in what they call meaningful experiences and survey them by asking people about experiences that changed their lives in different contexts. By contrast, Shedroff (2009) emphasizes the co-creation of experiences in a process of five essential stages starting with the creativity and the innovative capacity of people in creating a vision on moments of contact and meaningful-experience settings and the concepts that develop because of these. The idea Shedroff (2009) proposes is to conceive of and bring about new concepts in a creative way and learn from earlier meaningful experiences, converge and co-create them. Pine and Gilmore (1999) call to this step to theme the experience. They suggest a simple idea, which actually is behind many experiences in the market: take a verb and convert it in an experience by adding “ing experience”: driving experience, shopping experience and so on. On the contrary, few studies focus on strategic decision making on experiences. At that stage, to make a decision, companies need assessing the market potential of identified experiences. Market potential is given by different variables among which value stands out. However, probably arising from differences in the definitions of experience, there is not a clear definition of the value of experiences and, in consequence, a method to estimate it. With respect to market value of experiences, outstanding authors advocate for taking the individual as the source of value (Boswijk et al., 2005; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Shedroff, 2009; Zuboff & Maxmin, 2002). That proposal is fundamentally, a user centered approach in which experiences are co-created between companies and customers in a way that end users lead value creation (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). Pine and Gilmore (1999), in the transformation economy, and Boswijk et al. (2005) for meaningful experiences, state that value aligns with people's perceived benefit of experiences. The central argument of their proposal is that customers value experiences according to the benefit they perceive they obtain. In this context, assigning a value to meaningful experiences that by definition, are unique and memorable, and that may or should lead to a personal change by the individual having the experience, is rather difficult (Boswijk et al., 2005; Diller & Rhea, 2005). Therefore, at this stage of strategic design, the challenge is to define what the benefit is and then measure it. O'Sullivan and Spangler (1998) present an instrument to measure the perceived quality of experiences. They identify five dimensions of experience quality (physical surroundings, service providers, other customers, customers' companions, and the customers themselves) but do not examine the relationship between experience quality and outcome variables such as customer satisfaction, loyalty, and purchase intention. Pine and Gilmore (1999) propose a framework for assessing the richness of an experience for the customer. Their approach consists
1075
of four realms given by people's participation (passive or active) and people's connection or environmental relationship (immersion or absorption) in the experience. However, Oh, Fiore, and Jeong (2007) report a poor relationship between the results of this framework and consequences of tourist experiences related to market outcome, such as satisfaction or overall quality. The authors (Oh et al., 2007) conclude that this framework is of little help in strategic decision making. Generalizing the statement by Oh et al. (2007) is possible by saying that company managers and product marketers are still needing methods and procedures for a practical approach allowing them managing and benchmarking their offerings into the experience economy. In this sense, this paper presents a procedure to help strategic decision making in companies willing to enter into the experience economy. The procedure consists of two stages: first, identification of experiences and second, assessment of their market value considering people's perceived benefit for their quality-of-life. This article demonstrates the procedure using a practical case to assess the Spanish Association of ceramic tile manufacturers, together with a group of ambient intelligence, lighting and sound companies, in strategic decision making regarding experiences to offer by environmental design as a new market. In this context, Environmental Design, as defined by Nathan Shedroff, in their glossary of experience design (http://www.nathan.com/ed/glossary/index.html), refers to the field of developing physical, spatial environments (interiors and/or exteriors) to solve a particular need or create a specific experience. 2. Material and methods The work presented in this paper follows a two stages procedure for strategic design of experiences: identification of experiences and experience assessment from the point of view of end users. 2.1. Identification of experiences for environmental design Identification of experiences relies on a logbook technique. In this way, 35 volunteers took part in the first part of the experiment. They were balanced in gender whereas age ranged between 28 and 45 years old. The purpose of the technique was explained to them in a first meeting at which they were handed a paper logbook, in which every person was instructed to freely report, for the following week, any experience he/she lived or wished to. Volunteers were asked to write down in the logbook any experience pleasant or unpleasant, lived or desired, describing the instant of the day as well as their physical and emotional status. They were encouraged to include as many details as possible of the sources of the experience as well as about the environment in which it took place (sounds, colors, objects, etc.) and emotions, feelings and sensations related. All reported experiences were put together eliminating those very similar. As the interest of the study is in environmental design, those experiences originated mainly from stimulus coming from the environment were selected for the second part of the study. 2.2. Assessment of experiences from users' point of view The second step consists of a field survey to assess people's opinion about the value of experiences. Generally perceived benefit is measured as the perception people have on the influence of identified experiences in their quality-of-life (QOL). People's interest in having the possibility of living each experience whenever they would like is collected as a measure of interest. Finally, how often people live these experiences was asked to control people's familiarity with experiences.
1076
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
In this way, 142 people fulfilled a questionnaire including the following questions for each experience in a random order: • How this experience would influence in your quality-of-life? In a 5 points Likert scale being 1 highly negative and 5 highly positive. • How would you interest be in having an ambient that would allow you to live this experience whenever you like? High/Low. • How often do you live this experience? Often, little, never. Table 1 shows age and gender characteristics of people taking part in the study. Most of them had completed University Studies and lived in an urban area. A descriptive statistical analysis was first done for all variables. Outliers were identified, analyzed and eliminated from the study when necessary. Variability was computed using the coefficient of variability as: COV = standard deviation (SD) / mean. An analysis of variance ANOVA allowed assessing the influence of experiences in QOL. A General Linear model was used considering experience as fixed factor and subject as random factor. First order interaction was included in the model. A Tukey-b post hoc test was done to assess the existence of homogenous groups of experiences according to their influence in QOL. A Spearman correlation analysis was then done to assess the linear relationship between study variables. To study the strategic potential of identified experiences, a K-means cluster analysis was done considering all cases (all people's evaluation of all experiences) using perceived influence in quality-of-life, interest for reproducing them and frequency of living as classification variables. An ANOVA was included in the analysis. The conditions for accepting a solution were that all variables finally in the analysis should issue significant differences in the ANOVA (p b 0.05), final cluster centers had to be easy to interpret, the number of cases in each group had to be at least 5% of the sample (as being an exploratory analysis) and convergence had to be reached in less than 10 iterations. The percentage of cases in which each experience was classified by people in every identified group was used to assess their strategic position in the QOL market. Only percentages over 20% (28 cases) were considered. A Kruskal–Wallis non-parametric analysis of variance was done to assess differences in people's gender and age among groups. Then, a cross tabulation was done to assess the age and gender of people in each group. 3. Results
• Attending to a live music concert (LIFEMUSIC) • Having a nap in the sofa a Winter afternoon (NAP) • Feeling that there is someone around when you are alone at home (NOTALONE) • Walking around an oriental market (ORIENT_MARKET) • Being surprised by a heavy shower in the wild (RAIN) • Taking a bath in a Roman bath (ROMANBATH) • Walking in a main shopping street at the rush hour (SHOPPING) • Attending to a main football final (STADIUM). 3.2. Assessment of experiences from users' points-of-view Descriptive statistics show a variety of answers for influence of experiences in QOL. In the frequency distribution in Fig. 1, values range between 1 (highly negative) and 5 (highly positive). The mean influence in QOL is positive (3.7) and the standard deviation is 1.2. COV is 0.35. The ANOVA issues statistically significant differences (p b 0.05) in influence in QOL among both, experiences and subjects. First order interaction results also statistically significant showing that influence of experience depends in the subject and vice versa. Table 2 shows the results from Tukey-b post hoc analysis. There are five homogenous groups showing a wide range of answers for influence of experiences in quality-of-life depending on the experience and on the person. Group 1 includes Shopping and Notalone experiences that, in average, people consider to negatively influence their QOL (≈ 2). On the other extreme, group 5 includes Forest_walk, Bath and Beach_walk experiences, which, in average, score highly positive in influence in QOL (≈4.5). The Spearman analysis of correlation shows statistically significant linear correlations between the study variables. There is a small negative correlation of perceived influence in quality-of-life with interest (−0.41) and frequency (−0.36). In this way, the higher the positive influence in quality-of-life an experience has, the greater the interest in it. Also, a higher familiarity (frequency) with an experience relates with a higher perceived influence in QOL. The K-means cluster analysis using perceived influence in qualityof-life, interest for reproducing them and frequency as classification variables, issues a valid solution for six groups as described in Table 3. The results for each group are as follows. Group 1 includes cases related to experiences of great positive influence in QOL (4.7), people who often live them and with high interest in reproducing them.
3.1. Identification of experiences for environmental design Mean=3.68 SD= 1.23 N=1896
800
The analysis of people's logbook issued a total of 35 different experiences, 13 of which refer to environment as main source of stimulus. These experiences are (into brackets short names used in the study): • • • • •
600
Taking a bath in the beach or in a mountain lake (BATH) Walking by the sea side (BEACH_WALK) Having breakfast at the family old house (BREAKFAST) Seeing the dusk at the Café del Mar in Ibiza (Spain) (DUSK) Walking in a forest in Autumn (FOREST_WALK)
400
Table 1 Characteristics of people taking part in the study. Age group (years)
b30 30–40 41–50 51–60 Total
200
Gender Male
Female
Total
32 26 10 2 70
36 20 6 10 72
68 46 16 12 142
0 0
1
2
3
4
5
INFQOL Fig. 1. Histogram for influence in QOL.
6
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080 Table 2 Results of the Tukey-b post hoc analysis. Experience
Table 4 Percentage of cases that classified each experience in each homogenous group. Bold: >20%.
Group 1
SHOPPING NOTALONE STADIUM RAIN ORIENT_MARKET ROMANBATH NAP LIFEMUSIC BREAKFAST DUSK FOREST_WALK BATH BEACHWALK
1077
2
3
4
5
2.05 2.14
Experience
Group
BATH 2.77 2.93
BEACHWALK 3.75 3.92 3.95
3.92 3.95 4.25 4.27 4.33
BREAKFAST 4.25 4.27 4.33 4.44 4.48 4.53
DUSK FOREST_WALK LIFEMUSIC NAP NOTALONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
Total
30 21.1% 48 34.8% 14 9.9% 16 11.3% 20 13.9% 16 11.3% 46 32.4% 0 .0% 6 4.2% 2 1.4% 8 5.6% 6 4.3% 6 4.2% 218 11.8%
40 28.2% 24 17.4% 30 21.1% 52 36.6% 54 37.5% 92 64.8% 16 11.3% 10 7.1% 24 16.9% 24 16.4% 28 19.7% 12 8.6% 18 12.7% 424 23.0%
12 8.5% 6 4.3% 18 12.7% 10 7.0% 8 5.6% 8 5.6% 6 4.2% 0 .0% 22 15.5% 4 2.7% 56 39.4% 2 1.4% 18 12.7% 170 9.2%
6 4.2% 2 1.4% 24 16.9% 10 7.0% 8 5.6% 6 4.2% 6 4.2% 40 28.6% 66 46.5% 38 26.0% 24 16.9% 442 31.4% 88 62.0% 362 19.6%
0 .0% 0 .0% 4 2.8% 0 .0% 2 1.4% 2 1.4% 32 22.5% 86 61.4% 10 7.0% 34 23.3% 6 4.2% 68 48.6% 6 4.2% 250 13.6%
54 38.0% 58 42.0% 52 36.6% 54 38.0% 52 36.1% 18 12.7% 36 25.4% 4 2.9% 14 9.9% 44 30.1% 20 14.1% 8 5.7% 6 4.2% 420 22.8%
142 100.0% 138 100.0% 142 100.0% 142 100.0% 144 100.0% 142 100.0% 142 100.0% 140 100.0% 142 100.0% 146 100.0% 142 100.0% 140 100.0% 142 100.0% 1844 100.0%
Group 2 is one of the most numerous groups (22.3%) and includes cases that consider experiences of rather great positive influence in QOL (4.3), with a high interest in reproducing them but with a low knowledge of them. Group 3 includes cases referring to experiences of positive influence in QOL (4) with high interest in reproducing them but that they have never lived them. It is a small group (9.2%). Group 4 clusters cases for experiences with a neutral influence in QOL (2.7), with a low interest in reproducing them although they have never lived them. Group 5 refers to experiences with a negative influence in QOL (2.2), that have been lived some times and with low interest in reproducing them. Group 6 is also a big group (22.1%). It includes experiences of great positive influence in QOL (4.3) that they have lived sometimes but with low interest in reproducing them. Table 4 shows the number and percentage of cases each experience belongs to each group. Each case is the set of answers of one person for this experience in the three classification variables. Most experiences belong to more than one group (in at least 20% of cases, in bold in the table) showing, as expected, the great influence of people in experience assessment. For example, 21.1% of people's perceptions of Bath experience are in group 1, 28.2% in group 2 and 38% in group 3. In fact, only Lifemusic, Orientmarket and Stadium experiences belong mostly to a single group. Table 5 presents people gender and age for each group. The results of a Kruskal–Wallis non-parametric analysis of variance yield statistically significant differences among groups for gender only. They are mainly due to the fact that group 2 includes mostly men's answers (63.2%).
phase of the strategic design of experiences in terms of making decisions about which experiences to incorporate into their portfolio. The procedure starts by identifying experiences that both are aligned with company business and emerge from end users. To this end, following the user centered approach different authors propose (Boswijk et al., 2005; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Shedroff, 2009), this study uses a logbook technique. The logbook technique allows capturing the experiences that come to people's mind in a variety of situations along the day. In this way, they have more time to report experiences in a more free and personal context. Volunteers taking part in this phase of the experiment, as required, report any experience (not necessarily unique and very meaningful) they live, or would like to live, along one week. This approach contrasts with methods from other authors. In one extreme, some authors center on experiences rather extraordinary. Boswijk et al. (2005) focus in unique and meaningful experiences that change people's lives whereas Shedroff (2009) stresses the
4. Discussion
Table 5 Age and gender characteristics of people in each group.
Many companies are approaching experiences as a new promising market. The procedure this paper presents may help firms in the
ORIENT_MARKET RAIN ROMANBATH SHOPPING STADIUM Total
Group
1 2
Table 3 Results from cluster analysis.
3 Cluster
1 2 3 4 5 6
Cases
INFLQOL
FREQ
Interest
N
%
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
1. high/2. low
218 424 170 362 250 420
11.5% 22.3% 9.0% 19.1% 13.2% 22.1%
4.7 4.3 4.0 2.7 2.2 4.3
.53 .93 .90 1.24 .74 .56
1.00 1.98 3.00 3.00 1.90 1.71
.00 .14 .00 .00 .30 .46
1 1 1 2 2 2
4 5 6 Total
Gender
Age (years)
Male
Female
b30
30–40
41–50
51–60
104 48.1% 268 63.2% 80 47.1% 166 46.1% 116 47.5% 196 48.5% 930 51.2%
112 51.9% 156 36.8% 90 52.9% 194 53.9% 128 52.5% 208 51.5% 888 48.8%
98 45.4% 214 51.7% 88 52.4% 172 48.6% 106 44.2% 182 45.5% 860 48.0%
72 33.3% 110 26.6% 42 25.0% 112 31.6% 84 35.0% 144 38.5% 574 32.0%
44 20.4% 66 15.9% 16 9.5% 34 9.6% 20 8.3% 22 5.5% 202 11.3%
2 .9% 24 5.8% 22 13.1% 36 10.2% 30 12.5% 42 10.5% 156 8.7%
1078
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
co-creation of experiences with end users in a creative process looking for innovative and new concepts. In the other extreme, Pine and Gilmore (1999) propose the “ing” approach in a way that any daily activity transforms into an experience (driving experience, ironing experience…). Experiences identified in the present work go a step further the “ing” proposal from Pine and Gilmore (1999). Most of them can be seen as a gerund, an action, but taking place in a specific or special context or instant: taking a bath, but in the beach or in a mountain lake (Bath) or walking, but by the sea side (Beach_walk) or in a forest during Autumn (Forest_walk). These experiences associate to rather frequent activities like walking or taking a shower, which are neither very unique and memorable nor daily experiences. They relate to background emotions as defined by Damasio (1995, 1999): emotions of moderate intensity like relax or boredom, people live in a more continuous basis, in contrast with primary emotions of higher intensity people live sporadically. With respect to the concept of experience, while Pine and Gilmore (1999) consider that experience leaves a print in the person, something memorable and unique, and Boswijk et al. (2005) work with experiences that change people's life; experiences identified using the logbook technique align with Hekkert and Schifferstein (2008). These authors' definition includes “the awareness of the psychological effects elicited by the interaction with a product, including the degree to which all our senses are stimulated, the meanings and values we attach to the product, and the feelings and emotions that are elicited”. The logbook technique attempts to collect this kind of experiences as they emerge in people's mind while doing every day activities. They are for more people and lived more frequently than meaningful ones. These experiences center the interest of companies participating in the study, as well as that of many companies already marketing experiences, since people is likely to consume them more frequently than unique and memorable experiences. In any case, the logbook technique issues many different experiences (35 in total), which restricted to the context of being reproducible in a controlled environment (according to the interest of the companies collaborating in the study) yield 13 potentially interesting experiences. By way of contrast, Boswijk et al. (2005), present 15 meaningful experiences as the result of a worldwide survey. The experiences resulting from the logbook are by themselves, quite interesting as they provide a sort of product portfolio for companies, in this case in the market of environmental design. Any company may choose any of the identified experiences for their future offering. The procedure gathers people perception to help companies in making such a decision. End users asses identified experiences with respect to three variables: Perceived benefit, interest and familiarity with the experience. Using people perceived benefit as an approach to experience value agrees with Pine and Gilmore (1999) and Boswijk et al. (2005). Nevertheless, they do not propose a measure for perceived benefit what makes difficult comparison. The present study measures benefit by asking people's opinion about the influence each experience could have in their quality-of-life (QOL). The results of the experiment show that in fact, people perceive that rather common and repeatable (at least weekly) experiences as walking by the seaside, shopping or going to a sports or musical event, can influence their QOL, either negatively or positively. Answers range between very positive and very negative with variability around 35%. The Tukey-b post hoc analysis issues five homogenous groups showing that people perceive some experiences as Shopping and Stadium clearly, in average, as negative and others in average, very positive as taking a bath at the sea or at a mountain lake, or walking in a forest or by the seaside. However, the results from the ANOVA show that, as expected, the answer strongly depends on the subject in a way that what for a
person is highly positive can be highly negative for another. This is the case of Rain, which is negative for 34% of people, neutral for 29% and positive for the remaining 37%. The analysis of market potential should hence to consider people's variability and characteristics. A likely source of variability is the complex and subjective nature of quality-of-life. A renewed interest is occurring in quality-of-life as a general measure of development and value in contexts as different as urban politics or medical care. Although approaches to measure QOL may differ, there is a wide consensus in that perceived QOL is a complex concept resulting from people's perception of a series of dimensions on their lives as health, comfort, safety and others, weighted by the importance each person gives to each dimension (Cummins, Mellor, Stokes, & Lau, 2010; Gallup, 2009). With this respect, the benefit people perceive that identified experiences could have for their QOL will probably result from the way they perceive each experience could influence their health, comfort, safety, security, etc. but also from the way each person understands QOL and the importance each dimension has in her/his life. Further studies aiming at improving identifying people perceived benefit of experiences in terms of how experiences influence different aspects of their QOL, would issue a better understanding of experience value in the market. This could in turn, allow devising a specialized offering of experiences targeting in, for example, health or comfort. Together with influence in QOL as a measure of perceived benefit, the procedure gathers people's interest in reproducing the experiences and their familiarity with them (the question was: how often do you live this experience?). The results of linear correlations analysis show a logical but small relationship between variables. As expected, the more a person considers an experience is positive for his/her QOL, the more interested is in having it and the contrary. This result supports to some extent that benefit for QOL associates market value. The results from the clustering analysis using these three variables situate the experiences in six different groups according to people's perception of experiences. In this way, these groups present a preliminary map of experiences in the market as shown in Fig. 2. The nature of each group and the characteristics of people whose answers define it, allow making strategic decisions about the identified experiences. In fact, most experiences belong to more than one group showing, as advanced, the great influence of people in experience interpretation. Actually, only Lifemusic, Orientmarket and Stadium experiences belong mostly to a single group meaning that most people opine the same about them. Group 1 includes cases that consider experiences of great positive influence in QOL, frequently lived and with interest in reproducing them. It encloses captive customers for these experiences as they know the experience, consider it as very positive for their QOL and show a high interest in living it again. In this case, Bath, Beachwalk and Nap addressed to people 30–40 years of age, either men or women, are winning experiences, a ready market. They seem to refer to relaxing activities. Group 2 is one of the most numerous (22.3%) and includes cases that consider experiences of rather high positive influence in QOL, with an interest in reproducing them but with a low knowledge of them. The group represents potential customers whose loyalty is to be cultivated. They have some familiarity with the experience, perceive it positively and want to try again. Bath, Breakfast, Dusk, Forestwalk, Lifemusic and Romanbath can capture a market of mainly men, 30–40 years of age. These cases could be related to positive and energizing activities. Group 3 clusters cases referring to experiences of positive influence in QOL with interest in reproducing them but that have never lived them. It is a small group (9.2%) associated to the potential market for experiences of Romanbath when addressed to people 30–40 years of age, balanced men and women. This group is of special interest for designers and manufacturers of bath environments. Group 4 considers cases for experiences with a neutral influence in QOL, with no interest in reproducing them although they have
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
1079
Interest High
G3
G2
G1
Low
-
+
G4
Never
G5
Little
Influence in QOL
G6
Often
Fig. 2. Map of clusters of experiences attending to people perception of their influence in their QOL, interest in living them and familiarity with them.
never lived them. These are experiences as Notalone, Orientmarket, Rain, Shopping and Stadium that result indifferent for people 30– 40 years of age, balanced men and women. Group 5 refers to experiences with a negative influence in QOL, that have been lived some times and with no interest in reproducing them. This is the case of lost clients for Nap, Notalone, Rain and Shopping. They have some familiarity with the experience, perceive it negatively and do not want to live it any more. In this group, people seem to interpret negatively potentially disturbing environments like rain or shopping. Group 6 (22% of cases) includes experiences of great positive influence in QOL that people have lived sometimes but have no interest in reproducing them. This group refers to experiences like Bath, Beachwalk, Breakfast, Dusk, Forestwalk, Nap and Rain that whether properly redesigned could have a potential market for the people in the group. This group could also suggest that there are people not interested at all in reproducing experiences at home or that they did not understand the experiences proposed. The latter is a potential source of bias not controlled in this study to address in further studies. The study does not control for whether or not all persons taking part in the experiment understand the term experience in the same way and moreover, whether they understand each experience similarly. Future studies should address this issue. In this way, assessing experiences consists in placing them in the map in Fig. 2. There are experiences that depending on the groups (people) they belong to, result one way or the other round. An experience can be positive or negative, interesting or not depending on people addressed. Therefore, focusing on the right people with the appropriate proposals is so important as to consider it in strategic decision making since the very beginning. Experiences belonging to only one group are easier to assess. For example, the experience Lifemusic (65% in group 2), appears as a promising market issue for environmental design companies. Most people in group 2 have tried that experience, feel that it is positive for their QOL and have interest in having the possibility of living it whenever they like to. On the contrary, Orientmarket (46%) and Stadium (62%) lay mainly in the group of indifference (group 4). Addressing them would be a greater challenge.
Experiences falling within more than a group should be carefully analyzed. Groups 1, 2 and 3 somewhat represent positive market perspectives (high perceived influence in QOL and interest in living the experiences), whereas groups 4, 5 and 6 represent negative ones. In this way, experiences with cases mostly in groups 1, 2 and 3 would be a good choice. Unfortunately, this happens for Romanbath only (groups 2 and 3). Similarly, experiences falling within groups 4, 5 and 6 would be worse bet. This is the case for Notalone and Shopping (groups 4 and 5), as well as for Rain (groups 4, 5 and 6). Experiences belonging to groups from both the positive and the negative side require special consideration of people characteristics. For example, Beachwalk has a group of captive clients (group 1, 35% of cases) but also a 42% of cases in group 6 (people not interested). For making a decision we need to have additional information about people in each group. Actually, the lack of more detail about people's characteristics and preferences is a limitation of the study. Gender and age offer not enough information to describe groups. In fact, the only statistically significant difference is that group 2 is mostly due to men's answers. Also, all participants in the study live in an urban area that surely influences their perception on experiences like Forestwalk or Shopping. Next studies should consider other individual variables as income level, place of residence, people mood, motivation and past experience. On the other hand, although this article illustrates the procedure in environmental design in correspondence with the interest of companies participating in the study, it is easily applicable to any other sector. In any case, the results are of potential interest for many industries, in particular hospitality and retailing sectors. These sectors have incorporated physical environment design as a crucial element in managing customer experience, emotions and attitude, as well as brand image (Carmel-Gilfilen, 2011; Jang & Namkung, 2009; Machleit & Eroglu, 2000; Morrison & Beverland, 2003; O'Sullivan & Spangler, 1998; Park & Farr, 2007; Pullman & Gross, 2004; Sherman et al., 1997; Ward et al., 2003). Finally, the study is based on asking people without any stimulus. Results will probably change in case of using visual, or related to other senses, stimulus for the experiences.
1080
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
5. Conclusions This paper presents a practical application of a procedure likely to be helpful for companies entering into the experience economy. The procedure approaches strategic design of experiences in two steps: identifying experiences from people's perspective and assessing their market position. The steps include considering the classification of experiences attending to the benefit people perceive in them for their quality-of-life, people interest in living them and their knowledge on them. The study identifies 35 experiences of which, 13 are of potential interest for environmental design. These experiences classify according to different strategies as follows: • Experiences with a captive or potential market: Lifemusic and Romanbath. • Experiences with problems to be marketed: Orientmarket, Stadium, Notalone, Shopping and Rain. • Experiences not for everyone. They need to strongly take into account end user characteristics: Beachwalk; Bath, Breakfast, Dusk, Forestwalk and Nap. Acknowledgments The authors thank the Spanish Association of Ceramic Tiles manufacturers (ASCER) for their support to this study. References Boswijk, A., Thijssen, J. P. T., & Peelen, E. (2005). A new perspective on the experience economy: Meaningful experiences. Amsterdam: Pearson Education. Carmel-Gilfilen, C. (2011). Advancing retail security design: Uncovering shoplifter perceptions of the physical environment. Journal of Interior Design, 36(2), 21–38. Cummins, R. A., Mellor, D., Stokes, M. A., & Lau, A. L. D. (2010). The measurement of subjective wellbeing. In E. Mpofuand, & T. Oakland (Eds.), Rehabilitation and health assessment: Applying ICF guidelines (409–426). New York: Springer Publishing Company. Cupchik, G. C., & Hilscher, M. C. (2008). Holistic perspectives on the design of experience. In H. N. J. Schifferstein, & P. Hekkert (Eds.), Product experience. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Damasio, A. R. (1995). Descartes' Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Pub. Harper Perennial; (1 edition)978-0380726479.
Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. New York: Harcourt. Davis, L., Wang, S., & Lindridge, A. (2008). Culture influences on emotional responses to on-line store atmospheric cues. Journal of Business Research, 61(8), 806–812. Desmet, P. M. A., & Hekkert, P. (2007). Framework of product experience. International Journal of Design, 1(1), 57–66. Diller, S., & Rhea, D. (2005). A world of meaningful experiences, chapter from the book making meaning: How successful businesses deliver meaningful customer experiences. New Riders. Gallup, (2009). Gallup-Healthways Well-Being™ Index: Methodology Report for Indexes. Retrieved July, 1, 2011 from http://well-beingindex.com/files/GallupHealthways%20Index%20Methodology%20Report%20FINAL%203-25-08.pdf. Hayes, D., & MacLeod, N. (2007). Packaging places: Designing heritage trails using an experience economy perspective to maximize visitor engagement. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 13(1), 45–58. Hekkert, P., & Schifferstein, H. N. J. (2008). Product experience. In H. N. J. Schifferstein, & P. Hekkert (Eds.), Amsterdam: Elsevier. Jang, S., & Namkung, Y. (2009). Perceived quality, emotions, and behavioral intentions: Application of an extended Mehrabian–Russell model to restaurants. Journal of Business Research, 62(4), 451–460. Machleit, K. A., & Eroglu, S. A. (2000). Describing and measuring emotional response to shopping experience. Journal of Business Research, 49(2), 101–111. Morrison, M., & Beverland, M. B. (2003). In search of the right in-store music. Business Horizons, 46(6), 77–82. O'Sullivan, E. L., & Spangler, K. J. (1998). Experience marketing—Strategies for the new millennium. State College: Venture Publishing, Inc. Oh, H., Fiore, A. M., & Jeong, M. (2007). Measuring experience economy concepts: Tourism applications. Journal of Travel Research, 46(2), 119–132. Park, N., & Farr, C. A. (2007). The effect of lighting on consumers' emotions and behavioral intention in a retail environment: A cross-cultural comparison. Journal of Interior Design, 33(1), 17–32. Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The experience economy, work is theatre and every business a stage. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2004). The future of competition. Co-creating unique value with customers. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Pullman, M. E., & Gross, M. A. (2004). Ability of experience design elements to elicit emotions and loyalty behaviors. Decision Sciences, 35(3), 551–578. Shedroff, N. (2009). Experience design 1.19780982233900. Sherman, E., Mathur, A., & Smith, R. B. (1997). Store environment and consumer purchase behavior. Psychology and Marketing, 14, 361–378. Summers, T. A., & Hebert, P. R. (2001). Shedding some light on store atmospherics: Influence of illumination on consumer behavior. Journal of Business Research, 54(2), 145–150. Turley, L. W., & Milliman, R. E. (2000). Atmospheric effects on shopping behavior: A review of the experimental evidence. Journal of Business Research, 49, 193–211. Ward, P., Davies, B., & Kooijman, D. J. (2003). Ambient smell and the retail environment: Relating olfaction research to consumer behavior. Journal of Business and Management, 9(3), 289–302. Zuboff, S., & Maxmin, J. (2002). The support economy: Why corporations are failing individuals and the next episode of capitalism. New York: Viking.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Research
Designing experiences strategically☆ Enrique Alcántara a,⁎, Miguel A. Artacho b, Natividad Martínez c,1, Tomás Zamora c,1 a b c
Instituto de Biomecánica, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain Departamento de Proyectos de Ingeniería, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain Instituto de Biomecánica de Valencia, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 1 November 2011 Received in revised form 1 May 2013 Accepted 1 June 2013 Available online 26 July 2013 Keywords: Experience design Strategic design Environmental design Quality-of-life
a b s t r a c t Companies willing to enter into the experience economy have available procedures for experience design and evaluation but not for strategic decision-making on what experiences to incorporate into their offering. This study presents a procedure for identifying experiences and for assessing their customer value. The fieldwork consists of a logbook technique for experience identification and their subsequent strategic assessment considering people's perceptions of the influence each experience has in their quality-of-life, their interest in living each experience, and their previous knowledge of each experience. The paper focuses on experiences related to environmental design. In that setting, the procedure led to the identification of 13 different experiences. A clustering analysis identified six groups of experiences accordingly to the perception of 142 persons interviewed: experiences that have a ready market, experiences with a market to captivate, experiences with a potential market, experiences indifferent for a given market, experiences with lost clients and experiences that need a better adjustment to the market. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Pine and Gilmore (1999) propose the experience economy as the necessary evolution of a services-based economy. They argue that technology and increasing competition would significantly reduce the costs of services, which together with increasing expectations of consumers, would make it very difficult to add value to services as well as to differentiate them in the market. In that new economy, customer experience appears as the new paradigm for added value and differentiation. The moment of experiences is here. The idea attracts the interest of many industries, and firms offering to customer experiences as diverse as chewing a gum, having a coffee, shopping, staying at a hotel, driving a car, visiting a city, or just taking a shower flood the market. As a consequence, experience design and development are becoming outstanding disciplines. According to Shedroff (2009), the process of creating experiences consists of two main and clearly differentiated phases: strategic design and development of experiences. The first one involves choosing what to develop in detail in the second one. ☆ The authors thank Eckehard Fozzy Moritz, CEO of innovationsmanufaktur, and J. Gámez, Universidad Católica de Valencia and JBR reviewers for reading and constructive comments of an early version of this article. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Instituto de Biomecánica de Valencia, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain. Tel.: +34 649308793. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (E. Alcántara), [email protected] (M.A. Artacho), [email protected] (N. Martínez), [email protected] (T. Zamora). 1 Tel.: +34 649308793. 0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2013.06.004
With this respect, companies willing to enter into the experience economy have available different methods for developing experiences but not for strategic design. Several authors propose procedures for experience design, production and evaluation (Boswijk, Thijssen, & Peelen, 2005; Hayes & MacLeod, 2007; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Shedroff, 2009). Most of these procedures consist of a series of steps with practical recommendations and tools. As an example, Pine and Gilmore (1999) procedure consists of five steps or principles for experience design: first theme the experience, then harmonize impression with positive cues and eliminate negative ones by managing any element issuing sensorial and cognitive information to the user, next mix in memorabilia (goods that convey memories of the experience) and finally engage all five senses. Knowledge from different fields of science can be used in any of the steps. Regarding the last step, the role of senses in experience eliciting attracts the interest of many researchers. A significant number of studies, mainly in retail and hospitality realms, show the influence that sensorial stimulus coming from the physical context have in customer experiences (Carmel-Gilfilen, 2011; Davis, Wang, & Lindridge, 2008; Jang & Namkung, 2009; Machleit & Eroglu, 2000; Morrison & Beverland, 2003; Park & Farr, 2007; Pullman & Gross, 2004; Sherman, Mathur, & Smith, 1997; Summers & Hebert, 2001; Turley & Milliman, 2000; Ward, Davies, & Kooijman, 2003). However, strategic design of experiences receives less attention in the academic field. In this phase, companies have to make strategic decisions to answer crucial questions like; what business should we be in? and what should we make/offer? (Shedroff, 2009). In other words, companies need first to identify experiences potentially interesting for them and then, decide which ones to incorporate into their business.
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
Regarding experience identification, companies may opt for treating experiences as any other product and use traditional methods for strategic orientation and design. Several authors follow this approach applying user-centered techniques as focus groups, questionnaires, scenarios, etc. to identify (Boswijk et al., 2005; Shedroff, 2009) and to design (Boswijk et al., 2005; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Shedroff, 2009) experiences. However, approaches and methods diverge, to a great extent due to the fact that there is not a single and widely accepted definition of experience. Pine and Gilmore (1999), from their marketing approach and services focus, and coinciding with other authors (Cupchik & Hilscher, 2008), define experience as what leaves a print in the person, something memorable and unique. Desmet and Hekkert (2007), issue a more complete definition of product experience as “all possible affective experiences involved in human–product interaction”. This definition is further completed by Hekkert and Schifferstein (2008) as “the awareness of the psychological effects elicited by the interaction with a product, including the degree to which all our senses are stimulated, the meanings and values we attach to the product, and the feelings and emotions that are elicited”. Boswijk et al. (2005) focus in what they call meaningful experiences and survey them by asking people about experiences that changed their lives in different contexts. By contrast, Shedroff (2009) emphasizes the co-creation of experiences in a process of five essential stages starting with the creativity and the innovative capacity of people in creating a vision on moments of contact and meaningful-experience settings and the concepts that develop because of these. The idea Shedroff (2009) proposes is to conceive of and bring about new concepts in a creative way and learn from earlier meaningful experiences, converge and co-create them. Pine and Gilmore (1999) call to this step to theme the experience. They suggest a simple idea, which actually is behind many experiences in the market: take a verb and convert it in an experience by adding “ing experience”: driving experience, shopping experience and so on. On the contrary, few studies focus on strategic decision making on experiences. At that stage, to make a decision, companies need assessing the market potential of identified experiences. Market potential is given by different variables among which value stands out. However, probably arising from differences in the definitions of experience, there is not a clear definition of the value of experiences and, in consequence, a method to estimate it. With respect to market value of experiences, outstanding authors advocate for taking the individual as the source of value (Boswijk et al., 2005; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Shedroff, 2009; Zuboff & Maxmin, 2002). That proposal is fundamentally, a user centered approach in which experiences are co-created between companies and customers in a way that end users lead value creation (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). Pine and Gilmore (1999), in the transformation economy, and Boswijk et al. (2005) for meaningful experiences, state that value aligns with people's perceived benefit of experiences. The central argument of their proposal is that customers value experiences according to the benefit they perceive they obtain. In this context, assigning a value to meaningful experiences that by definition, are unique and memorable, and that may or should lead to a personal change by the individual having the experience, is rather difficult (Boswijk et al., 2005; Diller & Rhea, 2005). Therefore, at this stage of strategic design, the challenge is to define what the benefit is and then measure it. O'Sullivan and Spangler (1998) present an instrument to measure the perceived quality of experiences. They identify five dimensions of experience quality (physical surroundings, service providers, other customers, customers' companions, and the customers themselves) but do not examine the relationship between experience quality and outcome variables such as customer satisfaction, loyalty, and purchase intention. Pine and Gilmore (1999) propose a framework for assessing the richness of an experience for the customer. Their approach consists
1075
of four realms given by people's participation (passive or active) and people's connection or environmental relationship (immersion or absorption) in the experience. However, Oh, Fiore, and Jeong (2007) report a poor relationship between the results of this framework and consequences of tourist experiences related to market outcome, such as satisfaction or overall quality. The authors (Oh et al., 2007) conclude that this framework is of little help in strategic decision making. Generalizing the statement by Oh et al. (2007) is possible by saying that company managers and product marketers are still needing methods and procedures for a practical approach allowing them managing and benchmarking their offerings into the experience economy. In this sense, this paper presents a procedure to help strategic decision making in companies willing to enter into the experience economy. The procedure consists of two stages: first, identification of experiences and second, assessment of their market value considering people's perceived benefit for their quality-of-life. This article demonstrates the procedure using a practical case to assess the Spanish Association of ceramic tile manufacturers, together with a group of ambient intelligence, lighting and sound companies, in strategic decision making regarding experiences to offer by environmental design as a new market. In this context, Environmental Design, as defined by Nathan Shedroff, in their glossary of experience design (http://www.nathan.com/ed/glossary/index.html), refers to the field of developing physical, spatial environments (interiors and/or exteriors) to solve a particular need or create a specific experience. 2. Material and methods The work presented in this paper follows a two stages procedure for strategic design of experiences: identification of experiences and experience assessment from the point of view of end users. 2.1. Identification of experiences for environmental design Identification of experiences relies on a logbook technique. In this way, 35 volunteers took part in the first part of the experiment. They were balanced in gender whereas age ranged between 28 and 45 years old. The purpose of the technique was explained to them in a first meeting at which they were handed a paper logbook, in which every person was instructed to freely report, for the following week, any experience he/she lived or wished to. Volunteers were asked to write down in the logbook any experience pleasant or unpleasant, lived or desired, describing the instant of the day as well as their physical and emotional status. They were encouraged to include as many details as possible of the sources of the experience as well as about the environment in which it took place (sounds, colors, objects, etc.) and emotions, feelings and sensations related. All reported experiences were put together eliminating those very similar. As the interest of the study is in environmental design, those experiences originated mainly from stimulus coming from the environment were selected for the second part of the study. 2.2. Assessment of experiences from users' point of view The second step consists of a field survey to assess people's opinion about the value of experiences. Generally perceived benefit is measured as the perception people have on the influence of identified experiences in their quality-of-life (QOL). People's interest in having the possibility of living each experience whenever they would like is collected as a measure of interest. Finally, how often people live these experiences was asked to control people's familiarity with experiences.
1076
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
In this way, 142 people fulfilled a questionnaire including the following questions for each experience in a random order: • How this experience would influence in your quality-of-life? In a 5 points Likert scale being 1 highly negative and 5 highly positive. • How would you interest be in having an ambient that would allow you to live this experience whenever you like? High/Low. • How often do you live this experience? Often, little, never. Table 1 shows age and gender characteristics of people taking part in the study. Most of them had completed University Studies and lived in an urban area. A descriptive statistical analysis was first done for all variables. Outliers were identified, analyzed and eliminated from the study when necessary. Variability was computed using the coefficient of variability as: COV = standard deviation (SD) / mean. An analysis of variance ANOVA allowed assessing the influence of experiences in QOL. A General Linear model was used considering experience as fixed factor and subject as random factor. First order interaction was included in the model. A Tukey-b post hoc test was done to assess the existence of homogenous groups of experiences according to their influence in QOL. A Spearman correlation analysis was then done to assess the linear relationship between study variables. To study the strategic potential of identified experiences, a K-means cluster analysis was done considering all cases (all people's evaluation of all experiences) using perceived influence in quality-of-life, interest for reproducing them and frequency of living as classification variables. An ANOVA was included in the analysis. The conditions for accepting a solution were that all variables finally in the analysis should issue significant differences in the ANOVA (p b 0.05), final cluster centers had to be easy to interpret, the number of cases in each group had to be at least 5% of the sample (as being an exploratory analysis) and convergence had to be reached in less than 10 iterations. The percentage of cases in which each experience was classified by people in every identified group was used to assess their strategic position in the QOL market. Only percentages over 20% (28 cases) were considered. A Kruskal–Wallis non-parametric analysis of variance was done to assess differences in people's gender and age among groups. Then, a cross tabulation was done to assess the age and gender of people in each group. 3. Results
• Attending to a live music concert (LIFEMUSIC) • Having a nap in the sofa a Winter afternoon (NAP) • Feeling that there is someone around when you are alone at home (NOTALONE) • Walking around an oriental market (ORIENT_MARKET) • Being surprised by a heavy shower in the wild (RAIN) • Taking a bath in a Roman bath (ROMANBATH) • Walking in a main shopping street at the rush hour (SHOPPING) • Attending to a main football final (STADIUM). 3.2. Assessment of experiences from users' points-of-view Descriptive statistics show a variety of answers for influence of experiences in QOL. In the frequency distribution in Fig. 1, values range between 1 (highly negative) and 5 (highly positive). The mean influence in QOL is positive (3.7) and the standard deviation is 1.2. COV is 0.35. The ANOVA issues statistically significant differences (p b 0.05) in influence in QOL among both, experiences and subjects. First order interaction results also statistically significant showing that influence of experience depends in the subject and vice versa. Table 2 shows the results from Tukey-b post hoc analysis. There are five homogenous groups showing a wide range of answers for influence of experiences in quality-of-life depending on the experience and on the person. Group 1 includes Shopping and Notalone experiences that, in average, people consider to negatively influence their QOL (≈ 2). On the other extreme, group 5 includes Forest_walk, Bath and Beach_walk experiences, which, in average, score highly positive in influence in QOL (≈4.5). The Spearman analysis of correlation shows statistically significant linear correlations between the study variables. There is a small negative correlation of perceived influence in quality-of-life with interest (−0.41) and frequency (−0.36). In this way, the higher the positive influence in quality-of-life an experience has, the greater the interest in it. Also, a higher familiarity (frequency) with an experience relates with a higher perceived influence in QOL. The K-means cluster analysis using perceived influence in qualityof-life, interest for reproducing them and frequency as classification variables, issues a valid solution for six groups as described in Table 3. The results for each group are as follows. Group 1 includes cases related to experiences of great positive influence in QOL (4.7), people who often live them and with high interest in reproducing them.
3.1. Identification of experiences for environmental design Mean=3.68 SD= 1.23 N=1896
800
The analysis of people's logbook issued a total of 35 different experiences, 13 of which refer to environment as main source of stimulus. These experiences are (into brackets short names used in the study): • • • • •
600
Taking a bath in the beach or in a mountain lake (BATH) Walking by the sea side (BEACH_WALK) Having breakfast at the family old house (BREAKFAST) Seeing the dusk at the Café del Mar in Ibiza (Spain) (DUSK) Walking in a forest in Autumn (FOREST_WALK)
400
Table 1 Characteristics of people taking part in the study. Age group (years)
b30 30–40 41–50 51–60 Total
200
Gender Male
Female
Total
32 26 10 2 70
36 20 6 10 72
68 46 16 12 142
0 0
1
2
3
4
5
INFQOL Fig. 1. Histogram for influence in QOL.
6
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080 Table 2 Results of the Tukey-b post hoc analysis. Experience
Table 4 Percentage of cases that classified each experience in each homogenous group. Bold: >20%.
Group 1
SHOPPING NOTALONE STADIUM RAIN ORIENT_MARKET ROMANBATH NAP LIFEMUSIC BREAKFAST DUSK FOREST_WALK BATH BEACHWALK
1077
2
3
4
5
2.05 2.14
Experience
Group
BATH 2.77 2.93
BEACHWALK 3.75 3.92 3.95
3.92 3.95 4.25 4.27 4.33
BREAKFAST 4.25 4.27 4.33 4.44 4.48 4.53
DUSK FOREST_WALK LIFEMUSIC NAP NOTALONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
Total
30 21.1% 48 34.8% 14 9.9% 16 11.3% 20 13.9% 16 11.3% 46 32.4% 0 .0% 6 4.2% 2 1.4% 8 5.6% 6 4.3% 6 4.2% 218 11.8%
40 28.2% 24 17.4% 30 21.1% 52 36.6% 54 37.5% 92 64.8% 16 11.3% 10 7.1% 24 16.9% 24 16.4% 28 19.7% 12 8.6% 18 12.7% 424 23.0%
12 8.5% 6 4.3% 18 12.7% 10 7.0% 8 5.6% 8 5.6% 6 4.2% 0 .0% 22 15.5% 4 2.7% 56 39.4% 2 1.4% 18 12.7% 170 9.2%
6 4.2% 2 1.4% 24 16.9% 10 7.0% 8 5.6% 6 4.2% 6 4.2% 40 28.6% 66 46.5% 38 26.0% 24 16.9% 442 31.4% 88 62.0% 362 19.6%
0 .0% 0 .0% 4 2.8% 0 .0% 2 1.4% 2 1.4% 32 22.5% 86 61.4% 10 7.0% 34 23.3% 6 4.2% 68 48.6% 6 4.2% 250 13.6%
54 38.0% 58 42.0% 52 36.6% 54 38.0% 52 36.1% 18 12.7% 36 25.4% 4 2.9% 14 9.9% 44 30.1% 20 14.1% 8 5.7% 6 4.2% 420 22.8%
142 100.0% 138 100.0% 142 100.0% 142 100.0% 144 100.0% 142 100.0% 142 100.0% 140 100.0% 142 100.0% 146 100.0% 142 100.0% 140 100.0% 142 100.0% 1844 100.0%
Group 2 is one of the most numerous groups (22.3%) and includes cases that consider experiences of rather great positive influence in QOL (4.3), with a high interest in reproducing them but with a low knowledge of them. Group 3 includes cases referring to experiences of positive influence in QOL (4) with high interest in reproducing them but that they have never lived them. It is a small group (9.2%). Group 4 clusters cases for experiences with a neutral influence in QOL (2.7), with a low interest in reproducing them although they have never lived them. Group 5 refers to experiences with a negative influence in QOL (2.2), that have been lived some times and with low interest in reproducing them. Group 6 is also a big group (22.1%). It includes experiences of great positive influence in QOL (4.3) that they have lived sometimes but with low interest in reproducing them. Table 4 shows the number and percentage of cases each experience belongs to each group. Each case is the set of answers of one person for this experience in the three classification variables. Most experiences belong to more than one group (in at least 20% of cases, in bold in the table) showing, as expected, the great influence of people in experience assessment. For example, 21.1% of people's perceptions of Bath experience are in group 1, 28.2% in group 2 and 38% in group 3. In fact, only Lifemusic, Orientmarket and Stadium experiences belong mostly to a single group. Table 5 presents people gender and age for each group. The results of a Kruskal–Wallis non-parametric analysis of variance yield statistically significant differences among groups for gender only. They are mainly due to the fact that group 2 includes mostly men's answers (63.2%).
phase of the strategic design of experiences in terms of making decisions about which experiences to incorporate into their portfolio. The procedure starts by identifying experiences that both are aligned with company business and emerge from end users. To this end, following the user centered approach different authors propose (Boswijk et al., 2005; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Shedroff, 2009), this study uses a logbook technique. The logbook technique allows capturing the experiences that come to people's mind in a variety of situations along the day. In this way, they have more time to report experiences in a more free and personal context. Volunteers taking part in this phase of the experiment, as required, report any experience (not necessarily unique and very meaningful) they live, or would like to live, along one week. This approach contrasts with methods from other authors. In one extreme, some authors center on experiences rather extraordinary. Boswijk et al. (2005) focus in unique and meaningful experiences that change people's lives whereas Shedroff (2009) stresses the
4. Discussion
Table 5 Age and gender characteristics of people in each group.
Many companies are approaching experiences as a new promising market. The procedure this paper presents may help firms in the
ORIENT_MARKET RAIN ROMANBATH SHOPPING STADIUM Total
Group
1 2
Table 3 Results from cluster analysis.
3 Cluster
1 2 3 4 5 6
Cases
INFLQOL
FREQ
Interest
N
%
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
1. high/2. low
218 424 170 362 250 420
11.5% 22.3% 9.0% 19.1% 13.2% 22.1%
4.7 4.3 4.0 2.7 2.2 4.3
.53 .93 .90 1.24 .74 .56
1.00 1.98 3.00 3.00 1.90 1.71
.00 .14 .00 .00 .30 .46
1 1 1 2 2 2
4 5 6 Total
Gender
Age (years)
Male
Female
b30
30–40
41–50
51–60
104 48.1% 268 63.2% 80 47.1% 166 46.1% 116 47.5% 196 48.5% 930 51.2%
112 51.9% 156 36.8% 90 52.9% 194 53.9% 128 52.5% 208 51.5% 888 48.8%
98 45.4% 214 51.7% 88 52.4% 172 48.6% 106 44.2% 182 45.5% 860 48.0%
72 33.3% 110 26.6% 42 25.0% 112 31.6% 84 35.0% 144 38.5% 574 32.0%
44 20.4% 66 15.9% 16 9.5% 34 9.6% 20 8.3% 22 5.5% 202 11.3%
2 .9% 24 5.8% 22 13.1% 36 10.2% 30 12.5% 42 10.5% 156 8.7%
1078
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
co-creation of experiences with end users in a creative process looking for innovative and new concepts. In the other extreme, Pine and Gilmore (1999) propose the “ing” approach in a way that any daily activity transforms into an experience (driving experience, ironing experience…). Experiences identified in the present work go a step further the “ing” proposal from Pine and Gilmore (1999). Most of them can be seen as a gerund, an action, but taking place in a specific or special context or instant: taking a bath, but in the beach or in a mountain lake (Bath) or walking, but by the sea side (Beach_walk) or in a forest during Autumn (Forest_walk). These experiences associate to rather frequent activities like walking or taking a shower, which are neither very unique and memorable nor daily experiences. They relate to background emotions as defined by Damasio (1995, 1999): emotions of moderate intensity like relax or boredom, people live in a more continuous basis, in contrast with primary emotions of higher intensity people live sporadically. With respect to the concept of experience, while Pine and Gilmore (1999) consider that experience leaves a print in the person, something memorable and unique, and Boswijk et al. (2005) work with experiences that change people's life; experiences identified using the logbook technique align with Hekkert and Schifferstein (2008). These authors' definition includes “the awareness of the psychological effects elicited by the interaction with a product, including the degree to which all our senses are stimulated, the meanings and values we attach to the product, and the feelings and emotions that are elicited”. The logbook technique attempts to collect this kind of experiences as they emerge in people's mind while doing every day activities. They are for more people and lived more frequently than meaningful ones. These experiences center the interest of companies participating in the study, as well as that of many companies already marketing experiences, since people is likely to consume them more frequently than unique and memorable experiences. In any case, the logbook technique issues many different experiences (35 in total), which restricted to the context of being reproducible in a controlled environment (according to the interest of the companies collaborating in the study) yield 13 potentially interesting experiences. By way of contrast, Boswijk et al. (2005), present 15 meaningful experiences as the result of a worldwide survey. The experiences resulting from the logbook are by themselves, quite interesting as they provide a sort of product portfolio for companies, in this case in the market of environmental design. Any company may choose any of the identified experiences for their future offering. The procedure gathers people perception to help companies in making such a decision. End users asses identified experiences with respect to three variables: Perceived benefit, interest and familiarity with the experience. Using people perceived benefit as an approach to experience value agrees with Pine and Gilmore (1999) and Boswijk et al. (2005). Nevertheless, they do not propose a measure for perceived benefit what makes difficult comparison. The present study measures benefit by asking people's opinion about the influence each experience could have in their quality-of-life (QOL). The results of the experiment show that in fact, people perceive that rather common and repeatable (at least weekly) experiences as walking by the seaside, shopping or going to a sports or musical event, can influence their QOL, either negatively or positively. Answers range between very positive and very negative with variability around 35%. The Tukey-b post hoc analysis issues five homogenous groups showing that people perceive some experiences as Shopping and Stadium clearly, in average, as negative and others in average, very positive as taking a bath at the sea or at a mountain lake, or walking in a forest or by the seaside. However, the results from the ANOVA show that, as expected, the answer strongly depends on the subject in a way that what for a
person is highly positive can be highly negative for another. This is the case of Rain, which is negative for 34% of people, neutral for 29% and positive for the remaining 37%. The analysis of market potential should hence to consider people's variability and characteristics. A likely source of variability is the complex and subjective nature of quality-of-life. A renewed interest is occurring in quality-of-life as a general measure of development and value in contexts as different as urban politics or medical care. Although approaches to measure QOL may differ, there is a wide consensus in that perceived QOL is a complex concept resulting from people's perception of a series of dimensions on their lives as health, comfort, safety and others, weighted by the importance each person gives to each dimension (Cummins, Mellor, Stokes, & Lau, 2010; Gallup, 2009). With this respect, the benefit people perceive that identified experiences could have for their QOL will probably result from the way they perceive each experience could influence their health, comfort, safety, security, etc. but also from the way each person understands QOL and the importance each dimension has in her/his life. Further studies aiming at improving identifying people perceived benefit of experiences in terms of how experiences influence different aspects of their QOL, would issue a better understanding of experience value in the market. This could in turn, allow devising a specialized offering of experiences targeting in, for example, health or comfort. Together with influence in QOL as a measure of perceived benefit, the procedure gathers people's interest in reproducing the experiences and their familiarity with them (the question was: how often do you live this experience?). The results of linear correlations analysis show a logical but small relationship between variables. As expected, the more a person considers an experience is positive for his/her QOL, the more interested is in having it and the contrary. This result supports to some extent that benefit for QOL associates market value. The results from the clustering analysis using these three variables situate the experiences in six different groups according to people's perception of experiences. In this way, these groups present a preliminary map of experiences in the market as shown in Fig. 2. The nature of each group and the characteristics of people whose answers define it, allow making strategic decisions about the identified experiences. In fact, most experiences belong to more than one group showing, as advanced, the great influence of people in experience interpretation. Actually, only Lifemusic, Orientmarket and Stadium experiences belong mostly to a single group meaning that most people opine the same about them. Group 1 includes cases that consider experiences of great positive influence in QOL, frequently lived and with interest in reproducing them. It encloses captive customers for these experiences as they know the experience, consider it as very positive for their QOL and show a high interest in living it again. In this case, Bath, Beachwalk and Nap addressed to people 30–40 years of age, either men or women, are winning experiences, a ready market. They seem to refer to relaxing activities. Group 2 is one of the most numerous (22.3%) and includes cases that consider experiences of rather high positive influence in QOL, with an interest in reproducing them but with a low knowledge of them. The group represents potential customers whose loyalty is to be cultivated. They have some familiarity with the experience, perceive it positively and want to try again. Bath, Breakfast, Dusk, Forestwalk, Lifemusic and Romanbath can capture a market of mainly men, 30–40 years of age. These cases could be related to positive and energizing activities. Group 3 clusters cases referring to experiences of positive influence in QOL with interest in reproducing them but that have never lived them. It is a small group (9.2%) associated to the potential market for experiences of Romanbath when addressed to people 30–40 years of age, balanced men and women. This group is of special interest for designers and manufacturers of bath environments. Group 4 considers cases for experiences with a neutral influence in QOL, with no interest in reproducing them although they have
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
1079
Interest High
G3
G2
G1
Low
-
+
G4
Never
G5
Little
Influence in QOL
G6
Often
Fig. 2. Map of clusters of experiences attending to people perception of their influence in their QOL, interest in living them and familiarity with them.
never lived them. These are experiences as Notalone, Orientmarket, Rain, Shopping and Stadium that result indifferent for people 30– 40 years of age, balanced men and women. Group 5 refers to experiences with a negative influence in QOL, that have been lived some times and with no interest in reproducing them. This is the case of lost clients for Nap, Notalone, Rain and Shopping. They have some familiarity with the experience, perceive it negatively and do not want to live it any more. In this group, people seem to interpret negatively potentially disturbing environments like rain or shopping. Group 6 (22% of cases) includes experiences of great positive influence in QOL that people have lived sometimes but have no interest in reproducing them. This group refers to experiences like Bath, Beachwalk, Breakfast, Dusk, Forestwalk, Nap and Rain that whether properly redesigned could have a potential market for the people in the group. This group could also suggest that there are people not interested at all in reproducing experiences at home or that they did not understand the experiences proposed. The latter is a potential source of bias not controlled in this study to address in further studies. The study does not control for whether or not all persons taking part in the experiment understand the term experience in the same way and moreover, whether they understand each experience similarly. Future studies should address this issue. In this way, assessing experiences consists in placing them in the map in Fig. 2. There are experiences that depending on the groups (people) they belong to, result one way or the other round. An experience can be positive or negative, interesting or not depending on people addressed. Therefore, focusing on the right people with the appropriate proposals is so important as to consider it in strategic decision making since the very beginning. Experiences belonging to only one group are easier to assess. For example, the experience Lifemusic (65% in group 2), appears as a promising market issue for environmental design companies. Most people in group 2 have tried that experience, feel that it is positive for their QOL and have interest in having the possibility of living it whenever they like to. On the contrary, Orientmarket (46%) and Stadium (62%) lay mainly in the group of indifference (group 4). Addressing them would be a greater challenge.
Experiences falling within more than a group should be carefully analyzed. Groups 1, 2 and 3 somewhat represent positive market perspectives (high perceived influence in QOL and interest in living the experiences), whereas groups 4, 5 and 6 represent negative ones. In this way, experiences with cases mostly in groups 1, 2 and 3 would be a good choice. Unfortunately, this happens for Romanbath only (groups 2 and 3). Similarly, experiences falling within groups 4, 5 and 6 would be worse bet. This is the case for Notalone and Shopping (groups 4 and 5), as well as for Rain (groups 4, 5 and 6). Experiences belonging to groups from both the positive and the negative side require special consideration of people characteristics. For example, Beachwalk has a group of captive clients (group 1, 35% of cases) but also a 42% of cases in group 6 (people not interested). For making a decision we need to have additional information about people in each group. Actually, the lack of more detail about people's characteristics and preferences is a limitation of the study. Gender and age offer not enough information to describe groups. In fact, the only statistically significant difference is that group 2 is mostly due to men's answers. Also, all participants in the study live in an urban area that surely influences their perception on experiences like Forestwalk or Shopping. Next studies should consider other individual variables as income level, place of residence, people mood, motivation and past experience. On the other hand, although this article illustrates the procedure in environmental design in correspondence with the interest of companies participating in the study, it is easily applicable to any other sector. In any case, the results are of potential interest for many industries, in particular hospitality and retailing sectors. These sectors have incorporated physical environment design as a crucial element in managing customer experience, emotions and attitude, as well as brand image (Carmel-Gilfilen, 2011; Jang & Namkung, 2009; Machleit & Eroglu, 2000; Morrison & Beverland, 2003; O'Sullivan & Spangler, 1998; Park & Farr, 2007; Pullman & Gross, 2004; Sherman et al., 1997; Ward et al., 2003). Finally, the study is based on asking people without any stimulus. Results will probably change in case of using visual, or related to other senses, stimulus for the experiences.
1080
E. Alcántara et al. / Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 1074–1080
5. Conclusions This paper presents a practical application of a procedure likely to be helpful for companies entering into the experience economy. The procedure approaches strategic design of experiences in two steps: identifying experiences from people's perspective and assessing their market position. The steps include considering the classification of experiences attending to the benefit people perceive in them for their quality-of-life, people interest in living them and their knowledge on them. The study identifies 35 experiences of which, 13 are of potential interest for environmental design. These experiences classify according to different strategies as follows: • Experiences with a captive or potential market: Lifemusic and Romanbath. • Experiences with problems to be marketed: Orientmarket, Stadium, Notalone, Shopping and Rain. • Experiences not for everyone. They need to strongly take into account end user characteristics: Beachwalk; Bath, Breakfast, Dusk, Forestwalk and Nap. Acknowledgments The authors thank the Spanish Association of Ceramic Tiles manufacturers (ASCER) for their support to this study. References Boswijk, A., Thijssen, J. P. T., & Peelen, E. (2005). A new perspective on the experience economy: Meaningful experiences. Amsterdam: Pearson Education. Carmel-Gilfilen, C. (2011). Advancing retail security design: Uncovering shoplifter perceptions of the physical environment. Journal of Interior Design, 36(2), 21–38. Cummins, R. A., Mellor, D., Stokes, M. A., & Lau, A. L. D. (2010). The measurement of subjective wellbeing. In E. Mpofuand, & T. Oakland (Eds.), Rehabilitation and health assessment: Applying ICF guidelines (409–426). New York: Springer Publishing Company. Cupchik, G. C., & Hilscher, M. C. (2008). Holistic perspectives on the design of experience. In H. N. J. Schifferstein, & P. Hekkert (Eds.), Product experience. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Damasio, A. R. (1995). Descartes' Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Pub. Harper Perennial; (1 edition)978-0380726479.
Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. New York: Harcourt. Davis, L., Wang, S., & Lindridge, A. (2008). Culture influences on emotional responses to on-line store atmospheric cues. Journal of Business Research, 61(8), 806–812. Desmet, P. M. A., & Hekkert, P. (2007). Framework of product experience. International Journal of Design, 1(1), 57–66. Diller, S., & Rhea, D. (2005). A world of meaningful experiences, chapter from the book making meaning: How successful businesses deliver meaningful customer experiences. New Riders. Gallup, (2009). Gallup-Healthways Well-Being™ Index: Methodology Report for Indexes. Retrieved July, 1, 2011 from http://well-beingindex.com/files/GallupHealthways%20Index%20Methodology%20Report%20FINAL%203-25-08.pdf. Hayes, D., & MacLeod, N. (2007). Packaging places: Designing heritage trails using an experience economy perspective to maximize visitor engagement. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 13(1), 45–58. Hekkert, P., & Schifferstein, H. N. J. (2008). Product experience. In H. N. J. Schifferstein, & P. Hekkert (Eds.), Amsterdam: Elsevier. Jang, S., & Namkung, Y. (2009). Perceived quality, emotions, and behavioral intentions: Application of an extended Mehrabian–Russell model to restaurants. Journal of Business Research, 62(4), 451–460. Machleit, K. A., & Eroglu, S. A. (2000). Describing and measuring emotional response to shopping experience. Journal of Business Research, 49(2), 101–111. Morrison, M., & Beverland, M. B. (2003). In search of the right in-store music. Business Horizons, 46(6), 77–82. O'Sullivan, E. L., & Spangler, K. J. (1998). Experience marketing—Strategies for the new millennium. State College: Venture Publishing, Inc. Oh, H., Fiore, A. M., & Jeong, M. (2007). Measuring experience economy concepts: Tourism applications. Journal of Travel Research, 46(2), 119–132. Park, N., & Farr, C. A. (2007). The effect of lighting on consumers' emotions and behavioral intention in a retail environment: A cross-cultural comparison. Journal of Interior Design, 33(1), 17–32. Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The experience economy, work is theatre and every business a stage. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2004). The future of competition. Co-creating unique value with customers. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Pullman, M. E., & Gross, M. A. (2004). Ability of experience design elements to elicit emotions and loyalty behaviors. Decision Sciences, 35(3), 551–578. Shedroff, N. (2009). Experience design 1.19780982233900. Sherman, E., Mathur, A., & Smith, R. B. (1997). Store environment and consumer purchase behavior. Psychology and Marketing, 14, 361–378. Summers, T. A., & Hebert, P. R. (2001). Shedding some light on store atmospherics: Influence of illumination on consumer behavior. Journal of Business Research, 54(2), 145–150. Turley, L. W., & Milliman, R. E. (2000). Atmospheric effects on shopping behavior: A review of the experimental evidence. Journal of Business Research, 49, 193–211. Ward, P., Davies, B., & Kooijman, D. J. (2003). Ambient smell and the retail environment: Relating olfaction research to consumer behavior. Journal of Business and Management, 9(3), 289–302. Zuboff, S., & Maxmin, J. (2002). The support economy: Why corporations are failing individuals and the next episode of capitalism. New York: Viking.