Experiential Marketing

An Assignment

By

Mr. Tage Nobin

Roll No: 50 MBA-I

Faculty of Management Studies Banaras Hindu University

Introduction

Nowadays then the world is very quickly change, coming new technologies, communication, comes changes in to the marketing too. There are big competitions so principles and actions of traditional marketing do not work. How attract new consumers, cause? These opportunities have experiential marketing. Marketing-mix theory was criticising due to its mechanical point of view (stimulus- reaction). Now is proved that between stimulus and reaction is process. Twenty years after, this notion has gained ground to be recognised as important for what it can contribute to marketing knowledge of the consumer. As a consequence, it is the pillar of the so called experience economy and experiential marketing. Marketers tend to engage consumers in a memorable way, offering them extraordinary experiences. For them, experiences provide consumers a way to engage physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually in the consumption of the product or service making the interaction meaningfully real.

Exploring the Notion of Experience

For researchers in consumer behaviour, an experience is above all a personal occurrence, often with important emotional significance, founded on the interaction with stimuli which are the products or services consumed. This occurrence may lead to a transformation of the individual in the experiences defined as extraordinary. Taking up the argument of sociology research in consumer behaviour considers experience as a central element of the life of todays consumer, a consumer who is looking for sense: for the post-modern consumer, consumption is not a mere act of devouring, destroying, or using things. It is also not the end of the (central) economic cycle, but an act of production of experiences and selves or self-images. Indeed, there is the recognition of a growing quest on the part of the contemporary consumers for immersion into varied experiences more and more conceptualized as embodied experiences. How do we create positive, memorable experiences that attract and retain customers? And, how do we encourage customers to share their experiences with others? One possible answer: Experiential Marketing. Experience may be defined as a subjective episode in the construction/ transformation of the individual, with however, an emphasis on the emotions and senses lived during the immersion at the expense of the cognitive dimension. The roots of this so-called experiential consumption must be sought in the growth of services, for which the good that is purchased is an experience rather than a material object. Its main feature is to grant space to emotions. This leads to an experiential approach to the study of consumption which recognises the importance of variables that have previously been neglected: the roles of emotions in behaviour; the fact that consumers are feelers as well as thinkers and doers; the significance of symbolism in consumption; the consumers need for fun and pleasure; the roles of consumers, beyond the act of purchase, in product usage as well as brand choice, and so forth. In the experiential

perspective, the consumption experience is no longer limited to some prepurchase activity, nor to some post-purchase activity, e.g. the assessment of satisfaction, but includes a series of other activities which influence consumers decisions and future actions. Consumption experience is thus spread over a period of time which can be divided into four major stages: The pre-consumption experience, which involves searching for, planning, day-dreaming about, foreseeing or imagining the experience; The purchase experience which derives from choice, payment, packaging, the encounter with the service and the environment; The core consumption experience including the sensation, the satiety, the satisfaction/dissatisfaction, the irritation/flow, the transformation; The remembered consumption experience and the nostalgia experience activates photographs to re-live a past experience, which is based on accounts of stories and on arguments with friends about the past, and which moves towards the classification of memories.

The alternative framework is based upon two elements: strategic experience modules, which are different types of experiences, and ExPros (short for experience producers) which are the various agencies that deliver these experiences. Experience marketing is the discipline of creating products and services that consider all elements of this framework. Five different types of experiences or strategic experience modules (SEMs) may be identified. These are: SENSE: These are sensual and tangible aspects of a product or experience that appeal to the five senses of sight, sound, scent, taste and touch. Sense experiences are particularly useful to differentiate products or services, to motivate potential customers, and to create a sense of value in the mind of the purchaser.

FEEL: Feel marketing is devoted to inducing affect (i.e. the creation of moods and emotions) that adhere to the company and brand. Clearly, positive or negative feelings toward a product or service will influence the extent to which it is consumed. THINK: The objective of think marketing is to encourage customers to engage in elaborative and creative thinking that may result in a re-evaluation of the company and products. ACT: Act marketing is oriented towards the creation of experiences through behaviour on the part of the customer, either privately or in the company of others. The goal is to change long-term behaviour and habits in favour of the particular product or service. RELATE: Relate marketing expands beyond the individual's private sensations, feelings, cognitions and actions by relating the individual self to the broader social and cultural context reflected in a brand. In other words, relate marketing plays upon the identification of self with the context and associations bound up in the product or service used. These five different types of experiences (SEMs) are conveyed to individuals through experience providers (ExPros), which are vehicles such as: 1. Communications: advertising, external and internal company communications, public relations campaigns visual and verbal identity and signage, including names, logos, colours, etc. Product presence: design, packaging, and display. Co-branding: involving event marketing, sponsorships, alliances and partnerships, licensing, product placement in movies, etc. Spatial environments: which include the external and internal design of corporate offices, sales outlets, consumer and trade fair spaces, etc. Web sites. People: salespeople, company reps, customer service providers, call centre operators.

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As a unique approach to the task of marketing goods and services, experiential marketing is a concept that integrates elements of emotions, logic, and general thought processes to connect with the consumer. The goal of experiential marketing is to establish the connection in such a way that the consumer responds to a product offering based on both emotional and rational response levels. Appealing to a variety of senses, experiential marketing seeks to tap into that special place within consumers that has to do with inspiring thoughts about comfort and pleasure, as well as inspiring a sense of practicality. This means that the marketer needs to have a firm grasp on the mindset of the target audience he or she wishes to attract. By understanding what the consumer is likely to think and feel, it is possible to get an idea of how to steer the customer in a direction that will relate with the product, and entice individuals to act on that impulse to purchase. In order to engage in experiential marketing, it is necessary to engage as many of the senses as possible. Striking displays with powerful visual elements, such as websites, and visual media such as print ads should not only be visually appealing, but also conjure up daydreams of locales and reminders of sensations that are enjoyable to the individual. When used to create customer experiences of this nature, a sense of rapport between the product and the consumer is established that helps to make the good or service more desirable with each encounter. Because experiential marketing connects with the consumer on multiple levels, the strategy is ideally suited for contemporary sales and marketing campaigns. Shortened attention spans demand that any ad campaign make a quick impression, or the opportunity to engage the consumer will quickly pass. While thirty second ads on radio and television once had a great impact, many people now use modern technology to avoid this sort of marketing approach. This means that ads on the Internet, in print media, and on modern billboards must immediately catch the attention of prospective clients and hold that attention long enough to make an impact. Experiential marketing holds the key to making this happen. By appealing to all the senses, and making the connection quickly and seamlessly, this approach to the marketing task ensures that businesses can still attract and satisfy the needs and desires of consumers.

Experiential Marketing: Selling the Experience

Does the brand define the experienceor is it the other way around? With the changing landscape of marketing and communications, it has become clear that a brand is only as good as its online customers say it is. Its the collective experiences of consumers that really drive the success of branding efforts in todays social and often instantaneous marketplace. While the challenge of marketers will always be to identify and communicate effectively with target audiences, new challenges have emerged. Experiential marketing allows users to interact with a brand and its products or services firsthand, often in a controlled environment. This area of marketing aims to appeal to emotions, logic and the senses, and it provides an opportunity for customers to engage with a brand. This engagement aims to diminish the disconnection between what a company says about its offerings and what customers actually encounter. Product demonstrations, online reviews, point-of-purchase displays, samples these are all very basic examples of experiential marketing that have existed in the marketing mix for awhile. These tactics, when paired with targeted messages, can be key components for success in any campaign. But, experiential marketing in todays world has pushed the envelope even further. The Internet, social networks, a demand for transparency and shortened consumer attention spans have contributed to a shift in experiential marketing strategies. This shift has resulted in a much wider approach to marketing and business that is heavily rooted in consumer opinion and dependent on target audience feedback.

Experiential Marketing and Customer Experience

In the early years of the new millennium, customer experience management (CEM) was a popular buzzword that really set the stage for experiential marketing. While experiential marketing and CEM are two different things, they are intertwined, and knowledge of both is necessary for ultimate success. In short, experiential marketing focuses on developing highly visible, interactive and sensory-engaging environments wherein products and services are showcased. Alternatively, CEM concentrates on customer experience as a whole, not just as the delivery method for marketing tactics. Customer Experience Management A core competency of CEM that addresses how customers sense, feel, think, act and relate to companies, products, brands, and/or services within a variety of online and offline environments. A parent area of focus defined as the discipline, methodology, and process used to comprehensively manage a customers exposure, interaction and transaction with a company, product, brand or service across a wide variety of channels. Focuses on: Customers and branding Environmental factors of perception Creating or modifying the environments in which consumers interact Improving marketing outcomes Adopting a balanced view across five areas: customers, environments, brand, delivery platforms and interface dynamics Narrow and limited in scope, and executional in nature. Often seen in individual campaigns or through a limited number of channels. Comprehensive in scope and strategic in nature. Supports iterative improvement and ongoing execution. Seeks to create individual environments for customer exploration, interaction and transaction, focused to achieve a specific set of business objectives. Seeks to help understand the entire world of the customer in order to better interact with them, develop relationships and foster loyalty and word-of mouth.

The bottom line isnt to talk about a product, its to get people to remember it and have an unbelievably positive association with the memory that lasts and sparks word of mouth years after the campaign is over. Marketers want to create an emotional attachment between you and what they are selling. They want you to see a Scion at great parties and start associating it with the things you care about: music, art and your community of friends. They want to offer you an experience, not just goods or services. And that means jumping off of the pages of magazines, out of the screen of your television and into your neighbourhood. The next competitive battleground lies in staging experiences. An experience is not an amorphous construct; it is as real an offering as any service, product or commodity. In todays service economy, many companies simply wrap experiences around their traditional offerings to sell them better. To realize the full benefit of staging experiences, however, businesses must deliberately design engaging experiences that command a fee. Another area where experiential marketing and traditional mass marketing dont match up is in terms of measurement. When an ad is purchased in a newspaper or magazine, there are a guaranteed number of readers who will be presented with that ad. Spots on radio or television offer equal forms of measurement, both of audience and response. If a radio ad for a product appears in one market and suddenly the sales in that area spike, its not hard to see the cause and effect. Results are not as clear with experiential campaigns, which often aim to create intangibles, such as word of mouth or an experience. Because of this difference, the experiential marketing crowd has created their own form of measurement: return on experience (RoE). Most current advertising still relies on obsessive proliferation of the brand through mass media that seeks economies of scalethe more eyeballs, the better. But consumers want more than mass messages sent to eyeballs. They want respect, recognition and relevant communication, and theyve indicated that the best way to give it to them is through experiences that are personally relevant, memorable, sensory, emotional and meaningful.

A 10-point manifesto for Experiential Marketing can be drafted as follows: 1. Experiential Marketing must be predicated on one-on-one personal interaction between a marketer and a consumer. 2. Experiential Marketing will be conducted when the consumer chooses. 3. Experiential Marketing campaigns should clearly deliver a meaningful benefit to the consumer. 4. Experiential Marketing is based on engaging people. 5. Experiential Marketing must be based on individual experiences. 6. Experiential Marketings goal is to succeed using innovative approaches and tactics to reach out to consumers in creative, compelling ways. 7. Experiential Marketing is idealistic enough to empower the individual consumer and street-savvy enough to unleash the power of grassroots activation. 8. Experiential Marketing is about authenticity. 9. Experiential marketing assumes that the entire world is media, and the entire universe is the consumer base. 10.Experiential Marketers exhibit curiosity about the world, each other and, well, just about everything.