Businesses have been competing on product quality, price, faster and more convenient delivery, and customer service. As competition intensifies, the scope for competing on these traditional factors tends to become less and less, and even unaffordable. It is in this context that it becomes necessary to take a more in-depth look at the experience your customer desires and receives, and look for ways of matching these better.
What is Customer Experience?
In a previous article on customer value, we had a general look at the elements of customer experience. In this article, we go deeper and try to provide a more in-depth view of what customers consider value. Before diving into the depths, let us look at the surface first.
Experience is typically gained through our senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. One or more of these might be more relevant in the case of a particular product or service. Marketers are also aware that people differ in what they find enjoyable; tasty food for one person might not be that tasty for another, and offers are developed that cater to particular segments.
Experience also involves meeting specific needs. Humans have a hierarchy of needs such as those proposed by Maslow (Maslow, Abraham H. (1943), "A Theory of Human Motivation." Psychological Review, 50, 370-396) and customer satisfaction results when one or more of these needs are successfully met by a product. The specific way a need is met might involve providing a positive gain or reducing a negative pain.
With the above background, let us now look at customer experience in more depth.
Holbrook proposed a typology that seeks to classify all types of consumption experience into a few broad categories (Holbrook, Morris B.(1995), "Customer Value-A Framework for Analysis and Research." Proposal for Special Topic Session: Association for Consumer Research, 1995, p.5). According to this classification, consumption experience can be:
- Self-oriented, i.e., created by a person's own reactions to the experience, or
- Other-oriented, i.e., created by other people's reactions.
The enjoyment we derive while playing, say, a computer game, is an example of self-oriented experience. The satisfaction an individual derives from the esteem that person receives from the community as a result of notable achievements is an example of other-oriented experience. Products such as a luxurious house in a prestigious suburb provide the latter type of customer experience.
The experience can also be:
- Active, i.e., created by the user's own actions with the product, or
- Reactive, i.e., created by what the product or service does to the user.
The satisfaction we get when using a product that provides great results with little effort is an example of an active experience. The joy we experience when listening to a haunting piece of music is a reactive experience.
Finally, the experience can be:
- Extrinsic, i.e., generated by an external instrument, or
- Intrinsic, i.e., created by the activity of consumption.
The esteem experience we derive from the house in a prestigious suburb, mentioned above, is an example of an extrinsic experience as it is created by an external thing. On the other hand, the good feeling we get through an act of charity is an intrinsic experience.
As Holbrook's typology table shows, the same experience has multiple dimensions, e.g. it can be self-oriented, active and extrinsic.
How the User Experience Classification Helps Marketers
Holbrook's classification might be disputed on the ground that it does not account for all types of experiences or for arguable classifications. However, it has helped marketers gain an actionable understanding into the process of creating customer value. By highlighting the different dimensions of customer experience, Holbrook helps the marketer adopt a systematic and in-depth approach to creating a unique customer experience.
The focus shifts from product features to the bundle of benefits that it provides to the user. Intangible benefits, such as the "intrinsic" good feelings created by ethical actions, also come into the picture.
The process of creating a unique customer value proposition becomes a more meaningful exercise with the findings of such a typological analysis. Customer surveys, customer relationship management and developing marketing messages all become similarly meaningful exercises.
Customer loyalty is created by providing great customer experiences. In an increasingly competitive market, the battle for customers is shifting to the area of understanding the more subtle dimensions of customer expectations and tailoring their actual experiences to these. Typologies such as Holbrook's consumption experience typology help marketers do a more meaningful job of both gaining an understanding and using it in product development and marketing messages.
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