Sustainable Customer Experience Design

Co-creating Experiences in Events, Tourism and Hospitality

Bert Smit, Frans Melissen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317217862
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Experiences are an important part of our lives and increasingly represent a crucial topic to address for businesses and professionals. This book focuses on designing, staging and managing experiences within the context of the events, tourism and hospitality industries. It also illustrates current and future developments in these industries and wider society, with an emphasis on sustainable development.

The book offers an innovative approach for successfully creating experiences for (potential) customers that is based on combining insights and methods from the world of design and the social sciences. Moreover, it shows how the experience economy and sustainable development both reinforce one another and create challenges that businesses and professionals can address through this approach.

Critical thinking questions, practical examples and international case studies are integrated throughout the text. Combining a design science and a social sciences perspective in one inclusive hands-on approach to designing, staging and managing experiences, this is essential reading for all students of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management, but also related fields.

PART I










DESIGNING, STAGING AND MANAGING EXPERIENCES

1 The concept of experiences

INTRODUCTION

Experiences are an important part of our lives and increasingly represent a crucial topic to address for businesses and professionals. However, what exactly is an experience? What does the term experience mean? Some would say life itself and everything we do and encounter while living our lives are experiences. There is definitely some truth in this statement because through our senses – seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching – we continuously experience the world around us. Moreover, we constantly compare this sensory input with what we know and expect of specific events, situations and encounters, even though doing so might not always be something that we are (fully) aware of. Most of these comparisons are made unconsciously and only draw our conscious attention if and when a situation is different from what we expected.

This book explores how businesses and professionals can design, stage and manage experiences successfully, with a specific focus on doing so within the context of the events, tourism and hospitality industries. Obviously, these experiences represent a particular subset of the complete range of experiences that shape our lives. In the first instance, the types of experiences addressed in this book are experiences that are purposely designed, staged and managed by businesses and professionals who offer these experiences to consumers in exchange for money. Some of these experiences might very well trigger strong emotions and many of them have been customised to fit the social norms and rules of a specific consumer or consumer group. Ultimately, however, the experiences addressed here represent a specific product or service offered by a specific company to specific consumers as part of the economic transaction that these two parties have agreed on. These experiences have been designed, and are staged and managed, with an explicit objective in mind: to satisfy the needs of both the consumer and the company involved. Reaching this objective requires a full understanding of all features of these experiences and how they relate to satisfying those needs. Therefore, the remainder of this chapter focuses on those features and the various types of experiences they can create, as well as the resulting challenges for businesses and professionals who offer them.

EXPERIENCES

Research specifically dedicated to experiences first emerged in the 1960s, with Thorne (1963) and Maslow (1964) publishing their studies on so-called peak experiences. Thorne refers to a peak experience as one of the most exciting, rich and fulfilling experiences a person has ever had, which is often described as the highlight of one’s life. The opposite of a peak experience would be a nadir experience: an experience that was extremely unpleasant and that represents one of the low points in one’s life. Maslow describes a peak experience as an experience leading to a person transcending ordinary reality and truly perceiving ‘being’ or ultimate reality. He explains that peak experiences are short in duration and accompanied by intense positive emotions and feelings of affection. Contrary to some of his contemporary colleagues, Maslow claims that any person can have a peak experience, whether that person is religious or not. By virtue of this statement, he contributed to peak experiences no longer being the exclusive territory of theology and becoming a topic studied by psychologists and others.

An optimal experience or flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) relates to a different type of experience. Flow represents a mental state in which a person is fully focused on a self-rewarding activity. Flow generally occurs if and when a person is challenged by engaging in an activity to a level that is only just within the reach of that person. If the challenge posed by a specific activity is not in balance with the skill level of the person undertaking it, engaging in that activity will lead to a different experience. If the perceived challenge is higher than their skill level, people will report feelings of arousal, worry or anxiety, whereas a challenge perceived lower than their skill level will lead to people reporting feelings of control, relaxation or boredom. Given that an activity at just the right level requires full attention, people engaged with this type of activity generally lose track of time and place but are also less likely to pay attention to feeling hungry, thirsty or sleepy. Reaching this state is called reaching a state of flow. A state of flow is more likely to occur in work situations than during leisure time. However, artists, such as painters and musicians, and gamers can also experience periods of flow. In one of his follow-up publications, Csikszentmihalyi (2000) describes flow as a state of peak enjoyment, energetic focus and creative concentration experienced by people engaged in adult play but even children can reach that same state while playing.

The flow concept as described by Csikszentmihalyi is similar to how several other authors have described or defined experiences. For instance, O’Sullivan and Spangler (1998) indicate that experiences require involvement and participation of individuals in the consumption stage and those individuals reaching a state of being physically, mentally, emotionally, socially or spiritually engaged. Mossberg (2007) describes experiences as many elements coming together and involving a consumer emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually. What all of these descriptions have in common is that they refer to a situation, activity or event requiring involvement and full attention of the consumer. In some way or another, they also all point out that, as a result, the consumer will temporarily forget about his or her environment, worries, everyday routines and so on.

However, there are also differences in these descriptions. The skill level of a person in a state of flow could very well increase as a result of engaging in that activity and thus the challenge involved with that activity will need to increase as well for that state of flow to be maintained. In other words, flow often incorporates an element of learning, which is not necessarily the case for other types of experiences. This is the reason why some authors make a distinction between an experience, representing a one-off event, and gaining experience or knowledge acquisition. Pine and Gilmore (1999), for instance, refer to staging experiences versus guiding transformations – often also referred to as transformative experiences. Whereas the outcome of staging an experience is a (positive) memory of that particular moment or period, the outcome of guiding transformations is a sustained change in a person with the term guiding referring to both a steering element and the, generally, longer duration of such experiences.

Some researchers have observed similar changes in people as the result of short events, specific situations and encounters that would not necessarily be classified as guiding transformations. Denzin (1992) calls them turning point experiences or epiphanies that ‘rupture routines and lives, and provoke radical redefinitions of the self’ (p. 26). Carù and Cova (2003) observe similar phenomena and call them philosophical experiences. They also make a clear distinction between consumption experiences and consumer experiences. The first relate to staged experiences and the latter to experiences that are facilitated by third parties. A consumption experience would then be a restaurant staging the experience of enjoying a great dinner with high quality food and beverages. A consumer experience could take place in that same restaurant but the actual experience revolves around catching up with an old friend, which you do while enjoying that dinner and which is thereby facilitated by the restaurant.

A final type of experience that deserves mentioning here is the so-called extraordinary experience (Abrahams, 1986) or extended experience (Arnould & Price, 1993). Both refer to experiences that are not based on a single event, situation or encounter but on a temporary extended series of events that include elements of novelty and discovery, but not necessarily learning. People that have had such an experience would usually refer to it as a single entity because they were immersed in that specific environment for a longer period of time. This type of experience is different from flow and guiding transformations because it does not necessarily lead to a sustained change in a person. A multi-day river rafting trip, a visit to Disney World or backpacking in the Himalayas represent examples of experiences that could qualify as an extraordinary or extended experience. They would almost certainly create strong memories and involve new discoveries but do not have to lead to changes in people and their behaviour, or increase their skill levels. If they do, you would refer to (specific events, situations or encounters during) these experiences as turning points, guiding transformations or a state of flow.

By now, it is clear that the word ‘experience’ can refer to many different things and is interpreted differently by different people. However, it is also clear that all of these different types of experiences have some elements in common: they all relate to events, situations or encounters that demand attention and involvement of people experiencing them and they all lead to some form of memories or learning in combination with specific emotions. In fact, we could categorise (see Figure 1.1) almost all of the different types of experiences mentioned earlier based on their position on two axes or dimensions. The first dimension relates to the duration of the experience, ranging from short, one-off events or encounters that could literally only last a few seconds or minutes to series of events and encounters or specific situations that could last days or even weeks. The second dimension relates to the outcome of the experience and ranges from a (positive or negative) memory to a (radical) sustained change in the person(s) involved.

FIGURE 1.1 Typology of experiences

Truly understanding and distinguishing between all the various types of experiences and their features can be quite a challenge – let alone purposely designing, staging and managing the particular experience that a particular consumer craves at a particular moment in time in a way that also benefits the company offering that experience. The purpose of this book is to assist businesses and (future) professionals in doing so. However, it focuses on only three out of the four categories of experiences displayed in Figure 1.1. So-called epiphanies or philosophical experiences are not explicitly addressed because they represent a category of experiences that would normally be beyond the scope of experience providers in the domain of events, tourism and hospitality. In fact, this applies to businesses and professionals in most other domains as well. Epiphanies and philosophical experiences are psychologically complex and their occurrence is highly dependent on the situation, history and mental state of the person(s) involved. As such, these experiences are almost never purposely designed, staged and managed within the context of an economic transaction between a company and a consumer. In contrast, experiences that fall into one of the other three categories displayed in Figure 1.1 could all very well be at the centre of such transactions.

A peak experience or memorable encounter

Peak experiences or memorable encounters constitute the first category of experiences that could purposely be designed, staged and managed by businesses and professionals. They usually relate to one-off events or encounters, or situations that do not last for a long time, and their outcome is a (lasting) memory of that event, situation or encounter. Obviously, this memory could be linked to positive emotions but also to negative ones. These emotions have usually been triggered by an element of the event, situation or encounter that was out of the ordinary or different than expected. A typical example of an encounter that could trigger positive emotions would be a waiter in a restaurant responding to customers in a way that makes them feel special, whereas a typical example linked to negative emotions would be that same waiter being rude. A specific dish tasting like something you have never experienced before could have the same effect, both in a positive and negative way – serving raw chicken will do the trick when it comes to the latter. Obviously, this type of experiences is key to being successful in the events, tourism and hospitality industries and many other domains.

An extended experience or extraordinary experience

Extended and extraordinary experiences differ from peak experiences and memorable encounters with respect to their duration. This type of experiences usually lasts for several days or even weeks. However, they are not aimed at changing people or learning. Extended and extraordinary experiences are also mostly self-steered rather than guided. Based on these characteristics they also differ from transformative experiences. Similar to peak experiences and memorable encounters, their ultimate effect is a (lasting) memory linked to specific emotions. Even though these experiences consist of several events or encounters that take place over a longer period of time, the whole period is remembered as one entity or story. They are also immersive by nat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of case studies
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Designing, staging and managing experiences
• Part II Sustainable development and the role of businesses and professionals
• Part III Co-creating sustainable experiences