THE STORE BECOME THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE VENUE AND PR
Josep Pine and James Gilmore's essay "Welcome to the Experience Economy," published in the prestigious Harvard Business Review in July-August 1998, was written by two writers, consultants, and friends that were establishing a new perspective for organisations to produce market value with their proposals and metaphors. The evolution of a birthday cake was regarded as the chronicle of economic progress in that essay. Mothers in ancient times started with raw materials and agriculture - flour, eggs, sugar - and blended according to unwritten recipes: the cake was handcrafted and cost a few cents. With the advent of the product economy, women spent a few dollars in their trusted stores to purchase semi-finished or pre-blended items. Then came the economy of services, in which parents (no longer just mothers!) always very busy bought a cake from their confectioner or baker for 10-15 dollars, paying the same price about 10 times that of the sum of the ingredients.
In the very stressed 90s parents no longer prepare the cake, even buy it, not even organise the birthday party: now they spend $ 100 or more and opt for an outsourcing of the entire birthday event, which must be a memorable event. Such an event could be organised and managed by a point of sale, which now becomes a place to spend pleasant time and buy products and services. Thus was born the economy of experiences, the fourth stage in the evolution of economic progress. The ability to create experiences helps businesses strengthen their competitive advantage and enables them to position themselves in premium segments.
The book published the following year by Pine and Gilmore themselves will describe and explain the experience economy, and to specify in the sub-title
that "work is a theatre and every business a stage": the world of work is a theatre and businesses are stages on which they set up spectacular events to excite and involve the participants. .
In the experience economy, experience is configured as a container of value for both the company and the consumer, that is, a new form of offer to create a competitive advantage.
In the "experiential view" of Holbrook and Hirschman, the consumption of products and services is an experiential phenomenon that also involves sensory pleasure, aesthetic satisfaction, emotions, and is aimed at the search for "fantasies, feelings and fun" . If before the important aspects were the tangible benefits, the monetary cost, the verbal stimuli, the systematic and schematic acquisition of information, the satisfaction given by the usefulness of the product, now we must also consider the symbolic and emotional benefits, the cost in terms of time, non-verbal stimuli, exploration, satisfaction generated by the experience of consumption and use. The perspective of the customer experience that helps to interpret the individual's journey towards the purchase (the customer journey) thus joins the perspective of the customer relationship, and integrates it: the points of sale are places where valuable experiences are built, that create and nurture relationships of trust with customers. It is precisely the commercial companies, which traditionally perform a function of connection between the offer proposed by industrial companies and the needs expressed by the demand, that represent a central subject in the new economy of experiences, a "node" in which connections materialise between supply and demand. In this context, the point of sale not only performs the traditional functions of a place of sale or a place of purchase, but proposes itself as a fundamental "customer experience and relationship platform" capable of performing "advanced connection" functions. between companies upstream of the value chain and end customers. In Italy there are almost one million points of sale: there are therefore one million store managers responsible for distribution "systems". The latter are configured in a very varied way: from large shopping centres to hypermarkets, from cash & carry to wholesale centres, from very large specialised shops, which are developed on surfaces of tens of thousands of square meters, to small sites managed by a single employee. A considerable number of subjects and companies of very different sizes, with very different competitive positions, which must equip themselves to take up the challenge of creating engaging customer experiences and lasting relationships by transforming their point of sale into a theatre of experiences and a platform relational. Managing a point of sale with these purposes implies important changes, which cannot be limited to the simple redefinition of the environment or the adoption of one-to-one promotional and communication mechanisms. Becoming a platform of experiences and relationships means profoundly changing the strategy of the company, the functions of the point of sale and its value creation processes. This new text proposes an approach to store management that integrates these two dimensions: the creation of experiences and the development of trusting relationships with customers. It intends to provide store managers with stimuli and suggestions to initiate a cultural transformation of the store function, which places the "Customer centricity" at the center of attention.
The literature on retail, both national and international, tends to assign the points of sale a primarily peripheral function. The shop is frequently thought of as the location where strategic decisions made elsewhere, usually at the head office or purchasing group level, are made and concretised. as a whole, delving into the details of the judgments made in the center, away from the points of sale Our approach aims to go beyond, proposing to begin with an examination of the activities and functions that occur on the periphery, at the point of sale, where the client and the offer collide. The company's core is interpreted as a service activity for shop management, whose major goal is the acquisition of solid assets and lasting relationships with customers.
The identification and understanding of the value creation processes that take place inside the store is of primary interest to us, as we believe that the point of sale, an object that has been overlooked by both academic and managerial literature, is the true vector of value creation for the commercial enterprise. The decision to take this method was influenced by changes in the commercial sector on an institutional, competitive, and managerial level.
Josep Pine and James Gilmore's essay "Welcome to the Experience Economy," published in the prestigious Harvard Business Review in July-August 1998, was written by two writers, consultants, and friends that were establishing a new perspective for organisations to produce market value with their proposals and metaphors. The evolution of a birthday cake was regarded as the chronicle of economic progress in that essay. Mothers in ancient times started with raw materials and agriculture - flour, eggs, sugar - and blended according to unwritten recipes: the cake was handcrafted and cost a few cents. With the advent of the product economy, women spent a few dollars in their trusted stores to purchase semi-finished or pre-blended items. Then came the economy of services, in which parents (no longer just mothers!) always very busy bought a cake from their confectioner or baker for 10-15 dollars, paying the same price about 10 times that of the sum of the ingredients.
In the very stressed 90s parents no longer prepare the cake, even buy it, not even organise the birthday party: now they spend $ 100 or more and opt for an outsourcing of the entire birthday event, which must be a memorable event. Such an event could be organised and managed by a point of sale, which now becomes a place to spend pleasant time and buy products and services. Thus was born the economy of experiences, the fourth stage in the evolution of economic progress. The ability to create experiences helps businesses strengthen their competitive advantage and enables them to position themselves in premium segments.
The book published the following year by Pine and Gilmore themselves will describe and explain the experience economy, and to specify in the sub-title
that "work is a theatre and every business a stage": the world of work is a theatre and businesses are stages on which they set up spectacular events to excite and involve the participants. .
In the experience economy, experience is configured as a container of value for both the company and the consumer, that is, a new form of offer to create a competitive advantage.
In the "experiential view" of Holbrook and Hirschman, the consumption of products and services is an experiential phenomenon that also involves sensory pleasure, aesthetic satisfaction, emotions, and is aimed at the search for "fantasies, feelings and fun" . If before the important aspects were the tangible benefits, the monetary cost, the verbal stimuli, the systematic and schematic acquisition of information, the satisfaction given by the usefulness of the product, now we must also consider the symbolic and emotional benefits, the cost in terms of time, non-verbal stimuli, exploration, satisfaction generated by the experience of consumption and use. The perspective of the customer experience that helps to interpret the individual's journey towards the purchase (the customer journey) thus joins the perspective of the customer relationship, and integrates it: the points of sale are places where valuable experiences are built, that create and nurture relationships of trust with customers. It is precisely the commercial companies, which traditionally perform a function of connection between the offer proposed by industrial companies and the needs expressed by the demand, that represent a central subject in the new economy of experiences, a "node" in which connections materialise between supply and demand. In this context, the point of sale not only performs the traditional functions of a place of sale or a place of purchase, but proposes itself as a fundamental "customer experience and relationship platform" capable of performing "advanced connection" functions. between companies upstream of the value chain and end customers. In Italy there are almost one million points of sale: there are therefore one million store managers responsible for distribution "systems". The latter are configured in a very varied way: from large shopping centres to hypermarkets, from cash & carry to wholesale centres, from very large specialised shops, which are developed on surfaces of tens of thousands of square meters, to small sites managed by a single employee. A considerable number of subjects and companies of very different sizes, with very different competitive positions, which must equip themselves to take up the challenge of creating engaging customer experiences and lasting relationships by transforming their point of sale into a theatre of experiences and a platform relational. Managing a point of sale with these purposes implies important changes, which cannot be limited to the simple redefinition of the environment or the adoption of one-to-one promotional and communication mechanisms. Becoming a platform of experiences and relationships means profoundly changing the strategy of the company, the functions of the point of sale and its value creation processes. This new text proposes an approach to store management that integrates these two dimensions: the creation of experiences and the development of trusting relationships with customers. It intends to provide store managers with stimuli and suggestions to initiate a cultural transformation of the store function, which places the "Customer centricity" at the center of attention.
The literature on retail, both national and international, tends to assign the points of sale a primarily peripheral function. The shop is frequently thought of as the location where strategic decisions made elsewhere, usually at the head office or purchasing group level, are made and concretised. as a whole, delving into the details of the judgments made in the center, away from the points of sale Our approach aims to go beyond, proposing to begin with an examination of the activities and functions that occur on the periphery, at the point of sale, where the client and the offer collide. The company's core is interpreted as a service activity for shop management, whose major goal is the acquisition of solid assets and lasting relationships with customers.
The identification and understanding of the value creation processes that take place inside the store is of primary interest to us, as we believe that the point of sale, an object that has been overlooked by both academic and managerial literature, is the true vector of value creation for the commercial enterprise. The decision to take this method was influenced by changes in the commercial sector on an institutional, competitive, and managerial level.
- Teacher: MANUEL PERROTTA
- Teacher: MARIA CRISTINA RIGANO