1st Edition

Memorable Customer Experiences A Research Anthology

By Joëlle Vanhamme, Adam Lindgreen Copyright 2009

    Experiential marketing - or memorable customer experiences - is proving a popular tool amongst businesses seeking to make an impact in a competitive world. Yet the scramble to achieve a presence among experience providers has led many companies to design and implement experiential marketing without integrating it with their overall marketing strategy. These companies often end up dissatisfying their customers rather than delighting them. This research anthology investigates different angles of experiential marketing. The 16 chapters are organised in six sections. The first section considers whether memorable customer experiences result from the use of traditional marketing practices, perhaps implemented more effectively than previously, or require entirely new practices with new foundations that turn companies into experience providers. Section two details ways businesses seek to build brands through putting experiential marketing into practice, while section three asks whether there are general principles that can be applied to the design of customer experiences which ensure successful outcomes whatever market you may operate in. Section four examines how companies manage their customer experiences once they have made the strategic decision to provide them, and section five looks at methods available to evaluate the success of these customer experiences. 'Experiential marketing changes everything!' claim the management gurus, but is it really so significant that not joining this race is dangerous? The last section of the book offers a much needed critique of experiential marketing.

    List of Figures, List of Tables, About the Editors, About the Contributors, Introduction, Part I Conceptual Foundations, Chapter 1. Experiential Marketing: Understanding the Logic of Memorable Customer Experiences, Chapter 2. Experiential Marketing and Brand Experiences: A Conceptual Framework, Part II. Brands and Brand Communities, Chapter 3. Tally Ho, Chocs Away! The Morgan Motoring Experiences, Chapter 4. Hush, It’s a Secret: How Trappist Breweries Create and Maintain Images of Authenticity Using Customer Experiences, Chapter 5. Brand Communities as Experience Drivers: Empirical Research Findings, Chapter 6. Orchestrating the Experience: Authorship of the Soul. The Case of Mag Nation Melbourne, Part III. Design of Customer Experiences, Chapter 7. Balancing Act: The Impact of Rational and Emotional Designs on Memorable Customer Experiences, Chapter 8 Reflections on Ultra-Fine Dining Experiences, Chapter 9. Co-Production in Memorable Service Encounters: Three Hot Chocolates in Belgium, Part IV. Management of Customer Experiences, Chapter 10. Oh Yeah, I Remember That Store! Memory, Experience, and Value, Chapter 11. Managing Hospitality Experiences: Las Vegas Style, Chapter 12. Considerations in Creating Memorable Tour Experiences, Part V. Methodological Issues 209, Chapter 13. Made it More Memorable? Evaluating the Customer’s Emotional Experience, Chapter 14. The Surprise–Delight Relationship Revisited in the Management of Experience, Part VI. Critique of Experiential Marketing, Chapter 15. Please Hold, Your Call is Important to Us: Some Thoughts on Unspeakable Customer Experiences, Chapter 16. Manufacturing Memorable Consumption Experiences from Ivy and Ivory: The Business Model, Customer Orientation, and Distortion of Academic Values in the Post-Millennial University, Index

    Biography

    Dr. Adam Lindgreen is Professor of Strategic Marketing at the Business School at the University of Hull. He is the author of Managing Market Relationships (2008) and co-editor of The Crisis of Food Brands: Sustaining Safe, Innovative and Competitive Food Supply (2009) and of The New Cultures of Food: Marketing Opportunities from Ethnic, Religious and Cultural Diversity (2009). Dr. Michael Beverland is Professor of Marketing with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology with expertise in branding and consumer behaviour. Dr. Beverland is co-author of Why Women Shop (Wiley, 2005) Dr. Joëlle Vanhamme is Associate Professor with the IESEG School of Management, Lille Catholic University'. She is co-editor of The Crisis of Food Brands: Sustaining Safe, Innovative and Competitive Food Supply (2009).

    'Reading this book is itself a memorable experience. The editors promise that the chapters come at the topic of consumer experience from different angles, and it is clear that they do”ethnographic, experimental, structural equation modeling, theoretical, methodological, critical, and more. The chapters take both managerial and behavioral approaches to the topic of consumer experiences and cover a wide variety of experiential contexts including magazine shops, Las Vegas strip resorts, automobiles, hot chocolate, and package tours. They also introduce a rich variety of experiential elements including luxury, authenticity, scents, and surprise. Some of the best of the materials is found in the concluding section with chapters by Brown and Holbrook offering critiques of experiential marketing. Other chapters also examine what can go wrong in delivering memorable consumer experiences, such as the work by Basil and Basil on ultra-fine dining experiences. All in all, this book provides a much richer examination of consumer experiences than most of the earlier academic and managerial books on the topic.' Professor Russell W. Belk, Schulich School of Business, Canada 'The editors have assembled an impressive collection of papers on the elusive topic of experience marketing. From conceptual foundations and brands through the design and management of customer experiences, the topics covered by papers in this volume provide needed insight to any manager hoping to improve the ability of their offering's experience on customers. I heartily recommended it for both managers and academics.' Valarie A. Zeithaml, David S. Van Pelt Distinguished Professor, Kenan-Flagler Business School,University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 'This is a very timely and important collection of papers that provides contemporary thinking on key issues of 21st century marketing in a well-structured and well-balanced format. The editors have done an excellent job in choosing contributions that off