Dare To Be Different

Twenty-five years ago, business professors Morris Holbrook of Columbia Business School in New York City and Elizabeth Hirschman of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, began researching experience as a factor in marketing, Schmitt says. They published their findings in a scholarly journal in 1982. Some companies, however, recognized the value of experience even earlier. Walt Disney, in particular, is an oft-mentioned pioneer. By attending to details such as piping the aroma of freshly-baked cookies into Disneyworld's Main Street, the entertainment giant turned an amusement park visit into a memorable and highly marketable experience.

Offering an experience means more than merely giving good service, stresses Carbone. Experience encompasses far finer details, including such things as the smell of the showroom or the feel of the floor. In fact, ideally, all the senses will be engaged for your customers, and their emotions, too.

Experience comes into play before and after the sale. For instance, Carbone told a health-care client that keeping fresh paint on the curbs in the parking lot would improve patients' experience before they even entered the facility.

Managing experience is also different from quality management. "Quality programs are about the elimination of negatives," says Carbone. "They don't build the things that make the experience of dealing with you so different that your customers won't buy from anyone else."

This article was originally published in the September 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Dare To Be Different.