FWIW there is a difference between the direct purchasing of an "experience" for the sake of the experience--bungee jumping, trips to the moon, visits to Disneyland or the Taj Mahal, the use of nail care salons--and the wrapping of the notion of "experience" around marketing/sales and/or management rhetoric.
My original observation still stands I believe, i.e. that the direct purchase of "experiences" has been (contra Keith) a very fast growing new "iconic product" of the late 20th and early 21st centuries and remains so even with a decline among certain financially suffering segments of the populations (trips to Disneyland are down for example... M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2010 12:14 AM To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Both schools are wrong "in the end, opinion is king" If the people are all rushing to one event, or pop star, or new product or whatever then it must be "good" or "interesting" or the need to belong becomes paramount. Then a new something emerges, pop star, movie, product and just as quickly a cohort of the population rushes to "experience" this by somehow being associated with the "product". And soon another and another and another. Media and the net accelerate this process. "round and round it goes and where it stops, nobody knows" Arthur -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 1:04 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: Both schools are wrong Mike G. wrote: > The largest and fastest growing consumer good (both elite and mass) is > the "experience industry" including.... I've noticed this notion being applied to almost everthing. Google for "shopping experience", get 5 million hits, in most of which [1] "experience" means "subjective perception of an event". Google "investing experience", get 40,000 hits, in most of which [1] "experience" means "expertise acquired from prolonged practice". I suppose the the notion is that if, when buying a product or a service, you have, yew know, a Good Time -- if it's, like, *fun*, y'know? -- then you won't know or care if it's cheesy product, sloppy service, hasty surgery or you hadda stand in line for two hours to get your burger. It's the *experience*. Interesting piece in the Report on Business mag [2] blow-in in the Globe & Mail today. Spins Mike's comment and Keith's thesis into a yarn. You don't need an altogether new product, you just need a branded version that the consumer must suffer to acquire. Primo example cited: Hamburgers from Shake Shack in Madison Square (NYC). You gotta stand in line for a couple of hours to get what is essentially an undistinguished hamburger with standard condiments. The status accrues to the fact of having suffered the lineup, the *experience* of pain to get the status object that is a status object only because you have to suffer pain to get one. Reminds me of shopping in Soviet Moscow. You have no idea what they're selling but it was a long line so it must be at least beets so you got in line. Tangentially, the venerable G&M must be schizophrenic -- well, have multiple personality disorder? The RoB mag has a long piece praising Canadian mining investors for slogging away for over 25 years to create a gold mine in NW Romania. Of course, some villagers object because the Canucks will strip the whole countryside around the village down to rubble and tailings and obliterate the area's only historic and tourist site, an intact Roman underground gold mine. But jeez, they're going to create lotsa *jobs* and make a lot of money. Go for it, Guys! OTOH, they have that "Pain Principle" article more or less ridiculing consumers as suckers and another that is headlined, "Wall Street CEOs insist that they're not like the sharks you see in Oliver Stone movies. The trouble is, they are." And another entitled "They won't stay dead" suggesting that commercial bankers, whom they call BSDs [3], are recovering from.. umm.. lets say, a bad zombie experience, and are about to once again become parasites on retail banks. Added trivium: The same mag has over a hundred mug shots with bio squibbs of lawyers and related professionals speciallizing in corporate "insolvency and restucturing". Today's biz celebs, eh? Only one step down froM People Who Own Professional Sports Teams. - Mike [1] Most? Well, okay, most of the first 30 hits. [2] RoB, Nov 2010, v.27,No.3. Apparently on-line only for subscribers at factiva.com. [3] BSD: Big Swinging Dicks. You had to look... -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
