Experience Economy

Let’s say you make TV sets. You sell a TV set to a customer. When is the next time he’ll be your customer? Probably not for many years. By selling him a TV set, you’ve lost him as a potential buyer. Every sale is a loss. Every success is a failure.

This is the problem with selling tangible goods. There are all sorts of limitations on how many you can sell to one person. Space is limited, for one.

Of course, there are all sorts of tricks to bring back the customer. Planned obsolescence is one. But still, tangibles are complicated and needy. You have to ship, store, and employ people to handle the very physical thing you are trying to sell. What a bore.

Many purchases in consumerist societies aren’t about the actual objects but the emotions they evoke. A woman who pays $600 for a handbag isn’t paying for the bag as much as she’s paying for the feeling, for the image of herself as a woman with this kind of a bag.

What if we can exclude the bag from the equation completely? Have the customer pay directly for the emotion?

You can sell an experience endlessly. Emotions can be consumed again and again. They are evanescent, and the need is never saturated. Space is never a limitation. Nothing is. As long as the experience feeds the ego, the customer will only need more and more.

Yesterday, a reader of this blog posted a link to a company that sells the feeling that one is a good parent and is developing her baby’s intellect. This is the experience economy. The parent pays to feel like a good parent. The need in that feeling cannot be exhausted. The customer gives money for whatever combination of images and words on a screen can make her feel a certain way.

This is the neoliberal dream of a business model. Minimal costs, minimal space taken, and most importantly, a minimal number of people employed. Everything is intangible and endlessly renewable.