Experiential positioning
Q: Several weeks ago, we attended your brand positioning seminar and the story you told us about Starbucks left a lasting impression. When our executive committee recently convened, the members were also impressed about what you termed as Starbucks’ “experiential positioning strategy.” The committee chair asked a hard question that we could not answer. He correctly pointed out that Starbucks is a service. He asked: “Does experiential positioning apply only to service and not to consumer durable products like our digital camera? If you say it has equal application, how?” We found this hard to answer because at the seminar, your two other examples were all in service marketing: Disney World and Club Med.
A: Our apologies for giving you misleading and rather restricted examples. Our adopting Christopher Lovelock’s definition of a service must have also contributed to the confusion. In adopting Lovelock, who wrote the most used reference book in services marketing, we said that what you sell in marketing a service is “experience.”
Since we were talking about experiential positioning, it must have been only natural to link this to the selling of a service as an experience.
There were four interrelated elements in the experiencing of the Starbucks service. First was the “core product,” namely, the brewed coffee and other menu items. Then, there’s the “baristas,” or service staff. Related to this was the “servicescapes” which is all about “the style and appearance of the service outlet’s physical surroundings where customers and service providers interact,” as Professor Mary Jo Bitner defines it. Finally, there’s Starbucks’ service processing that brings together in a unique way its brewed coffee, barista and servicescapes.
In the case of your consumer durable product such as a digital camera, how does this multi-dimensional concept of a service apply? Of course, not literally. In the Starbucks service, consumption and production are taking place at the same time. The experiencing of the service is still with the customer, while its performance is with its core product, its barista, servicescapes and service processing. The difference between the Starbucks service and the service from the digital camera, is in that simultaneity of experiencing and performance. In the Starbucks service, it’s simultaneous; with your digital camera, the two are separated in place and time. Production of the camera happens in a factory, way before the customer buys it and experiences using that camera.
The customer experiencing your camera as a “service” is for the most part in the usage stage. In the buying stage, there is already a good deal of experiencing of the service that a buyer expects from the camera. That’s when the buyer “tests” the camera’s features. After the purchase and whenever occasions present themselves, the experiencing of the camera’s service manifests itself.
Where’s the barista? That’s no other than the owner, whenever he or she uses the camera. What about the servicescapes? The usage occasion serves that function. It is also a creation or, more accurately, a selection by the camera owner as well. And the service processing? This too is performed by the owner.
If you think about it then, a consumer does not buy your camera for its sake. One purchases the camera for the “service” that its use will provide. If the owner gets a Starbucks-like satisfaction from the camera’s service, he or she will keep using the camera as a core product. Then, when its product life is over, he or she repurchases.
This is how a consumer durable product, or any consumer good for that matter, is also a “service.” This is how experiential positioning has an equal but subtly different application to your product.
Keep your questions coming. Send them to us at [email protected] or [email protected]. God bless!
