Experiential_Marketing_Application

Introduction Nowadays, in the changing and competitive economy environment, the service industry has become a main focus of attention. An important part of this environment is that many companies are trying to distinguish themselves as creating a unforgettable customer experience through their products and services. Identifying appropriate characteristics that affect the experience requires the company to create a unique experience to the customer and getting a better understanding of how they influence consumers' perception of product value (ANDREW, 2009). Therefore, the experience marketing has become the cornerstone of the latest progress places as brand promotion, event marketing and retailing (Williams, 2006). However, when it refers to the tourism and hotel industry marketing strategy, there is not so much clear relative theory and information. The development of marketing and promotion is the most significant factor to the success of the hotel and tourism industry, however, the of nature of it often simplistic and neglected. The readily is that the traditional tourism marketing tends to pay a lot of attentions on the determination of the purpose of the tourists, but could not persuade them to consume different things (Williams, 2006). More importantly, tourism marketing and hotel products have become increasingly complex, they should not only deliver the image of the industry, but also give the consumer a unique experience (Chen, 2008). In the past few years, many researchers have discussed many characteristics of this industry, which shows that, this industry is different from other products and services, take the the purchase decision for example, it is on the base of expectation and perception of the place, rather than the past experience (Petkus, 2002). It becomes more and more complex to study on the behavior of consumers, as a result, there should be more attention paid to the nature of the tourism and hotel and the contemporary consumer (ANDREW, 2009). Tourism and hotel offers different spaces for people to consume. Theme park, hotel, restaurant, and bar provides the increasingly complex consumer with more and more opportunities to consume. The hotel and tourism industry has become the most important economic activities, which may be due to the changes of supply and requirement. The changes show that there is a requirement of qualitative and diversification consumption in the hotel and tourism industry (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). This paper will firstly review the literatures about the shift from traditional to the customer-experience based economy and the impact of customer experience on brand equity in the services setting. And then, this paper will also use with some detailed examples to study how the companies in the tourism and hotel industry create experience for their consumers and what the impacts of the e-marketing on customers and market behavior. At last, some suggestions and implications will be given to the marketers in the tourism and hotel industry. Literature review 2.1 The shift to the customer-experience based economy About 40 years ago, the futurist Alvin Toffler (1970) pointed out that a shift will profoundly affect the products and services and then lead the economy to the next age, which is called as “experience industry”. The experience or experience dimensions is a combination of many individuals that get together, which may involve consumers’ emotional, physical and mental elements (ANDREW, 2009). Experience dimensions examples might include the physical environment, social environment and other consumers. Carlson (1997) estimates that experience can be described as the thoughts or feelings that occurred in the the moment of consciousness. Actually, organizations can not grant consumers the experience. Instead of that, the organizations can only create environments and circumstances in which the consumers can have an experience (ANDREW, 2009). It is the consumer or travelers that puts the resources together in the consumer experience as the production of tourist experience as to add the link in the production chain. That is to say, the experience consumed by the customer occur inside the people and the results or the consumer experience should be on the dependence of how customer reacted to the staged encounter, according to particular circumstances or mental state (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). In the modern service industry, a lot of attentions have been paid to create experience for customers. Some researchers believed that, as the society has provided an increasing number of commercialized products and services, the enterprises must look for new ideas and marketing strategies to distinguish themselves from their competitors (Williams, 2006). What the consumers want is more than the products and services , but experience, interpersonal relationship, and the stories behind the business (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). To achieve this goal, the company should focus on the design and delivery of service experience in order to increase the customer satisfactory and , eventually, the customer loyalty. In Pine and Gilmore(1999)’s description of the customer experience based economy, they argued that the desire of consumers is not only the producing, delivering and consuming of products and services; on the contrary, they seek a unique event, with products and services as to create a memorable experience. Pine and Gilmore (1999) think, the company should shift their focus from the "make and inventory" goods economy and the "delivery" service economy, which focus on high quality products and services to an economy whose emphasis is on "staged" experience, and eventually creating unforgettable consumption experience. They define experience as "event that engages an individual in a personal way" (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). The way that the companies create and design experiences for the consumers is also called as experience marketing. 2.2 The effect of customer experience on brand equity The experiential concept is adopted in lots of models by some branding researchers, who provided limited evidence as how customer experience directly impacts some dimensions of brand equity and how did they indirectly influence of the overall brand equity. In Biedenbach and Marell(2010)’s study, they proposed the concept model in which considering the 4 dimensions of Aaker’s (1991) brand equity model, and investigate the direct effect of customer on these 4 dimensions of brand equity. Brand awareness is regarded as a critical way for the customer to develop the brand preference. For repeated direct experience, improve product knowledge and professional judgment to promote brand awareness and customer do the possibility of recall. What is more, individual interaction between the organization and customers in the service industry may lead to a positive experience in which creating a stronger belief based on the experience which may have a positive effect on the overall brand awareness. As a result, Biedenbach and Marell(2010) make a conclusion that there is a positive impact of customer experience on brand awareness. A direct experience is one of most important ways to build a strong brand benefits and attributes association in the particular consumers’ memory. Direct experience in product testing will lead to a stronger association, held that allow the creation of brand difference by the interaction between the service provider and consumers. When the consumers encountered with their employees, they may form a positive and favorable judgment, which will make a contribution to the formation of positive brand association. In addition, when the consumers encounter a service with customer experience creating, Product testing as an important method to the brand knowledge, because the basis of experience, become a brand association. In other words, positive and favorable customer experience may create a positive brand association. Therefore, Biedenbach and Marell(2010) concluded that there is a positive effect of customer experience on brand associations. Many researchers believe that only very few people pay attention to understanding the customer experience affects the quality of service attitude. However, recent studies have shown that perception is closely related to performance, therefore, the quality of the product knowledge test and a certain degree of experience overall quality evaluation is necessary. In general, the product testing is as an important part of, because it provides evidence of personal learning, impact the performance of the product. Customer must evaluate services or products are mainly based on their perception of the brand name to experience them. However, when the customers have the opportunity to try our products, they will get more information, further combining with their perception of the quality. Considering the quality of service is only in the eyes of the consumers, the perception of quality is considered to be high in high customer expectations, confirm the follow-up service delivery ( Biedenbach & Marell, 2010). When the customer expectations, negative experience will lead to a negative evaluation of the quality. Therefore, there is a positive influence on perceived quality of the customer experience. In order to improve customer loyalty, improve the company's recognition, a good user experience is critical to achieve these goals. Satisfaction, participation in and presided over the role of experience in brand loyalty is high risk in some professional service, and understand before buying experience is the key to develop brand loyalty. Based on the fact that the service evaluation mainly happens in the consumer, previous customer experience has important influence on brand choice. High and long lasting brand loyalty is through a positive experience, a brand over time. As a result, customers will understand from previous negative experiences and avoid these negative interactions by stopping to buy these goods and services. According to these findings, Biedenbach and Marell(2010) believed that customer experience have a positive impact on brand loyalty. In conclusion, it could be a significant factor for the positive customer experience influencing customers' brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality, and even their loyalty to the brand ( Biedenbach & Marell, 2010). 3.Creating the customer experience in the tourism sector The design of marketing strategies is the most important part of experience in the tourism industry. In fact, many tourism enterprises and organizations are trying to apply this kind of marketing. One of the earliest organizations applying the experiential marketing is the Disney theme park in the United States. It is a revolution in the entertainment industry when Disney park opened in America. Disney park is the place that American people really want, instead of that the cartoonist has to draw for them. Somebody said that it is just like a symbol of the United States utopia (Williams, 2006). The cast is always in the cartoon character, whether they are acting sleeping beauty or serving coffee in the Disney restaurant. It is worth mentioning that the key successful factors of Disney’s achievement is their cooperation with ABC company through the use of new TV media in marketing strategy. As a return of the fund, Disney try to design and produce a weekly TV Disney cartoon series. The Disneyland and Disney Park is a visual display of Disney. As a result, this series featured a weekly rotation display in the Disney park. Nowadays, this program has become a platform to update the audience's perception in the park construction and expanding all over the world (Williams, 2006). This process is still continuous, and in the past sixty years , there are many popular films based on Disney character, for example, the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series is regard as very successful. However, it is strange that there are very few tourism companies trying to imitate Disney’s successful marketing strategy in the past few years (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). In the entertainment industry, the nature includes Remote sensing, Escapist Realm doing, Education Realm learning, and the Esth-etic Realm (Petkus, 2002). Because the four realms are not mutually exclusive, rich experience to consumers including the 4 aspects are producing the sweet spot in order to meet the four realms and only the four realms incorporate together that can create a rich experience. As a result, Walt Disney World is a good example of the four realms model that provide customers with rich experiences, as they not only emphasize their staff, but also focus on the environment and background regions (Williams, 2006). Only the company’s products have been defined that can apply experiential consumption properly (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). Another examples is Irish first tourist attractions: the Guinness as well as the Guinness house. The marketing manager of Guinness house said that the house is intended to promote sales of the Guinness all around the world, they created over 2500,000 brand ambassador to talk about Guinness (Jauhari, 2009). The experience in the house includes many aspects like education and theme project, fantastic souvenirs, the sense of participation and seeking for feedback (Williams, 2006). In particular, there is a postcard wall in the Guinness house, which is a platform for people to write feedback for Guinness. Actually, this is a great attempt because other tourists will see the feedback written on the wall. When people see others reaction to it, they don't feel like to be spun, and this is a different respect for Guinness. It is clear that the experiential consumption is different for every customer in tourism industry. The interaction between consumers and the environment provides a definition about experience of emotional and cognitive reactions which is synchronized and interacted when they consume the experience in the tourism industry. Creating customer experience in the hotel sector There are many examples in the hotel sector that applying the experience marketing, companies such as the MGM Le Grand Hotel and Casino has taken the wake-up call into consideration, in order to give their guests an unforgettable experience through the records celebrity voice (Williams, 2006). And there is another example that the L'Ermitage Hotel in Raffles charge consumers 24 hours day rate rather than the room rate (Williams, 2006). In particular, the best example is the spa, which are increasingly marketed as experiences. For example, the Thalassotherapy Centre of Carnac talks about its advantage as its location is just one hundred meters away from the sea (Williams, 2006). If we compare this to the fit rooms and swimming pools introduced as amenities in many hotels during the 1980s and 1990s, most of them give little or even no different experience, which is generally seen as a sinking cost. Even though we have seen many examples of hospitality organizations adopting experiential marketing, there are few to perform it well, and even its nature is often being misunderstood. Many hotel organization believed that they are creating experience for their guests, but the truth is that they just used the old marketing strategy. Taking the Tourism Division and Ohio travel for example, they adopted the experiential marketing in their marketing strategies in order to create a new brand image and feeling (Williams, 2006). However, they still adopted some traditional ways as the printing, TV, radio, and broadcasting. What is more, they also use some traditional advertising and public relations to stimulate sales. While in the same way the Canadian Tourism Commission suggests that their new companies are applying the use of experiential marketing (Williams, 2006). They believed that the potential passengers will not be given a special picture of Canada, but will be inspired to come, explore and reach their own conclusions. In fact, this is not experiential marketing, either, due to the fact that their media and methods are just from the traditional marketing (Carù & Cova, 2003). Therefore, As has been suggested when referring to the Canadian Tourism marketing strategy, there is a big problem that how can you create a positive experience when the experience has not been defined (Williams, 2006)' Experiential marketing is a relatively new direction in the marketing development, whose aim is to win in the developed countries. Therefore, it should offer the consumers a different way of consumption compared to the traditional one. There are many difference ways between the traditional marketing and experience marketing. Traditional marketing believed that consumers are rational decision makers, their focus are on product features and benefits, while the experiential marketing thought that customer are very emotional, and the focus should be on the creation of pleasant experience (Williams, 2006). The experience are achieved through “experience providers” by the communication, visual and verbal recognition and media experience. And the goal of the experience marketing is to build an overall experience with personalized experience and a comprehensive gestalt and help to develop their own brand equity (Schmitt, 1999). The effect of E-marketing on creating customer experience The advancement of information technology caused the essence of marketing of tourism and hotel fundamentally changed. Therefore, old marketing activities has been changed into electronic marketing, help an organization to create some different forms of network marketing in these places (Andrlić & Ružić, 2010). In the 90's to share the development of the international information network has opened up the probability of a new marketing practice. The network marketing company provide tourism products and services a new distribution and communication channel. At the same time, the changes in information technology is a potential entity enterprise customers and build customer relationship lasting threats and stimulate, maintain the relationship marketing theory. The Internet can help customer contact business entities, at any time, day or night anywhere, because it provides for the purchase of all the necessary knowledge (Andrlić & Ružić, 2010). This knowledge can be on the base on specific to the different customers’ demands. what is more, the Internet is a easy way that helps clients find effective competition of information. The Internet provides a quick visit with great diversity related information than ever before, the book is quick and easy in the hotel all users everywhere. Tourism products or services online sales as they in the electronic environment is one of the many essential functions useful for. In fact, the main characteristics of three products and the influence of network information retrieval and online shopping services. They are: the purchase cost and frequency values, propose and degree of differentiation. (Andrlić & Ružić, 2010) Tourism products to our higher than any other tangible consumer products don't participate in a higher degree of differentiation level, therefore, it is very easy to sell it through the site. The development of electronic communication is very important for tourism marketers sell perishable, heterogeneous, intangible and high-risk products. More importantly, the simple description of the nature of the many tourism products also promotes the advancement of e-commerce (Andrlić & Ružić, 2010). Network marketing in tourism marketing theory and practice is very important. Therefore, we can realize the goal of marketing using Internet and other electronic technology. If we analyze the world in the past 10 years, the number of Internet users, there is a significant increase. Meanwhile, the same record of the growth trends of the world tourism market (Andrlić & Ružić, 2010). Travel and many other relative business has changed the old methods of knowledge , communication and promotion. Generally speaking , in the online tourism business, there is a growth in market share year by year. As a result, the European online travel market value increase rapidly from 1998 to 1998 (Anon., 2013). The trends of increasing online tourism market size in Europe from 1998 to 2009 [pic] In fact, the network marketing has become an important medium for hotel enterprises. The technology also helps to improve the hotel revenue management. However, at present, in some countries, the hotel's website is just a tool, has great potentiality, to establish a close connection necessary to major search engines (Jauhari, 2009). It is more and more obvious, international visitors to use online booking service, click the mouse button is very quick and easy to get a large number of people. For hotel operators, the main advantage is that can be done online, it provides the elimination of fees and the prospect of direct communication with customers. In addition, customers feel more so that he can decide when and how to pay. While in some countries as China, they are lagging behind in this area, site need to increase the skills, so that they can use in this world, there is a market opportunity. The hotel and tourism enterprises in the importance of increasing consumer advisory website, illustrated guide to consumer choice is also very important (Andrlić & Ružić, 2010). In a word, with the development of modern communication technology and digital technology, the rapid development of network technology, provides many a lot of possibilities in the tourism industry. it seems that these people will be like other resources to decide whether to buy the tourism industry (Andrlić & Ružić, 2010). In addition, the Internet has become the hotel enterprises to change their position is to provide visitors a high level of service competition. With the development of technology, it is necessary to research on the effects of consumer behavior within this industry (Jauhari, 2009). Use of Internet in the tourism service for factors influencing consumer decision-making, two main factors to save time and convenient use of the users of the site. We can draw such a conclusion, the network marketing will grow significantly faster and significantly. 6.Implication and conclusion In short, the experience marketing is the current in one direction of marketing strategy, and the tourism and hotel service industry is very important in applying this strategy. In particular, many companies in the industry is changing from traditional ones and useful method of experiential marketing (Williams, 2006). In addition, it is likely to affect consumer brand awareness, an important factor, positive customer experience, brand association, perceived quality, and even their brand loyalty ( Biedenbach & Marell, 2010). In addition, with the development of modern communication technology and digital technology, the rapid development of network technology, provides many new possibilities in the tourism marketing (Andrlić & Ružić, 2010). Lastly, we find that, tourism and hotel industry is not considered the marketing direction immune basic change. Innovation experience design will become the core competitiveness of these enterprises is more and more important. Only those who make advancement in their excellent service and market experience can lead this industry (Williams, 2006). This study presents evidence may have many beneficial enlightenment: first, marketing personnel should pay more attention to the customer experience and their way of life, it provides consumers with a cognitive and sensory, relationship value (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). Secondly, they need to focus on creating synergies in consumption, meaning, cognitive, and brand loyalty. And, as a matter of fact, the customer is not logical, but the impact of decision makers or motives ration (Williams, 2006). In addition, Experience marketing requires different research ways to understand their customers. Diversity and uniqueness, we need a new, more subjective approach to search, but not the same (Morgan, 2002). What is more, marketing managers should create more positive customer experience value, which may lead to more favorable reaction, this brand a brand and a higher value of the future ( Biedenbach & Marell, 2010). Lastly, a useful tourism electronic commerce is the meaning, strategy is more likely with rich content in the tourism electronic commerce website design, relative to a competitor's site. A competitor's site should have differences in the abundance of the knowledge and useful information. Therefore, the site should be useful and customers in different information keeping ability. All the three factors together, the impact of online customer purchase behavior. Although the electronic commerce tourism is one of the most important of the hotel and tourism industry at present, relative importance in their growing. As a result, the marketing personnel should design the tourism electronic commerce website effectively (Andrlić & Ružić, 2010). Reference Biedenbach, G. & Marell, A., 2010. The impact of customer experience on brand equity in a business-to-business services setting. Brand Management, p. 446–458. Aaker , D. A., 1991. 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