Experiential Marketing

The extent to which Crossword and Planet M delivers the theories and practice of experiential marketing.

Introduction

Brent H. Schmitt (1999, 2003) has coined the new term instead of traditional marketing called experiential marketing and provided a strategic framework for experiential marketing. Traditional marketing views consumers as rational decision makers who care about functional features and benefits. In contrast, experiential marketers view consumers as rational and emotional human beings who are concerned with achieving pleasurable experience. In variety of industries, companies have moved away from traditional “features-and- benefits” marketing toward creating experience for their customers. This shift toward experiential marketing has occurred as a result of three simultaneous developments in the broader business environment. Businesses worldwide are realizing that consumer’s decisions are much more influenced by emotionally generated feeling rather than by rationally derived thought (Shukla,2007).

Experiential marketing is everywhere. In a variety of industries, companies have moved away from traditional “features-and-benefits” marketing towards creating experiences for their customers.

An experience occurs when a company uses services as the stage- and the goods as props- for engaging individuals in a way that creates a memorable event (Pine and Gilmore, 2003). Thus, experiential marketing attempts to evoke a strong emotional (Cognitive) response by the use of sensory technique (Shukla, 2007).

Experiential marketing is said to be practiced when marketers go beyond meeting basic needs to excite the consumers, to build consumers enthusiasm by becoming part of the everyday life experience of the shopper. The experiential approach seeks to indentify behaviors (or attitudes or value sets) held in common across and audience whose demographic characteristics- the traditional basis of segmentation- might be quite diverse (Gautier, 2003). Experiential...