Heriot Watt University

Experiential Marketing Essay：

Overview

The aim of this assignment is for students to critically explore the concept of the experience

economy and customer experiences.

Over the past decade within leisure and tourism, attention has shifted away from product and

service delivery to the customer’s experiences as the added value element. This shift has been

coined by Pine and Gilmore (1998) as the ‘experience economy’. Simply, the experience economy is

one in which consumers are in search for extraordinary and memorable experiences. Therefore,

organizations must develop and market memorable events and activities for their consumers, and

that memory, or experience, becomes the fundamental element of the product or service offering.

Companies stage an experience when they engage consumers and connect with them in a

personal and memorable way. Experiences are developed over the various touchpoints which are

developed by the organization and are inherent through the consumer consumption stages

(Arnould et al., 2004). As Lemon and Verhoef (2016, p. 71) highlight, the customer experience is

a:

“Multidimensional construct focusing on a customer’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensorial,

and social responses to a firm’s offerings during the customer’s entire purchase journey.”

Customer experiences, both developing and managing, is the core value of the leisure and

tourism consumption process. Therefore, providing tourists with memorable experiences is

central to a highly competitive marketplace. This is essential as customers’ experiences have an

influence on many issues which are critical to organizational success – for example,

differentiation, satisfaction, word-of-moth, hedonism, loyalty, revisit/repurchase, and perceived

quality. However, given the subjective nature of the leisure consumer, developing experiences is

challenging and requires an understanding of the consumer market and the organizational

offering. With this is mind, the aim of this assignment is for students to critically explore the

concept of the experience economy and customer experiences. To do this, students should explore

perspectives on experience.

Essay Topics:

You should select one of the essay titles below:

1，The Experience Economy: A critical discussion of the contemporary leisure society

2，Dimensions of Experience: A critical exploration of the four realms of consumer

experience (entertainment, educational, esthetic, and escapist, Pine and Gilmore, 1999) and

how we understand experiential marketing through them

3，In Pursuit of Authentic Experiences: A critical discussion of authenticity within the

leisure experience

4，Dark Experiences: Consideration of the ethical and moral debates relating to staging

leisure experiences around suffering

Expectations of Content

All essays are expected to present a sophisticated and comprehensive critical understanding of

the academic literature relating to consumer experiences and experiential marketing. This should

reference the literature shared via class lectures and tutorials as well as demonstrate extensive

further reading into the subject. Marketing consumer experiences is at the core of each essay title

and the subject of the essay is then orientated in a specific direction (essay 1 – the economy and

society at large; essay 2 – the specific types and characteristics of experiences; essay 3 – the

authenticity debate; essay 4 – the morality and ethics of dark tourism).

Every essay should present a basic understanding of the prevailing discussions within the

literatureon experiential marketingand then demonstrate how that understanding is being

applied to the specific focus of the essay in a critically balanced way.

Examples from the realworld may be used if you feel it will animate or amplify a point you are

making, but this is an academic essay so real-world examples should not be used at the expense

of support from academic literature. For example, Ritzer (2005) talks about ‘cathedrals of

consumption’ and regularly uses Las Vegas as an example. Ritzer’s extensive work in this area

would entitle real world examples of Las Vegas to be used because it was clearly based in solid

academic research.

Formatting Your Essay

You must ensure your chosen essay title is clearly written at the top of your submitted essay. If

the title is missing, the marker will do their best to discern which title you had chosen and mark

accordingly. No mark will be awarded for Presentation (5%) for those essays which omit their essay title.

The word limit for the essay is 3000 words. That means that every word from the beginning of

the Introduction to the end of the Conclusion is included in the word count, regardless of whether

it is a title, quote, citation or contained within a table.

The list of references will not count in the word count.

The essay should be written using 1.5 line spacing, should include page numbers and should be

written in a clear legible font (Times New Roman, Arial or Calibri are recommended).

The essay may make appropriate use of headings, but this should be used sparingly if at all.

You may feel it necessary to incorporate tables or figures, this is not forbidden, but this should also be used sparingly, if at all.