A Definitive Consumer Experience

In our last class, we discussed several ways of creating a consumer experience, and we looked at various techniques utilized by marketers to gauge consumer value and thereby ensure impactful consumer experiences. I found the discussion on Bernd Schmitt to be particularly interesting in that it divided the consumer experience into five categories – SENSE, FEEL, THINK, ACT, and RELATE. Some of these dimensions are clearly understood, while others are more obscure and difficult to measure. In any case, it’s useful to have a model such as this within which we can define consumer experience, and I am actually inclined to read more of Schmitt’s writings in “Experiential Marketing” to more clearly grasp these proposed concepts.

One meaningful consumer experience I can recall is both purchasing my Sony Playstation 3 as well as owning it for the past three years. It initially seemed like a frivolous gift to myself, seeing as it was primarily for entertainment purposes and that it was funded by my paycheck from a summer job that was supposed to “help pay for school.” I actually don’t play a lot of videogames, but I was very intrigued by the Blu-Ray format, and I mainly bought the PS3 to upgrade my home entertainment system. However, this new technology became useful to everyone in my household (my mom, my dad, and brother) and it soon came to define how we viewed photo slide shows from vacations and how we played music for parties and get-togethers. USB systems, speakers, and computers can be hooked up to the PS3, and virtually any media is compatible with the Sony platform. Over the years, it gradually became my family’s go-to entertainment device. I’ve brought it to UT with me for the last year or so, and it serves the same purpose among all my friends here and in my new apartment. The experience of buying and owning the PS3 has made me feel very in control of my media, and for someone like me, that is truly something of value. I am a textbook media-junkie, and I consume DVDs, new albums, blogs, entertainment publications, documentaries, TV shows, comedy specials, animated shorts, etc. You name it; I watch/listen to/read it. My PS3 allows me to take pride in all these things and organize them the way I want to, and it plays and stores everything. It is connected online to the Playstation Network and it is consistently being made better through system updates. It has more than paid for itself since I purchased it.

With regards to Schmitt’s five dimensions, I feel like my consumer experience with my Playstation 3 applies to a few of them. For example, the SENSE aspect deals with strong visual and auditory appeals, and the PS3 certainly delivers on this with its HD support, its sleek display, and it’s modern user interface. Sony’s marketing of this product also relies heavily on strong visual representations of the processing power and graphics capabilities of this technology, which is essentially a very fast computer. These also play into Schmitt’s THINK dimension, which refers to intellectual stimulation as a source of consumer satisfaction. The PS3 is certainly not all flash, and being associated with a company like Sony certainly doesn’t hurt its reputation among the geek crowd. I fall under this category to an extent, and my decision to buy the PS3 was definitely motivated in part by the fact that it just seems technologically superior to competitors like the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox 360, and other Blu-Ray players, which are still inferior today. Also, for my purposes (entertainment > gaming), I really couldn’t go wrong with the PS3. Finally, it’s important to consider the FEEL dimension, and the fact that my PS3 became a fixture in my home around which my family gathered for years. Picture slide shows, movie nights, and small family events were all facilitated by the PS3, and even my mom, who is technologically challenged, to say the least, was getting in on the action and learning how to use the system so she could get the most out of it. I believe that if the experience is there, consumers will take the right steps to achieve it. Marketers just have to create and communicate that experience.