Are You Experienced? Marketing Parks And Recreation In The New Millennium - an increasing interest in, and availability of, recreation facilities

Parks & Recreation, Sept, 1999 by Ellen O'Sullivan

MARKETING PARKS AND RECREATION IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Have you noticed how the world has changed recently? Bookstores function as community centers, and shopping malls contain amusement parks. People are encouraged to touch things in museums and make noise in the library. A health-club visit may resemble either a social event or medical check-up. Hospitals serve gourmet meals, offer valet parking, and boast a list of leisure programs rivaling that of many park and recreation departments.

Welcome to the emerging economic world of experiences. All types of companies and organizations now realize that it's the experience and not just the product or service that is important to people. From automobile dealers to zoos, you see evidence that in order to sell products or attract people to your venue, you need to go way beyond slick advertising, catchy slogans, and coupons.

Why Experience Marketing? Why Now?

Going beyond the norm to attract and retain customers and differentiate your product or service from the competition's moves an organization toward experience marketing. Why this radical shift in the way products and services are marketed? Increased information overload and the growth in a focus on psychic needs are the essential reasons. Just think about the countless ways in which Americans are bombarded by information and marketing messages. We are besieged by junk mail, telemarketers at dinnertime, even advertising messages etched into the sand at the beach. The world of commerce is changing, and changing rapidly. This decade has seen the size of the World Wide Web's holdings approach that of the entire Swiss economy.

It's not just information overload and technology that have created the need for experience marketing, but quality-of-life issues and how people's inner needs relate to that quality pursuit. There are a number of reasons for our nation's shift from material to inner needs. The aging of the baby boomers, the importance of children and families, and the relative stability of the economy are just a few of the explanations for the growing emphasis placed upon experiences. In combination, these factors result in the growth of what social scientists and economists alike refer to as psychic, or inner, needs.

As a society, we have shifted from the post-World War II definition of the American Dream to a new version of a preferred way of life that sets the foundation for experiences. The old American Dream -- a good job with a large corporation, marriage, and a family living in a suburban house with a station wagon parked out front -- has gradually given way to a New World view. Some of the shifts in major life categories are shown in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1. SHIFTS IN MAJOR LIFE CATEGORIES

              From            To

SOCIETY       A MELTING POT   A MOSAIC

FAMILY        NUCLEAR         "NEW FORMS"

OCCUPATION    CORPORATE       FREE AGENT

ORIENTATION   CONFORMITY      SELF-EXPRESSION

SPENDING      THINGS          EXPERIENCES

These changes in the American Dream, as proposed by Settle and Alreck in the 1988 version of Marketing Communications, have become reality as we move into the new millennium. Frazier, in his book Psychotrends, suggests that Americans are shifting their goals from "being well-off" to "well-being." A number of surveys reveal that Americans are making a shift from living to work to working to live. That desire of having a life as opposed to getting a life, and searching for well-being rather than being well-off, fuels people's need for experiences.

Pine and Gilmore, in their recent book The Experience Economy, published by Harvard Business Review, suggest that as goods and services become "commoditized," what matters most will be company-created customer experiences. The book both asks and answers the question, Why are people willing to pay different prices for a cup of coffee at a cafe or bookstore, local diner, or home? They use birthday celebrations to illustrate the various stages and progression of economic value. Birthday parties, which started with baked-from-scratch cakes at home, metamorphosed into cakes from prepackaged mixes to clowns and pony rides to staged experiences outside of the home.

A recent issue of Wired magazine featured an article extolling the numbers behind this trend for seeking pleasurable experiences and entertainment. This article, titled "Trend Pleasure Hinge," referenced Michael J. Wolf's newly released book Entertainment Economy. Wolf maintains that entertainment, not General Motors, is the driving force behind the new global economy. And the numbers indicate that he's onto something.

Let's take a look ...

* Entertainment is a $480 billion industry (even when sales of TVs and VCRs are excluded from the total).

* Entertainment and pleasure expenses weigh in at over 8 percent of household expenditures, exceeding clothing and health care as a percentage of such expenditures.

* California lost 242,000 aerospace jobs in 1988, while the entertainment industry has since generated twice that many.