I recently published an academic article with professorial colleagues Janne Harkonen and lead author Louis-Etienne Dubois entitled “Beyond the ephemeral: Scaling experiences through productization”. It delves into something I’ve never talked or written about before: “productizing” experiences, that is, standardizing them and turning them into a “product-like” offering, even though they fully remain engaging and memorable experiences – just not as engaging or memorable.
Many companies do this because the productivity of experience staging cannot be improved in the same way that it can with goods and services; a movie, play, or concert would not be better if it were staged in half the time, for example. But changing the way they are created to be more, well, mass produced can provide scale, albeit with some experience sacrifice. The productized experience may very well have a higher ratio of experience value to price, however, since the costs can be so much less.
Think of it as the experiential equivalent of “shrinkflation”.
It's when companies productize their experiences to save money without a commensurate lowering in price that they commoditize themselves. Think of it as the experiential equivalent of “shrinkflation”. (I’m looking at you, Starbucks!)
Check out the abstract of the article below, and if you find it of interest, do give it a read.
Productization & Transformations
Recognize, too, that of course with commoditization comes the opportunity for companies to shift up the Progression of Economic Value, in this case to go beyond experiences to guiding transformations!
Ah, but then, can transformations be productized? (In the Encore to The Experience Economy Jim and I wrote about how transformations cannot be commoditized – that’s one reason why it’s the fifth and final economic offering – but as alluded to above, by itself productization is not the same thing as commoditization.)
Can transformations be productized?
Yes, certainly! It’s already happening – and actually has long been a significant factor in the transformation business. Think about all of the self-help books out there where someone with expertise – a personal trainer, an Olympic athlete, a stellar stockpicker – distills decades of knowledge down into something digestible that the average person can affordably purchase for around $30, vs. paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for a direct transformative experience with the expert. The same with coaching apps such as Noom, BetterUp, and Nudge, which bring different types of coaching to your fingertips, often including live but virtual sessions that are not quite the same in value as being there physically with the coach, but are much lower cost and therefore lower priced.
I’m not sure the topic of productization will make it into the book (I’ve added it to my file “Ideas to go over when redoing chapters”. . .), but it’s certainly something to consider in your transformation strategy.
Joe Pine
© 2024 B. Joseph Pine II
