Cosuming Experience

This book covers the ‘hot topic’ of the experiential consumption in an accessible manner and from a unique industry perspective which is not used in any other book. It highlights the idea that an experience is not something that can be readily managed by firms and is not limited to the market: an individual’s daily life is made up of consuming experiences that can occur with or without a market relation.

Offering an overview of the consumption experience, it outlines a continuum of experiences of consumption that consumers go through, including:

• those that are mainly constructed by consumers around small items that comprise their daily life, such as organic products and non-profit or local associations
• those that have been co-developed by companies and consumers: tourism or adventure projects, rock concerts and cultural events
• those that have been largely developed by the companies where consumers are immersed in a hyper-real context such as fashion, sports brands, edutainment and retail.

Broad and comprehensive, this book provides a challenging vision of the consumption experience, which is an invaluable tool for all those studying marketing and consumer behaviour.

This book position itself within Experiential Marketing. It differs from its competitors by the way it examines the phenomenon of consumer experience. US competitors consider any consumption experience as necessarily dependent on the acquisition of products and services from the market, this book acknowledges that everyday life is largely comprised of experiences based on elements acquired in other ways (the family, friends, the state). Where its US competitors suggest to companies that they have to build a long series of strong emotions and unforgettable and extraordinary experiences for the consumers, this book highlights the need of letting the consumers construct their experience themselves, instead of pre-planning extraordinary experience for them. This book is less of a 'how to do' text and more comprehensive that its competitors. Experiential marketing is a topic that encapsulates several previous lectures or courses such as 'Store Design', 'Brand Management' (see the notion of Brand Experience) and 'E-marketing' (see the notion of Virtual Experience). We expect this topic to become on a par with Relationship Marketing. Already, CEM (Customer Experience Management) is challenging CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Thus, the number of Experiential Marketing courses could increase in the near future especially as one of the Advanced Marketing Courses. Comprehensive and accessibly written, this text takes an international, although predominantly European approach. Its unique contribution to this emerging subject will be invaluable to all students engaged with customer experience management, relationship marketing and brand management.