Experiential Marketing - My Thesis

The shoot was centred on an experiential marketing exercise; Marvin Joseph (photographer) had to perform/execute twelve images over two days on a make-shift set outside Customs house in the heart of Circular Quay, Sydney, Australia July 2007. There was an estimated audience of 50,000 passers by that 'experienced' a fashion shoot in progress with high-end talent and a production fit for a motion picture.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am studying marketing and I have begun to write my thesis about 'Experiential Marketing'.You can find the introduction part of my thesis below:

EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING

Experiential marketing has emerged as a new and exciting way of connecting brands with their customers. Companies focus on their target customers by the help of emotional appeals in order to emotionally connect their customers with the brand. In experiential marketing, customers are given a chance to experience products while having fun at the same time.

Nowadays products and services are mostly identical and customers are unable to feel differences between brands (Whelan S, Wohlfeil, M., 2006). Companies realized experiential marketing as a solution to create differentiation and build emotional bonds with customers. The applications of event marketing and product sampling have evidently been around for a long time. But lately companies have begun to make marketing based on experiences because differentiation has become an inevitable fact for companies to make customers pay attention to their products.

Traditional mass marketing sends standard messages for everyone without focusing on target audience. Traditional mass marketing vehicles which are television, radio, newspaper bombard people with various messages and as a result people filter most of them and select some messages which are related to and interesting for them. In traditional marketing, customers are just able to evaluate product quality, benefits, and a brand image. But what customers want is products, active communications, and marketing campaigns which appeal their senses, touch their hearts (Schmitt, B., 1999).

On the other hand, as the education level rises, consumers become more conscious and their demands change accordingly. Education is accepted as one of the key factor that determines one’s social class and highly educated consumers are supposed to have read more, traveled more, and are more willing to try new things than the rest of the population (Hoyer, W., MacInnis, D., 1997). People do not want to take risk and waste their time and money by buying products without having any information or trial therefore companies which give a chance of experiencing product make customers feel more comfortable and confident about their brands. In experiential marketing environment consumers have more options than ever, they can compare the features and prices of products easily. Having a trial of product and an interaction with the salespeople of the brand can immediately change the perception of customers in a positive manner because young generation seeks for environments where they can have fun while shopping or examining product.

In this study, experiential marketing will refer “the newest iteration of event marketing blended with product sampling, it melds the art of customer reaction with the science of fact-based management. “ (Armbuster, D, 2005)

In other words, experiential marketing is a nice mixture of six marketing communication tools: advertising, direct marketing, interactive/internet marketing, sales promotion, personal selling. (Berman, B., Evans, J., 2002)




"MarkeTingle"