Value-in-use or value-in-experience?

Hi Will

I like how you acknowledge the importance of social networks to the creation of customer value. Also anyone who has wrestled with SDL deserves credit! Kudos to you!

I do have one suggestion to make. Marketers for far too long advocated the value-in-exchange model of customer value; then came value-in-use. I don't think either is sufficient to explain how consumers perceive value.

I'd like to suggest that marketers think more about value-in-experience. In other words, there may be value perceived in any or all stages of the customer journey, from searching for a solution to a problem, to remembering affectionately a highly enjoyable interaction.

I'm supervising a doctoral candidate who is investigating this very phenomenon. He is using narrative data (customer stories) to unpack the components of, and timing of, customer value. It's clear that customers can experience value well before, and well after, a product has been consumed. For example, when research participants are asked to recall 'my first car', many have very fond memories of the car, which still gives pleasure many years after it was hauled off to the recycler!

What do you think about this idea of value-in-experience?

Thanks.

Francis Buttle, PhD
The Customer Champion
www.buttleassociates.com

In Use Experience

Hi Francis,

Thx for the kudos and contribution. Here's my take:

First of all Service Dominant Logic is not a total logic. I do not think value creation is completely limited to "in use". I do believe that most value for the Customer is created in use.

Furthermore, to me, SDL does not go against experience. Graham Hill makes a very good remark, in several of his posts here on Customer Think, when he states that we do need to understand that the Customer experience goes well beyond the traditional CRM-channels or interaction touch-points. It is the experiences over a lifetime that matter. Most of that experience is created by using the product or service itself.

I also believe that most of the experience does not lie in the product or service, it lies in how well the Customer is able to do the job for which he "hired" the product or service.

Adopting SDL does not mean that we should completely neglect surrounding experiences (such as the "searching" experience, or even the "remembering" experience) that also shape Customer behavior.

As current marketer are mostly focused though on these surrounding experiences, SDL's value-in-use focus provides a new logic to shift a marketers focus from dominantly focused on experiences towards exchange to dominantly focused on in-use-experiences. Nike running (or Nike +) is often used as an example of Social Media Marketing. I think it is a great example of “value-in-use-experience” too.

When focusing on the Customer's value-in-use-creation process there is also more value for the company to be created. Not just in increased Customer loyalty but also in better understanding the jobs Customers are trying to do. These insights can be used to create new or additional products or services (and experiences!), or better "value propositions" that improve the Customers' experience or, as I “frame” it in the article: improve the Customer’s ability to (co-)create his value. Think Nike again, and how they, together with Apple, have created a platform and community in which Customer’s can now co-create their value-in-experience, in use, of the combination of products of both companies, together.

To answer your question in short: I like the idea of value-in-experience and believe that most value co-creating opportunities, for all stakeholders involved, arise when focusing on the value-in-use-experience.

What do you think?