re-thinking experience marketing and its connection with previous marketing philosophies

I had once asked Prof. Hooi Den Huan with Nanyang Business School what could be the next hot research subject following old terms and philosophies of marketing, such as production, selling, green marketing, branding and etc. He told me it could be anything. Yes, it really could be an impossible mission to predict what could appear among today’s mass media with so many ideas of wisdom. Prof. Hooi’s response is exactly the right answer, but I have been thinking and wandering over and over again, anticipating something enlightening.

It did not happen even though I read a lot, much more than what I had been doing over the past few years, but the recent reading of a book named “A Study on Virtual Brand Community” appeared to be rewarding. The author mentioned experience marketing in the early chapters and said in experience marketing consumers integrate themselves into the process of product processing, or simply production which should, as my understanding can support, be viewed as an equivalent of value creation. By doing this, consumers experience the brand while the marketers brand  the experience and thus build their unique competitive strategies for the consumers’ experiences are highly customized with low possibilities of being imitated.

Then, I recall the traditional marketing philosophies, production, product, selling vs. marketing. It seems that if placed in order from left to right, or back to front, these few terms involve more and more intervention (I cannot pick a right word from my mind now) of consumers, but less control over the production process from the manufacturers. Also, aligning with this direction is the trend of product abstraction, as the more the manufacturers control the production, the less the core benefits are given to end users. It seems that the consequences would be that the end users, or consumers are approaching the production lines and grabbing controls from the manufacturers and will represent a new and more powerful weight in determining what product should be rather than let the makers have the final say. Besides, these consumers are creating another form of value, the process of participating in the process of production, and this can be called experiencing the brand(ing).

Since we are going more abstract and losing our power as never before, we should actively let people in and create the experiences for them as well as for ourselves.