A few weeks ago I watched a film called The Game. In the film the character gets a special gift from his brother: He will participate in a game that offers real life experiences.
The film was good and I thought that I could see people buying this type of experience.
We buy experiences, much more so when we are boomers. (Actually one of the reasons restaurants are seeing less and less boomers is due to the fact that dining out many times lack any special experience).
Well, now there is a company that offers something similar:
Extreme Kidnapping is a company operated by Adam Thick, an entrepreneur and convicted counterfeiter from Oakland County, Michigan. For $500, Adam and his crew will abduct you at gunpoint and hold you hostage for four hours. A thousand bucks gets you ten hours, along with a bit of customized sadism.
Experiences are the newest, hottest luxury items.
As with any pricey upscale service, you have many choices for your Extreme Kidnapping. You can even select your kidnapper.
You can choose to have sexy kidnappers, be tortured etc.
For $500, Adam and his crew will abduct you at gunpoint and hold you hostage for four hours. A thousand bucks gets you ten hours, along with a bit of customized sadism.
After the kidnapping is over, you will get a customer satisfaction survey.
Now, I have a very hard time understanding why someone would ever want to be kidnapped but I get spending money to have a special experience.
We talked before about another company, Nexpedition selling experience in the travel industry.
There are some studies around this fact:
-
Contrary to what people predict, it’s not young and impulsive people who want to pay so much for these crazy experiences. It’s actually people who plan and are obsessed with being productive,” says Anat Keinan, who now teaches marketing at Harvard Business School.
-
Consumers buy into these unusual experiences because they are considered “collectible,” not because they’re pleasurable. The following five experiments confirmed that it is those who are fixated on productivity that tend to desire these collectible experiences.
-
A new study suggests that those who spend money to do things are happier than those who spend their money on possessions.
We could add to that routine, loneliness, less social interactions due to technology and a lot more reasons.
The fact is that people today buy experiences and we need to provide experiences.
Customer experience is fundamental to the success of every business. For most companies, in fact, customer experience is the single greatest predictor of whether customers will return — or defect to a competitor.
Every interaction with customers can be an experience. It can also incorporate some mystery and rituals as we talk in our irresistible business.
It does not have to be as radical as the example above, but you should pay attention to these types of businesses.