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Comment by 馬來西亞微電影實驗室 Micro Movie Lab on November 15, 2021 at 10:34am

Google Arts and Culture in association with over 2,500 museums and galleries around the world is offering virtual tours and online exhibits of the world’s famous museums to the interested. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, in order to make this experience more immersive created printable colouring books for kids, thereby striking the right chords of engagement. According to Randy White, CEO of White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, since virtual experiences are not exclusive and unique, the contemporary health crisis requires making those experiences conspicuously valuable (White, 2020). This can perhaps be done by offering one-time events for a handful of audience, may be through limited sale of virtual tickets. Club Quarantee, an online nightclub, possibly meets these requirements, thereby changing the dynamics of out-of-home leisure experiences.

To combat the fall in visitor rate, Shanghai Botanical Garden live-streamed cherry blossom tours from a closed park. This breakthrough experience paves way for the rise of the ‘Armchair Traveller’ (Papagiannis, 2020), navigating the world through the comforts of homes, using updated technological methods of live-streams, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). The feat of such experiences rests on how well a virtual environment succeeds in immersing a user. In a nutshell, the survival of each of the businesses is based on their competency to wrap their uniquely themed experience offering around the crisis to ensure that robustness and cohesiveness do not get diluted. To be able to do so, businesses all around the world are placing the value of each human life on a pedestal.

Comment by 馬來西亞微電影實驗室 Micro Movie Lab on November 15, 2021 at 10:31am

（con't）Hopeful Healthcare

Healthcare industry, which is a prime example of a transformative industry—turning sick into healthy—does thrive on experiences, based on which a health service user decides to revisit a medical practitioner, a hospital, a nutritionist or a fitness studio. Health concerns that have surmounted during COVID-19 are not likely to recede anytime soon. Thus, it provides ancillary integrative opportunities to all businesses to hold onto the branches of hygiene and physical well-being and be a part of the health ecosystem to provide cohesive experiences to consumers.

A new WHO policy declared telemedicine as an alternative model for clinical services and clinical decision support. This has increased the demand for telemedicine services in all the corners of the world. Practo, the Bengaluru-based health and technology start-up, is enabling real-time interaction with verified doctors at all times within a duration of less than 5 minutes.

National Informatics Centre, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology—IT (India), has developed the Aarogya Setu application that helps tackle the COVID-19 virus at an individual level by detecting the presence of an infected person around. Furthermore, healthcare sector is using robotics, artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) along with spatial technologies against the COVID-19 pandemic. This has inspired a tiny village of Barigaon in Uttar Pradesh. Here, the villagers are trained to dial a button on their phones to report the possibility of a COVID-19 transmission.

On the fitness front, Cure.Fit’s 270 fitness centres all over India are shut amidst the lockdown. Nevertheless, its free live fitness sessions engage as many as 200,000 people nationwide against the pre-COVID footfall of 80,000–90,000 (Singh, 2020). Such a step helps in shaping a transformative experience robustly. Other companies like Apple TV+, FitBit and Eros Now are also following this strategy.

Conclusively, the big picture indicates that customizing the experiences in alignment with the EE principles of robustness, cohesivity, transformation, drama and personalization, businesses today would be able to form customer relations that will be sustainable on the scale of longevity.

Comment by 馬來西亞微電影實驗室 Micro Movie Lab on November 15, 2021 at 10:29am

（con't）Experience Economy-Driven Course Correction

Pummelled by the COVID-19 crisis, many global economy sectors have been decimated. Enterprises strictly associated with EE, for instance, theatres, museums, restaurants and bars, malls, amusement parks, and especially including, but not limited to, tourism destinations, airlines, hospitality industry and many more such businesses have been hurt the most. Despite this threat, EE is here to stay as research shows that people deem experiential purchases (e.g., entertainment, outdoor activities, travel, meals out) more satisfying than material purchases (e.g., furniture, gadgets, clothing, jewellery), both in foresight and in hindsight (Carter & Gilovich, 2014; Guevarra & Howell 2015; Kumar et al., 2020). Ostensibly, making experiences a more reassuring channel to augment well-being than possessions, regardless of the time when happiness is evaluated (Kumar et al., 2020).

Comment by 馬來西亞微電影實驗室 Micro Movie Lab on November 10, 2021 at 3:34pm

（con't）Considering the pandemic instilled crisis, there is a shift from globalization to a new era of passivity best described by a term coined by a Dutch writer—‘slowbalization’ (The Economist, 2019). This slowbalization surely does not mean lack of ideas and creativity. The only difference is that experience seekers prefer more familial experiences than public, more digital experiences than the physical ones while adhering to the social distancing norms. The surge in quarantine-driven virtual events suggests that every enterprise is either an experience enterprise at the moment or must turn into one. The future-ready businesses that are redoing their business models to meet the needs of customer experience have insightful implications to offer to the business world in fast-tracking the wave of EE that was already underway. Given the added layers of intricacy and urgency as both businesses and consumers grapple to adapt to the intense ups and downs of doing business during a pandemic, a probable progression path has been charted as follows:

Comment by 馬來西亞微電影實驗室 Micro Movie Lab on November 10, 2021 at 3:29pm

Figure 2. Rise of the New Experience Economy in Select Sectors

Source: The authors.

Survival Stage

This stage is essentially an amalgamation of two phases—accumulation and early recovery phase—comprising most immediate tasks businesses need to indulge in (during the lockdown) and approaches that need consideration in the near term (post the lockdown). The accumulation phase is predominantly characterized by digital experiences, increasing their circles of inclusivity. This interestingly points to how digital transformation needs to be a concept common among all businesses; however, the earnest need to digitally transform the experience offered will assume an even greater priority across various sectors and geographies even after the COVID era comes to an end. Many think tanks (Alon, 2020) have tagged COVID-19 as a Black Swan Event—a term coined by Taleb (2007)—owing to its characteristics such as ‘rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability’. Taleb (2012) refers to a somewhat similar scenario: How to make a company ‘antifragile’? Antifragile companies, in contrast to the fragile ones—which suffer a breakdown under pressure—actually grow sturdier in the face of arbitrary, disruptive events. This is exactly the path the businesses exhibiting resilience are (un)knowingly adhering to.

Comment by 馬來西亞微電影實驗室 Micro Movie Lab on November 10, 2021 at 3:27pm

（Con't）The pandemic has put all businesses in arguable stages of the experience-offering paradigm. Businesses with halted operations are relying on their cohesiveness and previous memory of the consumers and are enticing them to stay affiliated. The vouchers offered by airlines and hotels are a classic example of the same. The experience offerings in the market are currently being served underneath the veil of precaution and hygiene. For instance, the Dubai Mall reopened itself to visitors with only 25 per cent of parking space operational, compulsory temperature scanners and acceptance of mostly online payment (Webster et al., 2020). At the moment, undifferentiated commodities sandwiched between memorability and compassion are the most sought-after experiences in the real world.

Blending collaboration with empathetic experiences needs to be at the heart of any transformative approach. For example, the Delhi government has had a tie up with Leela Hotels to let all the doctors stay with them free of cost. This is sending across a message that the hotel chain values health and hygiene and, if doctors can rely on them, so can the customers in the future times to come. Needless to say, business, which will build a healthier associative ecosystem, would be able to grow better and instil a positive boost among all the stakeholders in the wake of seemingly forlorn environment. Keeping this in view, restaurants are ensuring to send messages detailing that the service boys would be wearing masks and hand gloves and taking all the necessary precautionary measures. Instead of ‘cashing in’ on the crisis, the enterprises need to offer more co-operative experiences. Zomato, one of the food delivery organizations, has mandated the use of ‘Arogya Setu’ application to its delivery personnel. The application provides with a feature that would indicate, by establishing Bluetooth connectivity, if there is any person infected with COVID-19. This move perhaps could be extended to airports and other experience providers as well; by doing so, the experience stagers would instil assurance to all the parties involved that their experiences are corona free.

Comment by 馬來西亞微電影實驗室 Micro Movie Lab on November 10, 2021 at 3:23pm

（con't）The newly built affiliations could be based out of the need of the hour or perhaps as an exhibit of actions of generosity that would strengthen the cohesiveness of the experience or nail robustness deeper within the offering. Market players as Nivea, Godrej, Tata Consumers have tied up with Zomato and alike in a bid to ease the sales and delivery of essential commodities. In an unconventional move, Zoomcar has also entered a similar partnership with online grocers. Such networking moves are leaving a positive impression on the consumers. Forest Essentials, too, is providing high-quality Ayurvedic hand sanitizers to hospitals, police stations and public service offices in Uttarakhand. The customers have flooded the brand, seeking the availability of the sale of these sanitizers, but the brand remains committed to provide them to front-line workers only, as of now. In another interesting scenario, the Khan Academy is providing training to 1,000 school teachers to enrich their experience with digital teaching, reclining the focus of experiences on digital and virtual mediums.

In order to involve experience seekers in a relatively immersive manner and encourage socialization during the pandemic requires experience stagers to be flexible in their response and not be wedded to the traditional frameworks. To evoke and engage the customers and further enhance their magical experience pertaining to the brand ‘Harry Potter’, J.K. Rowling recently launched the ‘Harry Potter at Home’ hub, offering exciting resources to parents and children locked in the confines of home due to the pandemic. Another vibrant example is the hashtag battle (#CreepiestObject and #SassiestObject) on twitter kicked off by Yorkshire Museum, UK, to keep its art collections alive on social media and engage people in a fun way (Yorkshire Museum, 2020).

Comment by 馬來西亞微電影實驗室 Micro Movie Lab on November 9, 2021 at 10:13am

In the early recovery phase, businesses which are easily accessible have lesser admissible permits, and costs would witness rallying of consumer sentiments. Perhaps the outdoor venues may recuperate faster than the indoor ones, as with continued threat to health, people might consider outdoor environments safer from the health prism than more tightly swarming indoor arenas. Amusement parks, zoos, biodiversity parks, wildlife sanctuaries, museums, etc., come in the former category, while theatres, dine-in restaurants, retail showrooms, hospital OPDs represent the latter. There can be events, for example, Labour Day, or dates of value that radiate socialization as a part of embedded traditions, which will help in bringing a positive spike in the consumption of such experiences. This stage would essentially see majority of businesses rushing through the enticing and evoking stage to the engagement stage.

After months of lockdown, when the parks and museums reopened in China, places like the Forbidden City operated only at one-third of the capacity to ensure social distancing norms. The visitors, however, did admit that the place felt different with lesser crowd. In contrast, Mount Tai, one of China’s sacred mountains, did not stop selling the tickets till they reached the maximum capacity for the day with nearly everyone violating the social distancing norms. Conclusively, it is the responsibility of the experience provider to not hinder the consumer consumption, or take a direct hit on profits or even aggravate the possibility of a contagion. These recent examples help in understanding the dominant role of a marketer more explicitly. Pine (2020b) makes it easier for the marketers to build sustainable experiences by emphasizing that the money value of experience is measured in terms of the time spent by a consumer with the experience provider. With higher precautions and subsequently lesser probabilities of infections, businesses can easily charge higher for exclusivity and customized experiences. The current-day digital interactions, such as booking appointments mandatorily beforehand, compulsory digital payments, no-queue protocols, etc., nurture the possibilities for achieving mass customization effectively.

Comment by 馬來西亞微電影實驗室 Micro Movie Lab on November 9, 2021 at 10:12am

（con't）Though digitalization would serve better with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT), it is imperative to understand that human interactions are a lot more important. People seek modern sentiments and experiences in the current age of EE. Therefore, location-based entertainment enterprises offering immersive experiences with a strong digital component (augmented/virtual Reality aka AR/VR) will boom. Visitor economies, however, would need a phased approach to reboot and return. The focus herein would be on domestic visitors before distant/international visitors are willing and able to return; tweaking the experiences in tune with renewed safety and health norms, revised carrying capacities, etc.

The world over, businesses need to ease the transition by managing renewed customer expectations and ensuring their own survival in the face of fundamentally altered customer behaviour. This requires a ‘Needs-based, Action-oriented and Affiliation-centric’ strategy mix based on the new EE wave as displayed by the aforementioned illustrations and scenarios.

Revival Stage

In the longer term, adaptability and agility would emerge as key business competencies, facilitating overhauls that accommodate buoyant consumer behaviour, based on the new perplexed realities. Every company will be an experience enterprise that would need to combine design and technology to serve memorable events for stakeholders interacting with their brands. The product of these events and the ensuing memories would be the experience. Such experience-led transformation once embedded to the fabric of the enterprise would pave the way for the New Experience Economy Age (Freedman, 2020). Here, a mere revival to customization and theme-based experiences would not suffice; instead, robust experiences resting on the firm foundations of central planks of Stage 1 (see Figure 3) would continue to fuel the pragmatic (and not dogmatic) strategies essential to sustain experiences that exert positive and long-lasting impact on the lives of all the stakeholders.

Comment by 馬來西亞微電影實驗室 Micro Movie Lab on November 9, 2021 at 10:12am

（con‘t）India implemented a nationwide lockdown, a stringent non-pharmaceutical intervention to curb the spread of the virus at the very initial stage. It is evident from the influenza pandemic of 1918 that places which implemented more rapid and forceful non-pharmaceutical health interventions did not experience the worst downturns (Correia et al., 2020). This offers hope for a positive and growth-driven long-term recovery after a mutated survival. The probability of new-fangled vaccine would ensure people can move around freely not to forget having practised social distancing for so long it might get instilled as a sustainable health practice. People would travel, go for concerts and eat out. A thought that needs revisiting is that the virtual experiences have been around, nonetheless, and actual experiences have more memorability and, hence, cost more. In view of that, the experiential fee would not be lowered because it can be a short-term tactic but not a long-term strategy.

Going forward, it is obvious to assume that pandemics and other man-made disasters will become recurrent and even more arduous. Therefore, any corporate strategy must deliberate upon the fact that people crave for genuine experiences, almost always. As rightly pointed by Pine and Gilmore (2019) in their new book— The Experience Economy—with a new preface by the authors, ‘today’s Experience Economy companies now compete against the world for the time, attention, and money of individual customers’. Based on EE framework, in what follows, we present a toolkit that the businesses can use as a blueprint for revival in the long term:

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