Experience economy

Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore argue that businesses must orchestrate memorable events for their customers, and that memory itself becomes the product: the "experience".

A good example can be found in the pioneering book of futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Future Shock, first published in 1970, which Pine and Gilmore quote in their work.

In Chapter 10, The Experience Makers, they say that an economy is being created geared to the provision of psychic gratification, that a process of "psychologization" finds place and humans will strive for a better "quality of life".

[4] In the early 1980s, consumer behavior researchers had begun to question the hegemony of the information processing perspective on the ground that it may neglect important consumption phenomena like daydreams and emotional responses.

Pine and Gilmore's thesis has been criticized as an example of an overhyped business philosophy that emerged from the dot-com bubble during a period in which a rising U.S. economy was tolerant of high prices and inflated claims and imposed no limitations of supply or investment.

contrast it with other service-economy theses, such as that laid out in Natural Capitalism, which places a clear focus on making measurably better use of scarce resources, usually considered to be the basis of economics.

[citation needed] The thesis has also been criticized from within the fields of tourism, leisure, and hospitality management studies, wherein well-established theories on the role of experiences in the economy went unacknowledged by Pine and Gilmore.