A Beginning Step to Co-Creation

You are what you charge for. And if you’re competing solely on the basis of price, then you’ve been commoditized, offering little or no true differentiation. What would your customers really value? Better yet, for what would they pay a premium? Experiences.

Joseph Pine co-author of the book The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage, explains this process in this video. Another video, The Experience Economy Birthday Party provides another excellent example in story form.

I have written two other blog posts, Does your Value Proposition speak of the Customer Experience? and Changing the shape of your marketing funnel! that expands on some of these thoughts.

The Experience Economy description is an excellent introduction to co-creation. It takes us away from the basic thoughts of products and services and moves us into the world of differentiation and uniqueness based on what the customer truly values. And it is not our product and service anymore that the customer values. It is the USE of our product and service and the resulting benefit of it. Till we start thinking that way, the step to co-creation is probably unobtainable.