Oxfam Novib would like to know the impact of their messages on the music festivals of Lowlands and Mystery Land. The European Centre for the Experience Economy has been asked to direct this research. Since 2004 Oxfam Novib has chosen for “presence” on the larger music and dance festivals as PinkPop, Lowlands, Mystery Land. The selected tools are lifestyle communication through a bar/restaurant with fair food, fresh juices, produced through fair trade. On Mystery Land 2007 Oxfam organized creative workshops to create your own T shirt. In the context of accountability and improving the professionality of the intended experiences is it important to know what the emotional impact will be of these activities .What will be the “share of heart” of these experiences? What will be the impact on brand awareness and brand preference for Oxfam Novib? What will be the impact on actual buying behaviour? Will people buy more consciously fair trade food? In the beginning of september we will report on some of the results.see also www.oxfamnovib.nl

Dan Hill was key note lecturer at the yearly HSMAI conference the 5th of Oktober. He has done extensive research on facial coding and what sort of emotional responses could be deducted from the enormous film material of facial expressions that they collected. He is fascinated by the gap that exists between what people say and what people do. We feel before we think he argues. Less than 0,01% of our reactions are conscious. We respond within 3 seconds and most of the responses are through smell and 50% through visual information.We sense, we feel and than we act. Our first impressions are mostly through our sight. So the process works as follows, visual stimulation, emotional response, and rational answer. Dan has done research on eyetracking, and has discovered that our brains for 50% are occupied by working through our visual information.Through facial coding and eyeball tracking they know what emotions are evoked by commercial expressions. What sort of emotion does your website evoke, or the logo of your company. Facial coding is based on the 7 basic emotions; 1.Happiness, 2. surprise, 3.anger, 4.sadness, 5.fear,6.disgust, 7.contempt.

Currently almost 90% of the food products that are launched disappear form the market in one year. One of the main reasons for this high failure rate is the underestimation of the role that situational factors play in food choice. To enable a better prediction of endurable successes of new launches of foods and drinks in the market, observation of the consumers in specific situations e.c.experiences is an indespensable tool requiring technological breakthroughs. This conclusion has led to the design and construction of a higly advanced research facility for research on food related behaviour in an indoor setting the “Restaurant of the Future” at Wageningen University. The restaurant offers a flexible eating environment where food and choice and eating behaviour with respect to company catering can be observedd under conditions with the help of state-of-the-art observation and sensor technology.Observation of eating and drinking behaviour and of the emotional reactions triggered by such behaviour provides unique possibilities to help the food and drink industry design products and experiences that fit special situations and evoke hedonistic experiences. The European Centre of the Experience economy will be involved with Universiteit Wageningen and her partners to develop a unique mobile “rapid research services”.

In 2005 Thomas Thijssen, former director of research of the European Centre for the Experience Economy developed, together with Ed Peelen (Nyenrode Business School),Albert Boswijk and Susan Bink (University of Amsterdam), a new tool to measure the impact of meaningful experiences.
The XRP© was statistically tested and confirmed in a study on the impact of the on-line Arctic Games of Sportlife Deep (link to the case no 12 in our book; Experience Economy A new perspective .
The XRP© measures through an on-line questionnaire the following aspects of meaningful experiences: senses, emotions, experience (doing) and evaluation (undergoing). The impact of meaningful experience is expressed in marketing value, comprised of brand awareness, purchase intent and brand image.
The aim is to further test and validate the XRP© in a variety of on-line and off-line situations and develop a tool that can help decision makers in allocating marketing and communication budgets to investments in meaningful experiences with customers with a higher return on investment.Read more about Case 12 Sportlife.pdf

Tuesday the 28th of November 18.00 hours will be decided by the Jury which of the three most innovative marketing books will win the PIM Marketing Literature Award.

This is award is organized in coöperation with the University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit van Amsterdam. The Jury consists of Hans Molenaar, chairman PIM, prof.Ruud Frambach, VU faculty Marketing, prof.mr.dr.ir. Sicco Santema, TU Delft
Kai Doornink, publisher ITCommercie, Arend-Jan Nijhuis, ING Bank, Egbert Jan van Bel, writer/lector MBA UvA, bestuur Marketing Executive Center, Tim de Boer, CEO Pleon, Fred Sengers, Chief Editor MarketingTribune, Wil Wurtz, chairman CRM Genootschap.

As a former trainee at the European Centre for the Experience Economy, I graduated last week in Barcelona for my Innovative Hospitality Management Masters.

NRC next reports on research of Stef Aupers on the motives of gaming. “The most important motive in the gaming world is the more immediate satisfaction then in the real world.” Aupers finds four differentiating motives;1. the speed of satisfaction for reward and status, 2. magic elements, 3.the social structure(community feeling),4. the opportunity to make money. More about his research,read below and in dutch nrc next of today and http://www.eur.nl/fsw/staff/homepages/aupers

Developing new Theory on the Experience Economy with Rigor and Relevance.
More and more organisations experiment and apply new business logic to take advantage of the Experience Economy where additional value is co-created with the customer (ID&T, Sportlife Arctic Games, Apple, many forms of consultancy) or where the customer takes the lead in full (Examples: Lego Factury and Mens Mens Mens, Second Life). The phenomenon is so new that, even so, many organisations apply it in practice no formal theory is yet developed at Universities on the topic.

The hospitality business always has been an industry in which the experience of the guest is core business (Ford & Heaton: 2000).

Tomorrow’s people; How 21st Century Technology is changing the way we think and feel. Baroness Prof. Susan Greenfield (prof. of Pharmacology at Oxford University) lectured about the future of the mind at the People Ideas Nature and Creativity conference at Figi Zeist the Netherlands.

.Experience Toplecture 23rd of jan.2007 TCH Amsterdam

Friday the 7th of april we started the first labtests on our research project Bereiken vs Beraken.Results will be published beginning of june.

Flow is a subjective experience. As such the study of flow present two challenges.First, it is not currently possible to measure subjective experiences directly. We can not truly know another person’s subjective experiences. The second challenge that the subjective nature of flow presents to my research is the impossibility of testing a causal model with data that I collected on flow elements concurrently. Because I collected data on all of the elements of people’s flow experiences at the same time, I cannot make any strong claims about causality.
Ryan Quinn is Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior Olin School of Business Washington University One Brookings Drive St. Louis, MO
63130-4899Washington