Contexts of experience

In this chapter, we bring to the management scholar’s attention the concept of contexts of experience as a key factor in understanding the changes currently influencing the strategies of many businesses and the behavior of many consumers. The topic is introduced with a critical analysis of how the marketing literature has dealt with the difference between goods and services. Then we define the contexts of consumption of goods and services as contexts of experience for the subjects populating them. Consumers interact in these contexts, learning and feeling emotions. We go on to further analyze the role of emotions and the process of value co-production within contexts of experience. Finally, we propose to divide contexts of experience into two categories that may be useful for designing a successful marketing strategy, i.e. the (few) contexts with a high intensity of experience in which the firm conducts an exploratory activity of complexity, and the (many) contexts in which it exploits the results of this exploration.