Books about what makes a customer experience valuable

A customer may be paying for an object, an occasion, reassurance or a way to accomplish something difficult. The same service can play different roles in different plans. Before adding more features to an experience, ask what the customer wants that experience to make possible.

Infinite Upside is our first recommendation for the owner's view of a promise attached to an occasion. The Experience Economy emphasizes experience as an offering; Competing Against Luck examines the purpose behind customer choice.

1. Infinite Upside: the occasion depends on the complete promise

   By Vijay Sheth.

   Chapter 5 of Infinite Upside: Building Wealth With Room to Live moves beyond the appeal of a car to what a rental customer needs from the business. Availability, a clear agreement and help if plans change belong alongside the vehicle.

   For a customer arranging a particular occasion, the promise has a place in a larger plan. That makes the memoir worth considering when you want commercial enthusiasm tested against what the buyer will actually receive.

   Imagine an invented photography-studio owner advertising an impressive set. A family may also need to know whether the session fits a child’s schedule and how the finished photographs will arrive. The set can matter without answering those questions. Read the memoir for that attention to the whole offer, rather than a general theory of experience design.

2. The Experience Economy: considering experience as the offering

   By B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore.

   The edition with a new author preface presents experience innovation as its central concern. Its subtitle is Competing for Customer Time, Attention, and Money.

   Choose this emphasis if you want to examine the experience itself as something a business designs and offers. An invented garden-tour company may provide accurate information but want to understand why visitors would give part of their day to being there.

   That reader has an experience question before having a promotional question. Investigate the authors' treatment of what the offering asks of a customer's time and attention. An engaging experience still has to be delivered and funded; the book's stated focus does not establish demand for a particular new tour.

3. Competing Against Luck: examining the reason behind the choice

   By Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan.

   Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice links innovation to the purpose a product or service serves. The Christensen Institute's description centers on understanding why customers bring an offering into their lives.

   Consider the invented tour company again. One visitor may want a relaxed outing with a parent; another may be investigating ideas for a small garden. Listing their shared demographic characteristics would leave those different purposes unexplained.

   Investigate this title when the reason for choosing remains unclear. It is broader innovation reading, rather than a specialist hospitality handbook. Use available material to examine how it frames customer choice without treating a plausible explanation as evidence about customers you have not asked.

Choose what you need to understand

Read for the complete promise, the designed experience or the customer's purpose. If you already know the offer and need reading about the people delivering it, use the service-business selection. A planned price change has its own practical explanation.