THE DESIGN OF EXPERIENCES IN SERVICES

INTRODUCTION
Management Literature argue that the service economy has been transformed into an attention economy, entertainment economy, a dream society, emotion economy, or an experience economy, in order to find new alternatives to solve the problems of an increasing commoditization of products, increasing margin pressure and a need to develop loyalty (Davenport and Beck, 2002; Wolf, 1999; Jensen, 2001; Gobè & Zyman, 2001; Pine & Gilmore, 1998, 1999; Schmitt, 1999).

Although most of the Services Management models show great interest for customer satisfaction, actually are consumer experiences the natural result of their interaction with a company.

Therefore, focusing on the whole experience as a result of the customer interaction seems a more complete and holistic approach. It provides, as result, a more complete framework to the complex universe of the clients’ feelings, emotions and attitudes.

Experience design, or better, design for experiences, would play a central role for eliciting emotions and their role for acquiring customer loyalty, and could not only constitute a base of competitive advantage, but also a necessity that firms should be capable of managing in order to achieve customer’s loyalty.

Why is the study of Experiences relevant to firms? What do experience serve for? Inspiring Loyalty, strategic positioning of products, customer's identification with firms values and mission, just to mention some of the possible firm's interests. But mainly because makes firms more human: in touch with the universe of both customers and employees' feelings, perceptions and emotions.