The Experience Economy - History of The Concept

History of The Concept

This customer behavior in the society has been acknowledged by various authors. An early example is the book of Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, which Pine and Gilmore quote in their work. In 1971, Toffler criticized how “economists have great difficulty imagining alternatives to communism and capitalism”, and how they could only envision the economy in the terms of scarcity of resources. He talked about the upcoming “experiential industry”, in which people in the “future”, would be willing to allocate high percentages of their salaries to live amazing experiences. Later in 1982, Holbrook and Hirschman’s pioneering article "The Experiential Aspects of Consumption: Consumer Fantasies, Feelings, and Fun" in the Journal of Consumer Research (Vol. 9, #2), discussed emotional experiences linked to products and services. Then in 1992, the German sociologist Gerhard Schulze argued for the idea of the “experience society” in his book "Erlebnisgesellschaft", which was translated into English as "The Experience Society" in 1995. In 1999, it was published at the same time a twin book of "The Experience Economy", that is The Dream Society by Rolf Jensen of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, containing many of the same ideas.