Lecture Notes By Richard L. Routh, Ph.D.

 Commodity  Goods  Service  Experience  Very low profit margins (coffee beans)  Moderate profit margins (ground and packaged coffee)  Good profit margins (Coffee at the corner diner)  Great profit margins (coffee in venice)

 Work to move your company’s goods and services into the highest profit margin opportunities as possible. experiences  This means, figure out how to create customer experiences ◦ Experiences are memorable ◦ They are themed ◦ They are staged ◦ Usually have huge IT components behind the scenes ◦ “You are what you charge for” (so don’t be charging for goods or services)

 Barber Shop/Beauty Parlor  Car Tires  IT services  What else?

 Improv: “winging it” in customizing each customer interaction with the company.  Street Theater: The typical sales experience where the stage is never the same, but the salesman must deliver an impressive and entertaining “display” for the customer.

 Platform Theater: Formal scripting of customer experience such as fixed-agenda trade shows.  Matching Theater: Integrating the outcomes of work across many disparate business performances. E.g.: flight attendant matches across the various steps in the process of flying: boarding, safety briefing, introduction of in-flight entertainment, food service, landing, & deplaning. ◦ Another example: A sales tracking system matches across time by integrating and connecting different sales calls into one cohesive experience.

1. “ing” the thing 2. Create a theme 3. Select a type of theater 4. Focus on creating a lasting, quality memory 5. Design and implement the IT necessary to make all the above work and hang together.