TED Talk: What do consumers really want?

Interesting. A couple of notes I made:

• Experiences > Services > Goods > Commodities
• Experiences are about Rendering the Authenticity
• Services are about Improving the Quality
• Goods are about Controlling the Costs
• Commodities are about Supplying the Availability
• Basic paradox: No one can have an inauthentic experience but no business can supply and authentic experience because all businesses are man-made objects.
• 4 possible states of authenticity (2x2 matrix):
1. Real real: IS what it says it is, IS true to itself
2. Fake fake: Is NOT what it says it is, is NOT true to itself.
3. Real fake: IS what it says it is, is NOT true to itself
4. Fake real: Is NOT what it says it is, IS true to itself
• The economic experience Starbucks has provided:
• Coffee beans as a commodity is $0.02 to $0.04 cents a cup.
• Roast it, grind it, make it available on a grocery shelf, now it's treated as a good at $0.10 to $0.15 cents per cup.
• Take that good, brew it somewhere, now it's a service and you get maybe $0.50 to $1.00 per cup.
• Surround the brewing of the coffee with ambiance of Starbucks and their authenticity, it's now an experience and you can charge $4.00 to $5.00 per cup.
• Summary for business people:
1. Don't say you're authentic if you're not authentic.
2. It's easier to be authentic if you don't say you're authentic.
3. If you say you're authentic, you better be authentic.
• Summary for the consumers: Increasingly, what will make us happy is spending our time and our money satisfying our desire for authenticity.

Side note: Makes me a little happy that my functional group at work is called Experience Design.