In An Experience Emotions Trump Price

How do you avoid the race to the bottom?

Over on YouInc I had my first post of a series on marketing for entrepreneurs, small businesses.  It talked about satisfying emotional needs to overcome the temptation to compete on price.

To the extent that you can satisfy emotional needs and express them in a way that resonates with your customers, the more value you provide.

Any choice or decision to buy ultimately comes down to the value perceived by the consumer - a typical cost benefit analysis made in the mind as opposed to a spreadsheet.

In retail, there is a definite trend to offset promotional discounting with a 'better consumer experience'.   And to deliver that we need to think very differently about how people decide.  To help us try to understand what is going on we're beginning to tag content with various typologies to see if we can find out what works in what situations. 

There are two different questions we're looking at:

1. What kind of stuff does marketing leverage?   emotional, promotional, informational and communal content
2. How do consumers use content? to inspire, educate, entertain or inform

I'm sure there are others....