2023 Experience Strategy Trend Report

EXPERIENCE STRATEGY TREND REPORT 2023

Customer needs and expectations

are always evolving.

What can recent trends in those needs and expectations tell you about what’s coming next?

And how can you optimize your experience roadmap and prepare your business for what’s next?

Welcome to the first annual Experience Strategy Trend Report.

The

goal of this report:

Identify and explore major datadriven customer and cultural trends that should inform your roadmaps and shape your thinking for customer journeys, channels, and personas.

Discussion of each trend blends consumer insight + expert insight to create action-focused takeaways for Experience Strategists.

The Stone Mantel Mission: Increase the impact of your experience strategy.

We are the experience strategy company. We help companies accelerate initiatives to upskill teams and ignite culture change, innovate with experiences that better deliver on time well spent, and collaborate with other companies to solve big problems. We’ve helped all types of companies with our thought leadership, research, and frameworks.

We are on a mission to make experience strategy better for everyone. We present these trends, based on our extensive research into customers and the culture, to help you, the Experience Strategist, deliver more impact for your company and your customer.

Hello, Experience Strategists!

The other day I walked through a wasteland in Arizona—but not the gorgeous desert. It was a big box retailer. Shelves were empty. Pallets of products lined every row, still wrapped in plastic. Uniformed employees jammed aisles with carts full of online orders. They looked exhausted, overwhelmed, and disempowered. Just a few years ago, this company was a model of service innovation. But since then, every aspect of their business, from distribution to channel design to service design, has fallen apart. Outside forces—pandemic, war, inflation, new competitors—have destroyed the retail environment.

This company—and category—is not alone.

Experience strategy is at a historical inflection point. There’s never been more at stake for the experiences companies create. Yet many of them struggle with basics of customer service.

The last time we had rampant inflation, in the 1970s, the business environment was different. We were just becoming a service economy. Most companies had only one distribution channel. Almost none were global, either in customer base or delivery. You could tame inflation by simply raising interest rates, making goods and services more expensive to buy. Today, consumers are behaving like their 1970s counterparts: buying cheaper goods and cutting out non-essentials. EY reports that since February 2022, consumers have cut spending based on status or keeping up appearances, specifically purchases of beauty products, fashion, gadgets, and technology.

But unlike the 1970s, we are in an Experience Economy—complex, global, technology-driven. The main source of value comes from the aggregation of moments, interactions, memories, and connections, not from goods and services.

A word about Loyalty, a strategic concept that companies in the 1980s and ‘90s relied on to win and retain customers. Loyalty has now bit the dust, and not just because of the pandemic’s reduced product availability driven by high demand and supply chain issues—but also from the search for novelty (McKinsey). We see no sign that Loyalty as a marketing strategy will ever return.

Clearly, experience strategists must be at the forefront of solving the challenges facing industry. It’s time for Experience Strategy to step up, stand tall, and provide the frameworks for innovation, engagement, growth, and business-model design that will take us through these troubled, yet exciting, times. To that end, we are proud to introduce the first Experience Strategy Trend Report. We hope that it will help you provide guidance and leadership as your company works to build in a chaotic global environment.

All of these trends are topics we’ve been concerned about for years. We’ve conducted hundreds of interviews with customers. We’ve surveyed large swaths of the US consumer population. And we have talked to experience strategists about their needs. We are confident that focusing on one or more of these trends will help your company grow, innovate, and align with your customers

Dave Norton Founder and Principal of Stone Mantel, The Experience Strategy Company

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

About Stone Mantel

JOE PINE DAVE NORTON

The Experience Strategy Podcast delivers vital insights to complement the trends you’ll learn about here.

We are endlessly curious about what makes for rich customer experiences—and the strategies successful (and unsuccessful) organizations employ to create deep, meaningful relationships with their customers.

Dave is an author and the founder of Stone Mantel, The Experience Strategy Company.

Aransas is a coach and experience designer who’s worked with leading consumer brands—including WW International (formerly Weight Watchers) for 18 years—to create meaningful customer experiences.

Within each trend section, we’ll suggest past episodes to help deepen your understanding of that trend.

Be sure to follow and subscribe for more episodes that specifically complement this report. Available on major podcast platforms.

experiencestrategypodcast.com

Our Methodology

Stone Mantel is a research-led experience strategy company.

We employ a variety of research methods, including focus groups, one-on-one interviews, small group interviews, digital fieldwork, ethnographies, panel research, eyetracking protocol, and next-generation UX research.

To collect the insights in this Trend Report, we surveyed more than 3,200 customers and 200 experience strategists during the last two years. We conducted multiple rounds of ethnographic research and co-creation research. We then analyzed those results against the 20 months of our Meaningful Experience Monitor before, during, and after Covid-19 and the Experience Strategy data we’ve collected over the last 15 years to observe patterns and changes.

What Comes After Mobility?

A proven track record of forward thinking

Consumer and Patient Behavior Change

Who Are Context Comfortables?

How Do You Anticipate a Need?

The Future of Engagement

Defining Patient Engagement Impacting

Improving Outcomes in Healthcare

Delivering on New Journey Expectations

Intelligent Next Generation Experiences

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Meaningful Experiences

Smart and Genius in Healthcare

Meaningful Motivation

New Family Dynamic MX Health and Wellbeing

Tools for Producing Time Well Spent Building Transformative Experiences

Our Clients and Collaborators

We deliver handcrafted insights, strategy, and implementation for brands that care about meaningful experiences.

risks does my company face if we don’t plan for this trend?

What changes could we focus on in the near term to prep for the long term?

2023 EXPERIENCE STRATEGY TRENDS

WELLBEING EVERYWHERE

1Don’t think you’re in the wellbeing industry? Think again. Companies from every sector will be judged by their ability to support customers’ wellbeing.

2

POWERED BY CUSTOMER PURPOSE

Having a company purpose does  not equate to understanding your customer’s purpose.

ZOOM IN ON SMALL GROUPS

3The big picture still matters, but your most important strategic decisions will be those that target intimate microcommunities.

UNCERTAINTY IS CERTAIN

4 5

To maintain relevance and value, assume that abnormal is the new normal

HYBRID IS HERE TO STAY

The metaverse is in progress, and hybrid is here. Church, school, shopping, concerts, and theater are all hybrid for good. IRL alone will continue to wane.

CONTEXT IS KING

Content is no longer king. Context is. As the attention recession deepens, effective experience strategies will increasingly be driven by technology, time, and situation.  Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

6

Prediction

1WELLBEING EVERYWHERE

More and more categories are being judged by their impact on overall wellbeing. Customers will no longer be satisfied by tools that just get the job done. Increasingly, across all categories, they expect services to contribute to their total wellbeing.

37%

of people say it’s extremely important for brands to focus on wellbeing. Only 18% think brands are doing it extremely well.

- Alex (2022 meaningful experience interview)

Don’t think you’re in the wellbeing industry? Think again. Companies from every sector will be judged by their ability to support customers’ wellbeing.

“Being healthy is being happy and present. It isn’t about food and diet anymore as it was in the past. It is emotional, mental, and physical all working together.”

• Loneliness was already at epidemic levels before the pandemic.1

• Isolation and loneliness increased during the pandemic, especially among adults 18 to 25, older adults, women, and those with low income (NCBI Study).2

• Social relationships are strongly linked to health and longevity; social isolation and loneliness are associated with a 30% increased risk of heart attack and stroke (Journal of the American Heart Association).3

• Not only can isolation lead to loneliness and negative health effects, it has increased social polarization because lockdowns substantially reduced exposure to diverse people, lifestyles, and opinions.4

1 Noted by Dr. Vivek Murthy, US Surgeon General. This is supported by multiple studies, including a 2018 study from Cigna in which 46% of American adults said they sometimes or always felt alone, with Gen Z (18-22) and millennials (23-37) feeling the loneliest. By 2019 depression in adolescents had nearly doubled, with the sharpest increase starting in 2012. (SAMHSA)

2 Nearly half of young adults experienced mental health decline during the pandemic’s second year, and the ability to relate to and interact with others has been seriously impaired in over half of young adults globally. (Sapien Labs’ May 2022 rapid report cited in HBR)

3 The risk effects of loneliness, isolation, and weak social networks are comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day as noted in a BYU meta-analysis  (Source: NYT)

4 COVID lockdown restrictions likely resulted in smaller, more homogeneous networks; people tended to interact only with core network members while limiting “weak tie” relationships that would have exposed them to more diverse opinions and perspectives (Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health). A median of 61% across all 17 advanced global economies say they are more divided than before the outbreak (Pew Research).

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

People feel increasingly disconnected as work-from-home, distance learning, and other virtual alternatives proliferate.

Wellbeing in the workplace

• Global workforce expectations are driving wellness initiatives as employees now prioritize work–life balance over a comfortable salary. JLL Research

• Over the past year, two-thirds of companies report they have adjusted their mental health policies and procedures for employees (NFP’s 2022 US Employer Benefits Survey, “66% of companies are making changes to better support mental well-being,” Fortune Well).

• Typically, companies spend between $200 and $600 per employee for wellbeing benefits.

•

Over the next year, more than half of the employers surveyed plan to increase those budgets by 5% to 25%.

• The mental wellbeing budget is only a fraction of what employers spend on physical health benefits (between $5,000 and $10,000 per worker).

• In 1970, annual health spending topped out at just $353 per American. In 2019 that figure was $11,582. (Source)

Customers expect wellbeing support from most industries.

3 out of 4

employees expect their employer to support health, wellbeing, and nutrition.

Source:

JLL Research

Covid has also changed how consumers experience wellness.

Attitudes have evolved in 7 key areas1:

1. Self-care as preservation and survival. Pandemicrelated stressors profoundly shifted people’s view of self-care to a means of self-preservation and survival. Living through Covid also highlighted the multidimensional nature of wellness and the need to embed it into daily lives and priorities.

2. Prevention as a lifestyle and a public health priority. Covid revealed the close correlation between preventing infectious disease and preventing chronic disease.

3. The need for science to keep pace with wellness. Consumer adoption of wellness practices is accelerating faster than related scientific research, especially for supplements and functional foods. In the future, cost pressures on health systems, aging populations, and the increasing rates of chronic disease will likely force conventional medicine to look toward wellness and the value of its holistic lifestyle approaches and therapies.

4. Leaning into nature for nourishment and healing. During the pandemic, many people discovered the healing and nourishing aspects of nature. This is expected to endure post-pandemic and feature prominently in wellness experiences, with the added benefit of moving wellness companies in a more environmentally focused direction.

5. Balancing physical and virtual connections. Prepandemic wellness trends pointed to a desire to build connections and feel a sense of belonging. As we emerge from the pandemic and return to in-person interactions, the question remains of what virtual activities will endure.

6. Mental wellbeing taking center stage. Mental health has emerged from the clinic to become a “personal pathway towards higher levels of workforce protection and a public and community health strategy.” Practitioners are being supported by the private sector, which has been creating new solutions to help people improve their mental wellness in all aspects of their lives.

7. A reset of global values. Between self-reflection amid isolation at home and inequities exposed by the pandemic, fresh urgency for social justice arose. The global values reset raised questions. Is wellness a privilege or a basic right? Are we harming the planet or increasing injustice because of what we buy or do? The upshot: The wellness industry will move toward more “conscious capitalism.”

1Global Wellness Institute

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Your biggest competitor in wellbeing:

DIY

Over the past few years, a third of customers have developed new skills for managing their own wellbeing.

Base = Customer Sample (n=611) C23. What types of wellbeing have you developed strategies for? Select all that apply. (n = 209)

MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCES

Motivating factors like added flexibility and more personalized work environments are aligned with elements of wellbeing.

employees say that work/life balance is a top contributor to doing meaningful work.

EXPERIENCES THAT USE WELLBEING TO CREATE MARKET ADVANTAGE

Bringing hospitality home

Craftwork is disrupting the residential real-estate market.

The Experience Strategy Podcast: ”Hotelifying Apartment Living”

How do you take a simple moment and turn it into something memorable every single day? Many of us have had wonderful experiences at hotels, but residential living has been slow to embrace the lessons of hospitality. In this episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast, we talk to Trevor Hightower, the founder of Craftwork, about how his team is disrupting the residential real estate market by designing multi-unit housing that intentionally supports residents’ wellbeing.

Gamifying to put the customer first

The pharmaceutical industry has recently focused on becoming truly patient-centric. A key tenet is viewing the holistic impact of a disease or condition on all aspects of patients’ lives.

Merck offers an excellent example of this, partnering with Twitch to create “Game On for MS!,” eight hours of live-streamed gaming on World Multiple Sclerosis Day 2020. The event included MS experts, patient support staff, people with MS, and some of Twitch’s top gamers, to increase awareness and understanding of how MS affects everyday activities like gaming.

The results: Merck got closer to their patients and Twitch became a “healthcare company for a day.”

Source: Fierce Pharma

Source: Merck Twitter

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Employers as wellbeing providers.

• In the wake of the Great Resignation, driven by the physical and mental health impacts of the pandemic, employers find they need to step up their wellbeing game, not only to retain staff, but to help them thrive.

• PWC invested $2.4 billion into workforce wellbeing, including creating the “Be Well, Work Well Program,” which is “about forming everyday healthy habits that help fuel six dimensions of wellbeing—Physical, Emotional, Mental, Spiritual, Financial, and Social—which are proven drivers of performance, fulfillment, and engagement. This goes beyond the traditional employee wellness programs focused mostly on physical health; it’s a holistic approach to a happier and healthier life.”

46%

Employers as financial wellness providers, too.

It’s not just about physical and mental health in the workplace. Companies are taking on responsibility for the financial wellness of employees as well. A large majority now offer financial wellness tools to help increase retention.

• 97% of employers feel responsible for their employees’ financial wellness, up from 95% in 2021 and 41% in 2013.

• 84% of employers say offering financial wellness tools helps increase employee retention.

• 91% see higher employee satisfaction when offering resources to manage overall wellbeing.

Source:

study

BoA

of employers have seen an increase in resignations over the past year.

66% of Gen Z want a company culture built on mental health and wellness. (HBR)

Pharmacy sector expands into health and wellness.

• The “retailification” of healthcare, underway before the pandemic, sees retail pharmacies and chains such as Walmart expand from products and medications to health services, from whole-person wellness to primary care. The trend accelerated during Covid, as diagnostic testing and vaccine administration were pushed to pharmacies. This is a huge benefit to rural areas without health system coverage but with these retail outposts.

• Rite Aid RxEvolution is positioned as a “contemporary whole health destination that inspires shoppers to take care of their wellbeing.” Enhanced in-store experience includes spainspired design, the increased role of the pharmacist, and an upgraded digital experience.

Source: Walmart

Walgreens and CVS are doubling down on expanding into primary care with recent acquisitions of Summit Health by Walgreens and Signify Health by CVS

Retail store as wellness destination

• Other retail stores are focusing on more general aspects of whole health, with offerings that align with their brand.

• Rituals’ House of Rituals wellness destination flagship store in Amsterdam includes a body spa, mind spa, luxury perfume bar, Mansion Collection (customizable home fragrance), and restaurant.

• Galeries Lafayette Wellness Floor curates top wellness brands in a massive flagship experience guided by wellness concierges.

Digital wellness from unexpected brands

• Best Buy: ”Healthy living starts here.” Best Buy’s healthcare technology solution pairs companies with dedicated Healthcare Account Managers to help them purchase technology for businesses.

Source: Best Buy

• Barclays customers have access to mental health services through their banking app and website.

Wellness in the beverage sector

• Pandemic-inspired trends toward healthy living, trying new diets, and ways to reduce anxiety and improve focus1, 2 have emerged in the beverage market.

• The “functional beverage” trend—converting supplements to beverages, integrating functionality into the mainstream market, moving unregulated ingredients forward safely (e.g., CBD and adaptogens), and clean labeling3 —has taken off.

• People began drinking more alcohol during Covid,4, 5 but as the pandemic continued, consumption decreased in favor of low- or non-alcoholic options. From mid-July 2021 to mid-July 2022, 72 nonalcoholic beverages entered the market.6 US market is valued at ~$109 billion and anticipated to have a CAGR of 6% over the next 10 years. (FMI)

Recess Mood beverages claim to “calm the mind, lift the mood.

The beauty industry embraces wellness.

• L’Oréal differentiates via wellness partnerships with…

• Clue, the period tracking app, to help users understand how hormones affect skin—and to help evolve its skincare offerings to include personalized products that factor in menstrual cycles. (Global Cosmetics News)

• Verily, Alphabet’s life science subsidiary, to study the biology of the skin to develop new digital and diagnostic products for skincare. (MobiHealthNews)

• Shiseido’s WIN 2023 and Beyond. Their goal is to transform to a personal beauty and wellness company by 2030 by creating longterm, healthy beauty experiences for customers that anticipate their needs. (Accenture). As part of this strategy Shiseido inked a 3-year partnership with China’s WeChat/Tencent to build D2C and drive social commerce. (Cosmetics Business)

Source: Helloclue.com

Tech in the service of better sleep

Eight Sleep. Founded on the concept that good sleep is critical to good health, their bed “Pod” boasts sleep-well capabilities:

• Temperature-regulating microclimates and sensors that track deep sleep, REM sleep, and daily heart rates.

• Gentle wake-up, with an alarm that gradually cools the mattress several minutes before cuing a soft, chestlevel vibration.

• SleepOS, an AI-powered operating system that learns a user’s ideal sleep conditions based on tracker data and automatically adjusts, while also factoring in the ambient environment. It also serves as a private sleep coach, offering actionable feedback and flagging abnormal events.

Source: EightSleep.com

WAYS TO INFUSE WELLBEING INTO YOUR EXPERIENCE STRATEGY

Look at systems strategies.

Wellbeing is connected to all parts of life. It is an outcome of all other life systems— and a system in and of itself.

Our extensive research shows that people use many systems, but they have low conscious awareness of the way those systems interact. This means that experience strategists need to support customers’ systems—and customers need to be able to trust us to do just that.

KEEP LEARNING

Hear how the Founder and President of famHQ, a techenabled family concierge service supporting working moms in managing their households and careers, used systems thinking to design her startup CX.

https://experiencestrategypodcast. com/episode/supporting-workingmoms-through-systems

People have rules, routines, beliefs, and patterns. They work to create balance in their lives. They are orchestrating their experiences to accomplish their goals.

To do that, they need to create life systems—sometimes deep ones—to manage things.

Today, people want companies to support their lives as an interdependent system.

How customers describe their life systems

• Boost their belief in systems.

• Help them recognize their systems.

• Prompt reflection.

• Provide support to manage systems— such as dashboards, queues, toolkits.

• Build trust between your company and your customers.

Help strengthen your customers across different parts of their lives.

What helps life systems work?

Design for intentionality and reflection.

INTENTIONALITY

Definition: Employees and customers being deliberate, purposeful, and direct about their functional, emotional, social, and/or aspirational jobs to be done.

Example: A daily summary of phone usage with recommendations for staying true to purpose.

Doing things with intention (versus letting things just happen) is key to achieving balance and goals for both employees and customers. Companies can help people be intentional—not just with reminders, alerts, goal-setting support, and interactive dashboards—but also in how they create spaces, support the modes people want to get into, provide time-management support with calendaring tools and tools that turn off “distractions,” and encourage people to reflect on their intentions.

A person with strong intentionality can direct and drive their selftalk (thoughts) and modes, and proactively define and improve/ upgrade their deep systems.

REFLECTION

Definition: The prerequisite activity for any meaningful experience. Often happens well after the moment.

Example: “Retros” in Agile Product Development

Reflection is essential for experiences to be meaningful. It’s not about time well saved, but about time well spent and invested. It can happen both “in the moment” or afterward. Just having the opportunity to reflect can be meaningful. In our quantitative studies, we’ve found that people who reflect regularly rate all aspects of their lives higher than those who don’t.

Physical, virtual, or a mix of both can evoke reflection, with elements varying in size, cost, or significance. Companies can design prompts to spark reflection as well as safe spaces that invite reflection and conversation. Designed correctly, tokens, mementos, souvenirs (T-shirts, stickers, programs, pins, etc.), badges, certificates, and items with embedded goals (like a Fitbit or dashboard) can help with reflection—especially for aspirational jobs to be done. But reflection is key to functional, emotional, and social jobs as well.

Planning, learning, and discovery modes are ideal times to prompt reflection. This might be done digitally through assessments, quizzes, photos, and reviews (if given freely). Keep in mind that unless customer experience surveys and requests for reviews are done brilliantly, they will tarnish the experience. We saw lots of eye-rolling in our focus groups when CX surveys were mentioned; people see them being about the company and not them. We need to flip that paradigm.

Reflection moments are powerful because they enhance awareness and gratitude for what—and who—is important in their life. Explore how you can use prompts, acknowledgment, conversation, ritual, and physical or digital tokens to build reflection into experiences.

KEEP LEARNING

Tune into this episode of the Experience Strategy Podcast to hear how Caveday uses intentionality and reflection to help people work better https://experiencestrategypodcast.com/episode/caveday-modes-and-flow-at-work

Prediction

2POWERED BY CUSTOMER PURPOSE

With savvier customers and increased demand for transparency on all fronts, companies that focus on their purpose story will struggle, but those that focus their experience on their customer’s purpose will thrive and foster sustainable engagement.

66%

6 in 10 employees

46% believe brands are doing it well.

Thomas Kolster, author of The Hero Trap, recently conducted a study to test the different outcomes of advertisements that used a classic purpose approach (“believe in us as an organisation to bring change”) and those with a transformative promise (“believe in your own ability to bring change”). He conducted his tests using a mix of traditional surveys and an electroencephalography (EEG) brain scanner, and evaluated them based on emotional responses, willingness to buy, and willingness to pay a premium price. He found that transformative promises, those that understood the customer as hero in their own journey, increased both likelihood to spend and elicited significantly more positive emotional responses. In past studies, Kolster and others found that purpose drove perception, but these recent results indicate that tides may be changing. Kolster concludes, “As more and more organisations talk about the bigger societal role they’re playing in the world and sustainability is becoming increasingly mainstream the effectiveness or differentiation in that societal messaging is becoming weakened.”

Having a company purpose does not equate to understanding your customer’s purpose.

will choose employers based on shared beliefs and values.

of people believe it’s important for brands to align with their personal purpose. Only

INSIGHTS DRIVING THIS TREND

Consumer trust is at an all-time low.

The Edelman Trust Barometer has been measuring consumer trust and credibility for 22 years. Their 2022 report asserts that “Business’ societal role is here to stay: People want more business leadership, not less.”

The increasing distrust of media, government, and NGOs has positioned business to take the reins on finding solutions to societal issues. Edelman’s findings show that more than half of consumers will buy or advocate for brands based on their beliefs.

While laughing and having fun are important in meaningful experiences, they are listed as less critical for experiences with brands. Other elements that are less important with brands are gaining a deeper understanding of myself, being present in the moment, being more focused on self-care, giving me a sense of stability, reflecting on what is important, and appreciating the beauty around me. However, we know that brands play an important role in all these elements of meaning that were listed as less important (21%-27% and 4% as most important for each).

© Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Helping others and contributing to a larger purpose are as crucial as productivity in making brand or company experiences meaningful.

70% of consumers are wary of corporate ESG claims.

Millennials

Analyzing the disrupted worker-employer relationship, Deloitte suggests four possible futures, including the concept of “purpose unleashed” in which purpose outweighs the importance of the work itself. Purpose becomes central to the employer-employee relationship and the organization’s commitment to purpose becomes central to its brand for attracting and retaining workers, as well as how employees experience meaning and fulfilment at work.

• Over the past two years, 44% of millennials and 49% of Gen Zs said they have made choices about the type of work they are prepared to do and the organizations for which they are willing to work based on their personal ethics.

• When asked what workers will increasingly value in the next five years, 86% of executives predicted that they would value a meaningful mission and an opportunity to make an impact on that mission.

• A recent Gartner survey found that when an organization acted on today’s social issues, the proportion of workers who were considered highly engaged increased from 40% to 60%. Deloitte

LIFE SYSTEMS

Base: n = 1103 (2022), n = 2032 (2021)

Q10. Which of the following are important in helping you strengthen the different areas of your life?

Q11. Of the items you just reviewed, which is most important in helping you improve the different areas of your life?

and Gen Z want to work for companies with purpose.

Positivity and Purpose continue to be most important for strengthening life systems; open-mindedness shows significant growth year over year.

Base: n = 1103 (2022), n = 773 (2021)

MXTECH2. In general, how often do you want technology to help you reflect on your goals?

According to McKinsey, ESG means different things to different people, and each element’s value seems to vary by age.

• More than 2/3 of younger respondents said that at least one aspect of ESG is important to them. Top concern is transparency on how they care for people, including employees, customers, and community.

• Younger respondents prioritize authenticity and social issues such as DEI.

• Older respondents prioritize health and environmental issues.

According to Deloitte’s UK report on how consumers are embracing sustainability, there has been a sharp increase in the number of UK citizens who have adopted a more sustainable lifestyle since 2021.

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Still, there are mixed signals on whether consumer sentiment around the importance of ESG is translating into their behavior.

• A 2022 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey highlights a perceived “say–do” gap between consumer sentiment and behavior. Of consumer respondents, 80% said they think about sustainability in their day-to-day purchases, but only 1% to 7% reported that they pay a premium for sustainable products and services.

• Additionally, only 20% of consumers believe they can have an impact personally Similar “say–do” gaps exist on the investment side. According to a survey cited by Morning Consult, nearly 1/3 of US investors say some of their portfolio is focused on ESG investing, but more than half don’t know how much is allocated.

Customers increasingly demand environmental and social integrity but are skeptical of current efforts and unwilling to pay more.

More people want technology to help them reflect on goals daily.

The emerging recommerce space in fashion and

• The resale market in fashion is growing 11x faster than traditional retail, driven by consumer demand for more sustainable, affordable shopping and tech advancements that enable it. (Wilson Griffin, co-founder, Recurate via Forbes)

• Recommerce also appeals to consumer desire for exclusivity, which has been fueled by celebrity supporters such as Zendaya, Lorde, and Rihanna. (BCG)

• Per ThredUp resale report, global secondhand apparel market expected to grow 127% by 2026, 3x faster than the overall market, led by North America. This will bring it to $82 billion.

• Preowned clothing now makes up 25% of the average secondhand consumer’s wardrobe according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

• This trend primarily began with third-party resellers, such as ThredUp and Poshmark. Players within the fashion industry have started entering the market, opening resale shops either on their own (e.g., Madewell Forever, Lululemon Like New) or through partnerships with ThredUp (Cuyana Revive, Isabel Marant). Eileen Fisher pioneered with their Renew program which started in 2009 and has taken back over 1.5 million pieces.

• Brands with their own resale shops are up 275% from 8 in 2020 to 30 in 2021. (ThredUp)

• In 2021, 224 million consumers (74%) said they have or are open to buying secondhand apparel and 53% have purchased secondhand in last 12 months, up 22 points from 2020. (ThredUp)

• 65% of consumers across generations have said they’d like to experience recommerce directly with brands. (WWD)

• The fashion industry has been a leading contributor to environmental damage through production of greenhouse gas, water usage, water pollution, and waste. It’s leveraging resale shops as a way to show their commitment to sustainability. However, they are also responding to consumer demand and see it as a way to drive revenue and avoid dilution of their brand voice from third-party resellers. (ThredUp)

• Buyback and resale are not just limited to fashion; Ikea, Patagonia, and REI have all implemented programs.

Future is a virtual personal training app that uses wearable and mobile data to provide a totally customized experience for each user.

elsewhere.

While many companies use their data for manipulative motivation, the best companies support customers with meaningful motivation.

Companies with the most impact in the transformation economy deliver on their customers’ purpose by asking them what they want as part of the onboarding process.

Goal-setting is a weekly feature in Noom’s customer journey; they offer the support of a goal specialist, set weekly SMART goals with customers, and include a long-term Super Goal in the onboarding journey.

Explorer X co-founder and travel mentor Dr. Michael Bennett says that most travelers don’t set out with a specific goal in mind. Explorer X helps them gain clarity by asking them about the felt shift they want to experience on a trip. Their travel planners use that insight to design their customized journey.

Explorer X custom-designs experiences based on travelers’ goals.

Noom has made goal-setting a key differentiator in the crowded weight-loss market.

At Walking Mentorship, a travel program that combines nature, walking, and mentoring into a tool for self-development, each client is guided in defining their personal purpose before the journey begins.

• While Revivo, like many wellness retreats, promises transformation, it has made customization a key differentiator.

• Before booking a stay, a potential guest completes an 80-question survey about their physical, mental, emotional, relational, and energetic health and needs. Revivo’s wellness team collates and analyzes the data to design a custom wellness journey.

• They’ve invested in this level of customization to deepen guest engagement in the transformative journey and to optimize the impact of the visit.

Nailing the right sustainability strategy is key.

The Experience Strategy Podcast: “The Future of Smart Fashion”

As sustainability increases its influence on purchase decisions, companies across every category are looking at which authentic sustainability strategies work for them. In the world of fashion, materials science and manufacturing company Avery Dennison is focusing on the small but powerful clothing label. Listen to hear Amy Lee, Senior Trends and Insights Manager, discuss how the brand is rethinking labels for sustainability.

The best purposeleaders create dedicated moments for customers to get clear about what they want.

Revivo has gone beyond the traditional promise of wellness transformation.

Motivation must be meaningful, not manipulative.

What creates meaningful motivation

• Whether you work in financial services, health systems, spiritual or religious systems, family dynamics, wellbeing, education, employee experience, or travel, if your job is to support customers in achieving a goal, then you must understand meaningful motivation.

• To be meaningful, an experience must be both valuable and impactful. That means that your customer must believe that the time they spend with you and the data they give to you is time well invested. It also means that their engagement must pay off in results that move them toward their goals.

• People who are looking for motivation and support want understanding. Many companies believe it’s enough to understand customer needs that their segmentation research identifies. But customers increasingly tell us that they expect companies to understand their individual, personal goals.

Check out these eight principles for meaningfully motivating your customers and listen to this podcast episode to learn more.

Mantel 2023.

Principles of meaningful motivation

1

2

Start with understanding

• Acknowledge what matters

• Validate their perspective

• Use data to demonstrate that you’re listening

Measure what matters

• Quantifiable success metrics aren’t enough to keep customers focused through the long haul of change

• To arrive at a compelling “why” that drives behavior change, dig deeper until you get to something that energizes your customer’s efforts

• Demonstrate progress throughout the journey

Boost awareness to support change

3

• Help raise awareness of unconscious behaviors

• Design for moments of reflection

Help them see to believe

• Visualization is an important part of meaningful motivation at every stage of the transformative process

• Promote self-awareness about what works and doesn’t at a personal level 4

• Visualizations that keep a goal top of mind spark motivation and show and celebrate progress towards the personal goal

Motivation by fostering personal ownership

• Gather insights about their patterns

• Visualizations fall into three categories: those we think about, those we imagine, and those we can see. Most people prefer to have a mix of both physical and digital visualization tools 5

• Continually reestablish their compelling “why”

• Define their personal guardrails

• Help them see their role in their success 6

Cultivate a sense of accomplishment

• Transformation is a journey, and often a challenging one

• Your job as a facilitator of change is to help your clients and customers shift their sense of belief from “I can’t do it” to “I am doing it.”

Design for adaptation

• Celebrate adjustments over overhauls

• Monitor mindfulness

• Make confidence and curiosity your North Stars 8

Support identity shifts

• Making our efforts about some thing that matters to us, makes it more likely we will do the work to create change

• When our identities shift, so do our behaviors, and vice versa

Stage authentic experiences.

Why it matters

In the book Authenticity, the authors say that each customer and business is unique, so you must determine the best principles for the authenticity imperative in your enterprise. Your approach to authenticity reflects the heart of your business, culture, story, business model, and daily operations. It must be coherent and believable to create an emotional connection and render meaningful experiences.

The two standards of authenticity are… 1. Being true to your own self 2. Being who you say you are to others.

AUTHENTICITY

Definition: The rendering of experiences and the management of the customer’s perception of them so they are seen as real.

Example: Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays so teams and customers can worship and spend time with family; part of the “Chick-fil-A recipe.”

FAKE-FAKE

Go faux. With authenticity emerging as the new consumer sensibility, “fake” can be a term of derision. Ah, but if we do something that is obviously inauthentic, then it’s not fake—it’s faux. For companies, admitting that offerings are Fake-fake and calling them faux helps render them real. Such transparency

acknowledges customers’ desire for authenticity while recognizing— even celebrating—the true nature of the offering.

FAKE-REAL

Create belief. This mode glides over its inauthenticity by creating a fake reality. It’s not about the “willing suspension of disbelief” (poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous phrase). Rather, being Fake-real requires fashioning an offering for which your customers want to believe in its authenticity. You must create belief.

REAL-FAKE

Reveal the unreal. To be Real-fake, never mask your inauthenticity as with the Fakereal. Rather, reveal your unreality. Perceived authenticity resides on

the other-focused axis of ”Is what it says it is” (or “What it says”). Therefore, you must focus on how well the representation of your offerings maintain external consistency with others’ direct perceptions of your offerings, your outlets, and your business.

REAL-REAL

Get real: Being Real-real is the hardest of the four modes to achieve, generally taking a few decades, and sometimes many more—burrowing into the fabric of the culture. We tend to view things as Real-real only if they are older than we are. Moreover, once attained, Real-real is also the easiest mode to fall short of through subsequent activity. Realreal companies are held to high standards.

”People increasingly see the world in terms of real and fake, and want to buy something real from someone genuine, not a fake from some phony.”

Chapter 1, Authenticity by James H.

Gilmore

and Joseph Pine II

“It is easier to be authentic if you don’t say you’re authentic.”

FAKE-FAKE

Celebrate your inauthenticity by boldly embracing your Fake-fakeness.

Tabloids

FAKE-REAL

Mask your inauthenticity by comprehensively creating an alternate but believable reality.

Dave & Buster’s, Disneyland

REAL-FAKE

Acknowledge your inauthenticity by emphatically demonstrating where you are not true to self.

Experiences

From the introduction to The Hero Trap by Thomas Kolster: “Most companies today are firmly on the social and environmental issues ‘bandwagon,’ like bees around a honey pot, from plastic in oceans through to diversity. As a result, people are increasingly distrustful of these efforts which they view as cheap marketing stunts meant to wow people into buying more. ‘Try to fly like a superman, and you will come down like a tin of soup.’ Market economists have long told us that we’re driven only by money and status, but the inherent human truth that cuts across age, culture, and gender uncovers a stronger force: We wish to be in charge of our own lives and our own happiness.

“Through extensive growth and affinity research, world-renowned purpose-pioneer Thomas Kolster uncovers a simple answer that is key to driving marketing growth in the 21st century: If you put people in control of the marketing mix, from products to promotion, they can grow and in turn grow your organisation. This book explains the meteoric rise of a company like AirBnB, how a 20-something Swede, Maria de la Croix, built a global coffee empire like Wheelys in just a few years, and how a group of friends hanging out in a bar in Melbourne created one of the largest global nonprofits fighting for men’s health, Movember—and how you can empower people to do the same. Today’s power no longer rests in the hands of the privileged few, but in the talented many. It is time for you to unleash that power, in numbers.

Universal CityWalk

REAL-REAL

Transcend your inauthenticity by relentlessly pursuing Real-real in all you do.

Tiffany, Harley-Davidson

KEEP LEARNING

The Experience Strategy Podcast: Big Brands and the Hero Trap

“ ‘Who can you help me become?’ is the one essential question you need to be asking and acting on to chart a new course for your organisation, changing behaviours at scale and unlocking sustainable growth that benefits all.” Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Avoid the hero trap.

that support personal agency and self-efficacy have greater value and impact than those that assume they know what’s best for customers.

ZOOM IN ON SMALL GROUPS

The big picture still matters, but your most important strategic decisions will be those that target intimate micro-communities.

Prediction

Companies focus on the segment (the big picture) or they focus on individuals (personalization), but the real opportunity is the small group: families, friends, working connections, suppliers, personal connections.

Over 60%

of customers find support with their inner circle more helpful than support for themselves.

61% of people indicate it’s important for brands to help manage life and shared goals within their inner circle.

Covid has had many lasting impacts on evolving family dynamics, including parents engaging children more in family decisions.

Base: n = 686 respondents with children (2022), n = 567 respondents with children (2021) NF8: For each statement below, rate how well it describes your family dynamic.

The definition of family as a married mom and dad with two kids has been changing for a long time, impacting all types of experiences.

The closer to home a source is, the greater the trust.

According to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer (see more in the Powered by Customer Purpose Trend), while the world’s collective trust in NGOs, Media, Government and Business continues to plummet, consumers increasingly trust those closest to them, with significant increases in trust for close co-workers, family members, and neighbors.

Nearly two-thirds of customers say it is fairly or extremely important that brands are focused on helping to better manage life or shared goals within their inner circle.

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

EXPERIENCES THAT USE WELLBEING TO CREATE MARKET ADVANTAGE

Clayton Homes redefines the home—and family.

Clayton Homes, the largest builder of manufactured housing and modular homes in the United States, sees this new reality daily. For instance, an empty-nest couple was moving from New York City to North Carolina. They needed their home customized to have a shared living space in the center, but two matching primary suites on each end: one for them, the other for the wife’s sister, who was also moving from New York and will be living with them.

Family dynamics when home shopping reflect the varied approaches around living now and in the future. A mom and her two daughters stopped by Clayton Homes to look at housing options for the married daughter. As they shopped the lot, they discussed moving in together for a while to help with her young baby. In their ideal future, each woman would have her own living situation, but they recognized there would be different paths along the way.

The rise of group-focused care

Fusing pandemic-popularized telehealth with greater emphasis on DEI initiatives and culturally competent care, a batch of companies have entered the marketplace focusing on underserved populations.

Serving the transgender and LGBTQ+ community (Fierce Healthcare)

• Queerly connects LGBTQ people with trained providers, telehealth, and concierge health.

• Violet provides mental health by and for the LGBTQ+ community.

• Plume offers digital health for the transgender community; is expanding into employee benefits.

• Folx delivers telehealth, HRT Rx, and sexual health; they recently partnered with the National Black Trans Advocacy Coalition

Serving BIPOC populations

• Health in Her Hue connects Black women to culturally competent HCPs and evidence-based health content. Also includes a community feature for women to connect on health topics.

• Cayaba Care focuses on improving maternal health outcomes and pediatric care

• She Matters is a digital health platform for black women experiencing postpartum co-morbidities; offers cultural competency training for care providers.

Femtech: fertility, hormonal health, menopause, general women’s health

• Tia Women’s Health Clinic delivers telehealth and in-person care.

• Stix covers fertility, pregnancy, urogynecological health, and vaginal health.

• Winona offers hormone replacement therapy.

• Forty Fifty is a middle-aged wellness-focused community with health guides.

• Midi delivers menopause-related healthcare

Mental health takes a village

Circles by Modern Health is one of the highest-valued mental health startups of 2021. (Behavioral Health Business)

• Community-based care provides mental health support via virtual provider-led group sessions to members and non-members.

• Judgement-free spaces, or Circles, let people learn, share, and find community on topics that impact their wellbeing.

• Their workplace mental health platform supports 220 companies worldwide.

A winning concept

• After one week, 88% of Circles were filled and 53% of registered attendees had signed up for more than one session.

• In just a few months, Circles reached over 6,000 people through 250+ group sessions.

• 44% of survey respondents stated that they would leverage Circles instead of 1:1 therapy.

• In Q4 2022, Netflix shocked its subscribers as they announced the end of free family sharing across multiple homes. This shift marked a new era of accountability for customers, but also indicates an understanding of the insularity of shared home spaces.

• An informal interview with an Amazon customer service agent indicated that the strategy behind Amazon’s Family Plan is driven by family dynamics. The use case most commonly cited is gift giving. In a world where accounts are shared, Amazon’s Family Plan gives customers the opportunity to maintain elements of surprise.

© Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

The Experience Strategy Podcast: A Spotlight on Spotify

Launched in 2008, Spotify has grown to over 356 million users. The service connects with consumers on a deep emotional level by noting their music likes and dislikes and suggesting new music to discover. In this episode of the Experience Strategy Podcast, advertising and consumer behavior expert Margaret Callcott talks about using Spotify for herself and her family and how the Spotify Family Plan brought them together in new and meaningful ways.

KEEP LEARNING

The Experience Strategy Podcast: A Spotlight on Spotify

Circles include such topics as Healing Racial Trauma, Building Resilience, Quieting Negative Thoughts, Parenting Stress, Coping with Isolation, Managing Stress and Burnout, and Building Healthy Habits.

The fate of family plans depends on family dynamics.

Fans

• Fave has created a social platform dedicated to superfans, a community where one can find like-minded souls and create a more immersive and engaging experience including video content, challenges, and a marketplace to exchange physical and virtual goods.

• A gamified aspect to Fave drives engagement, awarding points for top fan status and rewards around the artists and creators fans love.

• Artists and creators can also monetize fans’ activity and earn a percentage of what fans sell

Source: Jacquelle Amankonah Horton, founder of Fave, interviewed in Female Founders Fund

• Streamloots, a top monetization platform for creators and their fans, partnered with mental health advocate Mxiety and Geek Therapeutics to provide creators with resources to manage their wellbeing via Streamloots Strong.

Source: Accenture, Streamloots

Experiences that are zooming in on small groups

Charlotte Tilbury makeup1 is combining small groups and hybrid to create more personalized and “small group personalized” experiences via:

• A 3D digital store with personalized recommendations from virtual associates

• Shopping with friends to navigate the VR store together via a video call (using tech similar to multiplayer video games) and find/ collect hidden keys

• Live shopping events on TikTok with discounts for in-app purchases

1 Marketing Dive; 2 TrendWatching

Samsøe Samsøe2 is zooming in to the individual seller level to enable them to resell their clothes to their target audiences

• They provide QR code sewn into fabric linked to the data set of fabric color, size, and original price, which can be scanned, connected to a Facebook account, and an ad will be generated.

• They also prepay for a micro campaign to reduce long-distance shipping

and creators engage in digital communities that “get” you.

Discover more about the rise of social commerce in the trend Context Is King

Family tools for teaching money management

Money management apps allow family collaboration for many functions, from allowance payments to monetary gifting from relatives to spending management (parents limit location and size of spend) to opportunities to save, invest, and donate. Rewards play a major part in the apps, some of which differentiate with financial education, while others help build and reinforce good financial habits.

• BusyKid

Earn money or other rewards for chores; options to save, donate, invest. Relatives can also gift money.

• Greenlight

Helps parents teach kids about spending and saving by loading money onto a card and limiting locations where they can spend it.

• FamZoo

Features chore and allowance tracking, prepaid card, and restricted spending access.

• Copper

Uses behavioral psychology to help teens build good financial habits. Allows parents to monitor purchases, and set up allowances.

BeReal brings friends together, digitally and spontaneously.

This photo-sharing app prompts all users to post one photo simultaneously each day—an unfiltered, unplanned social experience. Once you’ve posted your BeReal, you can browse your friends’ photos and see what they’re up to.

• No option to just “like” other photos; you have to engage with a post more deeply by taking a reaction selfie or commenting.

• 53 million users worldwide with US and Brazil leading downloads (SensorTower)

• Instagram reportedly testing “IG candid.” Snapchat rolled out dual camera functionality similar to BeReal (SensorTower). TikTok also testing a timed-posting feature.

• Vice likes the mundane nature of BeReal and calls it the “only good social media platform,” likening it to the unfiltered vibe of early platforms, but predicts a rapid decline due to its simplistic nature and our now-ingrained desire to fix our social media pictures to look better.

Reflect the new family dynamics.

The chosen family is the new foundational consumer grouping.

1. The individual is still important, of course. But the group of people who choose to call themselves family is by far the most underserved group today.

2. Let’s stop grouping people by demographics or psychographics and start grouping them by relationships. That’s where real intimacy with a brand can occur.

3. If we support the chosen family, they will create more meaningful experiences—and thank us for it. The

family has been studied as a group...

As individuals contributing to a whole

As a nuclear and extended group

As roles

Through psychology

Based on behavior

Through culture

• Each person opts into the Life Systems.

• Their shared experience is a set of principles, a common cause, love, rules, and a series of systems.

• The Life Systems are a response to the abundance of experiences, technologies, and content.

• It’s also the way in which families leverage their abilities and capabilities to maximize the total volume of meaning.

The new family dynamic: An example

The New Family Logic

If we can’t fix the money problems, maybe we can focus on the impact of money on our emotional wellbeing and reduce our stress.

And that will help us over the long term until we can fix our money problems.

Bad Company Logic

Of course you’re stressed, you’re overdrafting. Stop over-drafting, and you won’t be so stressed.

These life systems are connected.

The management of emotional wellbeing will lead to longevity

• Money problems create stress

• Stress is not good for our emotional wellbeing

• Stress could cause health concerns

…The family has not been studied (to our knowledge) as a dynamic.

Rethink personas.

Existing personas stereotype the demographics of an individual. Create personas that show the range of people who have similar jobs to be done and provide details in an easy-todigest manner. Show a range of people and their inner circles

Determine key elements for people for the JTBD and highlight what is important within those elements

KEEP LEARNING

Listen in to hear how fintechs are using niche segments to better define customer journeys https://experiencestrategypodcast.com/episode/niche-segments-and-omni-channel-in-fintech

UNCERTAINTY IS CERTAIN

To maintain relevance and value, assume that abnormal is the new normal.

Prediction

Now that we’ve proved how adaptable we are, customers will increasingly expect agility. Experience strategists will need to rethink customer journeys and experiences to deliver just-in-time products and services despite outages and political instability, including network distribution and modularity.

Because of all of the changes that have occurred, we want brand experiences to adapt and evolve.

Because of all of the uncertainties, we want brand experiences to stay the way they are.

Base = Customer Sample (n=611)

C24. Which of the following two statements best describes you and

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Nearly 3 out of 4 people believe it’s important for brands to adapt to unexpected circumstances, but less than half believe brands are doing it well.

We’ve always heard that customers don’t like change, but nearly 70% say they want brand experiences to adapt and evolve.

your family?

• Side hustles. According to CNBC, 44% of Americans work two jobs to make ends meet, 28% of whom took a secondary gig due to inflation. These range from online business and freelancing to e-commerce and gig jobs like Uber or Lyft.

(Side Hustle Nation)

• Workforce drain. Despite the downturn, the talent pool in many industries is drying up as employees pursue gig economy opportunities, leave to go to other sectors, or leave the workforce altogether. This shortage is particularly acute with digitally savvy workers. To combat this, companies are trying to retain workers with more meaningful assignments, better advancement opportunities, and reducing educational and traditional experience requirements. (McKinsey)

• Strategies for adapting. Recommendations from McKinsey include prioritizing structured approaches for growth, staying the course on sustainability to accelerate growth by creating value, and making supply chains more resilient and efficient to extract more savings. Leveraging new technologies can help combat both the labor shortage and supply chain challenges: combining AI and HI (human intelligence); 3D printing; action recognition technology to increase quality control and productivity

as well as generate datasets for process improvement; digital manufacturing solutions; 3D simulation (e.g., Nvidia’s Omniverse) to create digital twins to simulate factory, workstation, and assembly design, as well as logistics technology. (HBR)

• Data is key. A strong data foundation will help businesses weather the recession, according to Accenture. Kohl’s is leveraging the current circumstances as a “catalyst for change,” using customer data for personalization through tailored messaging as a powerful tool to motivate consumers to come in and shop. (Fortune)

• Creating new channels. The fashion industry has responded to consumers shifting toward recommerce— to purchase clothes more affordably and to make their own money—by adding resale platforms in addition to their traditional new merchandise platforms. Learn more in Customer Purpose trend, page 30.

Businesses and individuals are diversifying their approach to business in the face of uncertainty.

Supply chains, which were stable and predictable for decades, are now in a constant state of volatility.

We interviewed Kristi Gribble, the Senior Director of Operations for Hallmark Global, which has navigated supply chain complexity for over 100 years, to learn how recent instability is impacting their planning and strategy. Here are our top 3 takeaways:

1. The key factors driving this extended disruption are transportation, the downstream production effects of the pandemic, a lack of standardized requirements among online retailers, decentralized fulfillment centers, new shopper behaviors, geo-political instability and the threat of recession.

2. Of these, perhaps transportation has had the greatest impact. Predictability is gone, between shipping containers stuck in China or those in US waters that can’t be unloaded, impending rail strikes, and the cost and availability of fuel. What was once a stable force in the planning process now shifts constantly.

3. Strategically, this influences how Hallmark decides which products to feature and how to produce them, taking full-spectrum views of the true complexity of both production and distribution. We expect that many companies like Hallmark will end up prioritizing simplicity and flexibility over all else, with solutions like centralized fulfillment, fewer imported goods, and standardized marketing assets.

© Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

FAST FACTS

Hallmark delivers over 50,000 unique SKUs to over 50,000 unique locations every single year.

• The average delivery time for a new SKU is 76 days, but in extreme cases can take 120 days.

Flexport focuses on supply chain innovation.

“Supply chain disruption” has been as much a buzzword of the Covid pandemic as “social distancing.” And the supply chain challenges have demonstrated across nearly every industry sector the importance of a flexible, resilient supply chain.

Flexport has been an innovative disruptor in the supply chain space to help with both data visibility and end-to-end freight management.

• Their “Digital freight forwarding” software connects all players across the supply chain from the good manufacturer to shipping, storage, and delivery. Flexport

is currently testing a new freemium service it will launch this year. It provides free visibility, carbon tracking and messaging to users even if they don’t run freight with Flexport. They are also planning a fulfillment product that can identify high-priority goods and ship them faster through a virtual “HOV lane.”

• Flexport—“freight without constraint”— uses digital freight forwarding software that connects all players across the supply chain from the goods manufacturer to shipping, storage, and delivery.

Source: Forbes

How the hospitality industry is adapting

In this episode, we are joined by Ron Swidler, Chief Innovation Officer at The Gettys Group Companies and creator of the Hotel of Tomorrow® Project, a think tank that unites teams of hospitality experts to ideate, prototype, and test innovations for the near and more distant future of the hotel industry. From technological innovations and new business models to unprecedented shifts in customer expectations, Ron shares the top 10 things hotels should be doing to prepare for the future, including the role of modularity.

Rethinking the restaurantcustomer relationship

In this episode, we talk to brand and marketing guru Roger Beasley about how modes thinking is unlocking age-old problems in the restaurant industry and allowing restaurateurs to diversify their customer base, food delivery models, and stabilize their businesses in uncertain times.

KEEP LEARNING

The Experience Strategy Podcast: A Top Ten List for Hotels of Tomorrow

KEEP LEARNING

The Experience Strategy Podcast: A Revolutionary Way to Manage Restaurant, CX, and Brand

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Use

What is a mode?

A mode is a mindset and set of behaviors that a person enters temporarily.

They do so to get a job done, or to respond to an urgent issue, or because something has changed for them. Unlike a routine, modes are flexible to the situation at hand.

People get into many more modes than they have “moments.” They can switch modes easily and quickly. For example, at home, they might rotate among mommy/daddy, work, and entertainment modes.

Stone Mantel

has been studying modes for 10 years. Here are some key discoveries:

• Consumers are willing to share their modes with brands, and they respond well to mode-based experience design. Therefore, modes make a powerful “box” or “container” for creating discrete situations that can be studied.

• By studying modes, we can understand most retail customers’ mindsets, behaviors, and objectives, while keeping contextual data requirements to a minimum.

• Because consumers talk about being in modes, a company can prescribe a few modes, and most consumers will feel empowered to choose one. This helps the company anticipate consumer needs and customize accordingly.

People describe their mindset, behavior, and situation as a “mode” that they get into (not a “mission”).

KEEP LEARNING

https://experiencestrategypodcast.com/episode/modes-series-episode-6-modes-vs-momentsthe-impact-on-design-thinking

modes to rethink your customer journey.

customer

enter.

Jamie Norwood, named to Inc.’s Top 100 Female Founders and Forbes Next 1000, is the co-founder of Stix, a fast-growing startup in healthcare, challenged to serve extremely distinct customer needs. In this episode, we look at how Modes can create confident shoppers, a sense of community, and continuity across shopper journeys. Tune in and discover how you can apply these frameworks to businesses of any size or category.

KEEP LEARNING

The Experience Strategy Podcast: Applying Modes Thinking to Shopping Platforms

MODES

Definition: A mode is a mindset and set of behaviors that people “get into” temporarily.

Example: Mommy mode, beast mode, detox mode

Modes are states that people quickly get in and out of; they help people get things done. Think about how quickly you get into deadline or coaching mode at work, how different they are from your normal work processes, and how those modes help you in those situations. Modes are driven first by jobs to be done, then by lifestyle and attitudes. Time of day, setting, devices, and other people can also affect modes. They affect decision making and openness to new information, especially in discovery, learning, planning, creating or mentoring modes.

By understanding the modes related to the jobs people are trying to get done and targeting a mode for your value proposition, you are aligning your goods, services, or experiences with how people do what they want or need to do. Combining modes with occasions or milestones further refines journey or experience work. Design for mode first and demographic second in creating meaningful experiences.

“Imagine how unsuccessful these companies would be if they focused their value proposition on a demographic. Netflix: a subscription movie service for low-to-moderate income that can’t afford cable. Google Search: optimized for the working mother who doesn’t have time for extra steps. Uber: a private car service for middle class Americans.” —Dave Norton, PhD. , Digital Context 2.0

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Redesign

journeys to reflect the main modes that customers

HYBRID IS HERE TO STAY

The metaverse is in progress, and hybrid is here. Church, school, shopping, concerts, and theater are all hybrid for good. IRL alone will continue to wane.

Prediction

Church, school, shopping, concerts, and theater are all hybrid for good. IRL alone will continue to wane.

virtual experiences as well as hybrid experiences.

Which of the following statements best reflects your opinion?

Digital experiences are becoming increasingly important, and there’s less value for in-person experiences.

Digital experiences are becoming increasingly important, and there’s still value for in-person experiences.

Digital experiences have become increasingly important, and there should be more emphasis on in-person experiences.

Most people expect companies to provide both in-person and

In 2022, people saw all technologies as more meaningful in helping them reach their life goals—especially smartphone apps and smartwatches.

Base: 2022 = 1103, 2021 = 773

QMXTech1: What technologies are very meaningful in helping you reach goals in your life?

Artificial Intelligence intrigues more customers, but they still want a mix of human and digital support from companies.

Base: 2022 = 1103, 2021 = 773

MXTECH3: Some companies are developing Artificial Intelligence to act as a Personal Assistant giving you reminders, answering questions and even doing some tasks for you (all with your permission) and the ability to approve and adjust as needed. How concerned or excited are you about AI being developed to help you manage your day/week? MXTECH7: In thinking about the ideal mix of human and digital support from companies and brands, what is the right mix?

© Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Base: 2022 = 1103, 2021 = 773

MXTech4: How do you feel about an Artificial Intelligence Personal Assistant doing the following tasks for you (assuming you can make adjustments as needed)?

Significant increase in virtual visits year over year.

Base: 2022 = 1103, n = 510 (2021)

MXTech6. Have you ever participated in a virtual visit on your computer, phone or tablet with a company or professional for any of the following… % Yes among those who have used this service in the last 3 years? 2022 N = , Feb 2021 N = 510

People are becoming increasingly comfortable with AI.

Minimal distractions and access to technical support were voted the least important for a comfortable experience.

Most Important (top 3)

Important

Base = 773

MXTech64 In general, what makes/would make a virtual experience with a company/brand/ service provider the most comfortable for you? Check all that apply.

MXTech65. [pipe in options selected in MXTech64 ] What are the 3 most important expectations you have for a virtual experience to be successful? Pick 3

Voice clarity and a safe/ secure environment were voted most important for creating a comfortable virtual experience.

Why respondents chose virtual interactions over in-person, apps, email, phone, chat, or social media.

In a recent study*, we asked customers to tell us how they like to receive communication from companies on different subjects, including Financial Wellbeing, Family, Physical Health, Emotional Wellbeing, Travel, Career, Relationships, Hobbies, and Self-care.

• In general, people preferred in-person communication, followed by email and apps. The more relational the subject, the more important in-person communication was.

• Email peaked in career and financerelated subjects.

• Phone, online chat, virtual and social media were generally less preferred methods, across all subjects.

When we dug deeper though, we found that a majority preferred multiple methods of communication—especially on subjects that blend emotional and functional jobs.

*Base: 773

MXTECH61 How do/would you most like to interact with companies/brands that help you with the following?

Why respondents chose virtual interactions over inperson, apps, email, phone, chat, or social media.

Hybrid communication methods may be key to connecting with your customer.

Even as people return to going out, “nesting” continues. Spending on home improvement and maintenance is still growing; it is 11% higher than pre-Covid-19 projections, even adjusted for inflation. With consumers expecting to work from home at least one day a week, nesting behavior is expected to continue. (McKinsey)

Blame—or credit—the pandemic for speeding up the widespread adoption of telehealth, which has in turn accelerated consumerdriven healthcare. Consumers are demanding access to healthcare when and where it’s convenient, fueling a growth in solutions from digital start-ups to strategic moves by chains such as CVS and Walgreens to the entry of nontraditional players like Amazon as primary and home care providers.

• CVS makes strategic pivots. (CVS.com)

• Advancing primary care delivery capabilities

• Optimizing retail locations to serve as community health destinations

• Diversifying growth through new health services

• Driving a digital-first technology approach across business

• Embracing omnichannel health experiences

• Walgreens Boots Alliance acquires Village MD aiming for 600 primary care practices in 30+ US markets by 2025 and 1000 by 2027 with 50% in underserved communities. (Forbes)

• Pending is Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical, which would give them a network of more than 200 medical offices, 25 markets, and 790,000 members. (Healthcare Dive)

Events: Gaming, retail, and both

• Fortune Business Insights projects the global VR gaming market to grow from $7.92 billion USD in 2021 to $53.44 billion in 2028, a 31.4% CAGR. Much of the growth will come via virtual gamification, called “exertainment,” that blends music, visuals, wearables, instructors/influencers/ coaches, and brands.

• Meta’s Quest 2 VR headset has shipped more than 10 million units; its Oculus app store has racked up over $1 billion in sales.

• Balenciaga released their Autumn 2021 fashion collection as a video game, partnering with Fortnite to create items that appear in the game as well as in stores.

KEEP LEARNING

The Experience Strategy Podcast: Web3, The Future of Fashion with Futurist Matt Maher

Healthcare goes hybrid with new providers.

The metaverse: Reality or hype?

• Bloomberg Intelligence says that the metaverse, loosely defined as an always-on internet of 3D virtual worlds where users take the form of digital avatars, could be an $800 billion market by 2024.

• Interoperability of the core building blocks of the metaverse’s technology stack (content and experiences, platforms, infrastructure and hardware, and enablers such as payments and security) will be critical to evolution and adoption.

Luxury shopping: Real and virtual products in the metaverse

• Morgan Stanley projects that digital demand for fashion and luxury could grow to $50 billion by 2030. (Yahoo Finance)

• Luxury brands are gambling big on the metaverse, because it can help them…

• Eliminate overstock problems

• Enjoy bigger margins (no raw materials, little labor)

• Have creative leeway because of lack of physical constraints

• Bring old designs back and introduce them to new generations

• Reach audiences who might not be able to afford their physical goods

• Continue to gain resale revenue (on future transactions when item changes hands)

Events: Blending real and digital worlds in sports

• From Deloitte, the blending of real and digital sports worlds accelerates, with growing markets for data capture and analytics, esports, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and immersive technologies.

• Digitization is ongoing and transformative, spurred by growth in athlete data capture and analysis, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies, sports gaming and betting platforms, and more recently, the rise of NFTs.

• The use of VR and AR in sports has increased, with new applications for training and simulation, broadcasting, and in-venue experiences.

• With the greater deployment of 5G and its low-latency benefits, AR applications are multiplying.

• For example, Deloitte and the USGA have collaborated on an AR app to enhance the fan experience, with near-real-time shot tracking and 3D course models.

• AT&T and the WNBA have partnered on the Game View app to visualize game statistics in AR.

• At the stadium, you can take pictures with your favorite players in a real-world setting.

• NHL teams with Verizon and Immersiv. io to bring together player- and pucktracking, along with new ways to consume real-time statistics for a more immersive in-game experience.

• Formula 1 has seen a 17% YOY increase (17.3 to 20.1 million) in their European fan base, outpacing football (6% increase), largely due to the digital infrastructure they’ve built since Liberty Media took over in 2017.

• Research from The Insights Family found Gen Z is more interested in esports than traditional sports and they like “behind the scenes” action, especially “Drive to Survive,” developed in partnership with Netflix.

• Fastest growing sport on social media: YoY growth of 36%. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube are most important.

• F1 Esports and Virtual Grands Prix were incredibly successful in 2020.

• Fashion collaborations, music playlists, celebrity content, F1 TV—it’s not just a sports brand, it’s an entertainment brand.

• Williams Racing Terra Virtua Metaverse partnership will allow users to be in the race immersively, e.g., in the pits, in the car, at the afterparties.

Events: Live entertainment faces challenges

The rebound for in-person event experiences has been mixed.

• LiveNation reports that the “experience economy is driving record demand for concerts” with YOY numbers exceeding 2019.

• But the New York Times reports that the theater sector—regional theatres to Broadway, local orchestras to opera—is seeing persistent drops in attendance, noting that fewer than half as many people went to a Broadway show during the season that ended just before August 2022 than the last full season before the pandemic. The Met’s attendance has fallen to 61% from 75% pre-pandemic. Pandemic fallout may accelerate long-term trends in the arts, from softer ticket sales for classical music, a decline in the subscription model, and last-minute ticket purchases.

• This supports Deloitte’s assertion in the “2022 Media & Industry Outlook” that in-person entertainment faces greater pressure to evolve beyond simply “bringing people out of their pandemic cocoons by evolving and differentiating itself from the living room.”

EXPERIENCES THAT USE HYBRID TO DRIVE MARKET ADVANTAGE

Wishroute aces customer support.

There’s nothing better than a human to understand other humans. In this episode, we’re joined by Jess Lynch, Founder and CEO of Wishroute, a unique human-powered platform that helps people improve their lives and stay healthy. She discusses the #1 thing most digital wellness companies are missing: human-powered accountability supported by technology. If it’s your job to help people achieve their goals, don’t miss this episode.

KEEP LEARNING

The Experience Strategy Podcast: Human + Digital Support = Magic

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

At Signet Education, metrics are baked into the experience.

Does your experience serve your current customer? How about your future customer? Do you know if your experience is time well spent for your customer? Or if they are truly engaged? Or if the outcomes you’re delivering matter to them? In this episode, Sheila Akbar, President and COO of Signet Education, explores what happens when companies make measurement a meaningful part of the experience.

KEEP LEARNING

The Experience Strategy Podcast: When Measurement Is Part of the Experience

Hybrid workforces and productivity

• In Q4 2022, The Washington Post shared evidence that US employees have gotten dramatically less productive. The Wall Street Journal reported that companies like Ford are giving severance packages to underproductive employees. And pretty much every media outlet told us that employees are “quiet quitting” in astounding numbers.

• Companies like Caveday are cropping up to help remote and hybrid teams become more focused and productive.

• In our The Experience Strategy Podcast episode on hybrid work, Corinne Murray, an employee experience thought leader who has worked at such companies as WeWork, American Express, RXR, Gensler, and CBRE, shares her theories on what’s really driving our collective malaise, the influence and lasting impact of distributed and hybrid workforces, and how companies can create authentic and lasting employee engagement. Spoiler alert: They use the same strategies they use to create lasting customer engagement.

Healthcare that embraces digital experiences

• K Health uses AI to reduce doctor workload and cut costs. In 2021 they launched a pediatric program that allows parents to text a doctor any time of day or night, saving a trip to the doctor’s office. AI helps triage symptoms so doctors can diagnose, prescribe, and send prescriptions directly to the pharmacy. (Fast Company)

• XRHealth is a start-up offering physical therapy through “extended reality,” a combination of AR, VR, and mixed reality for physical or recovery therapy e.g., chronic pain, autism spectrum disorder, or Parkinson’s disease. (Boston Globe)

• Patients meet with XRHealth’s clinicians virtually for a screening session. After

determining a diagnosis and treatment plan, XRHealth ships a VR headset (made by HTC Vive) programmed with various applications developed by XRHealth to the patient.

• Their goal is to become “the hospital of the metaverse.”

KEEP LEARNING

Listen in to learn how patient experience is disrupting big pharma. https://experiencestrategypodcast. com/episode/disrupting-big-pharmawith-patient-experience

Shopping:

Gucci invested early in the metaverse for physical and virtual products.

• Gucci Vault (Vogue, Vogue Business)

• Digital concept store offering choice vintage pieces, customized and curated, from the brand’s 100-year history and refurbished by Gucci artisans. Also sells new pieces by emerging designers from across the globe.

• Sustainable and commercially savvy: Customizing creates a new category of objects that are both vintage and new.

• Gucci Grail is a partnership with 10KTF, an NFT shop in the virtual city of New Tokyo run by a fictional world-famous craftsman, Wagmi-san. Goal is to reward brand affinity and early adoption. (Vogue Business, CR Fashionbook)

• Gucci Town, a digital space on Roblox (previously Gucci Garden), includes a creative corner for art piece creation, an exhibition space, a shop selling digital Gucci items, and a place where members can meet. (Marketing Dive)

• Extension of Gucci Vault, as it will showcase drops and collaborations.

• Users can purchase and collect digital Gucci items or clothe their Roblox characters in Gucci styles.

• Gucci Garden sold a single bag for over $4,000 in real world money (Forbes)

• Gucci Gaming Academy is a partnership with gaming platform FACEIT (esports) for gaming sponsorship.

KEEP LEARNING

Check out this podcast to hear how packaging and labeling pros, Avery Dennison, are building for the future of smart fashion

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Shopping: Real rewards from a virtual world

• NON-STOP NARS Virtual World, for Chinese consumers, launched exclusively at China Duty Free in Hainan, China. (Retail In Asia)

• Customers are rewarded with virtual currency for brand interactions by their avatar and IRL, which they can use to redeem exclusive rewards, gifts with purchase, etc.

• NONSTOP NARS Virtual World consists of three rooms: NONSTOP Discovery, NONSTOP Play and NONSTOP Community.

Gucci is “merging past, present, and future.”

Work: Productivity via the metaverse

• In October 2022, Meta debuted the Quest Pro Headset, touting it as a productivity tool.

• Full-color passthrough uses cameras to capture and display the space outside the headset, allowing for “mixed reality” experiences that overlay digital content onto the user’s real-world environment.

• Partnering with Microsoft as B2B provider of metaverse technology, bringing Windows apps, Teams integration, and Xbox Cloud Gaming to Quest Pro. Progressive web app versions of tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook will be available.

• Partnering with Accenture to help companies better engage employees, interact with customers, and create products and services in the metaverse.

• Partnering with Adobe and Autodesk to aid design professionals.

• Critics at TechCrunch say the environment’s not engaging enough, and that it’s basically a re-creation of existing office/desktop. There’s no compelling value in being there. Even Meta is struggling to get their employees to use.

• While the goals may be a long way off, these partnerships and what they are trying to accomplish are a clear signal that the metaverse will play a role, though the exact role is still TBD.

Events: Enhancing live music via hybrid

• The music industry is seeing that hybrid events can be an excellent way to expand and engage the fan base through an experience that goes beyond just watching a streaming show. The benefits: audience growth, more meaningful audience relationships, new revenue streams, adaptability and resiliency to changing circumstances, less environmental impact, and a powerful body of data on audiences. (Quartz)

• “BTS 2021 Muster Sowoozoo,” a PPV concert by the K-pop band BTS, recently set a world attendance record for streaming events by engaging an audience of 1.33 million fans. The show included a live chat feature with band members, digital light sticks and virtual fan maps so the artists could feel the energy of the “crowd” that was spread across 195 countries, and a Multiview video tool that offered viewers different camera angles of the event. To further engage the audience, it offered local-language closed captioning. (Quartz)

Events: Squeeze for dating and friendships

Squeeze is a venue-driven mobile app that allows users to make real connections.

• When users arrive at a bar, restaurant, park, etc., they check in on the Squeeze app to view profiles of users also checked into that location. Users will then swipe and begin matching with others. Once a mutual match occurs, users begin their conversations on Squeeze, and have the option to click the “come say hi” button, which allows for an instant date to begin!

• Currently the app is Boston-based but looking to expand.

Events: Music and the metaverse

• As an outlet for music, the metaverse holds great promise, but technology and content are still catching up. General agreement is that artists and audiences, not engineers, will create the “new reality” of music in the metaverse.

• Former founder of Magic Leap and owner of the AI-focused music and film studio Sun and Thunder, Rony Abovitz compares the gap between the nascent technology and potential opportunity to the 1970s, when MTV music videos were just a cool idea.

• The experiences vary widely: augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), and mixed reality. Some AR experiences are based on renderings or footage imposed on a physical scene (e.g., Coldplay and BTS on “NBC Voice Live” finale). The Justin Bieber VR concert in 2021 kicked off his 2022 Justice world tour.

• ABBA has sold more than 300,000 tickets for an upcoming virtual tour combining the live band with the Swedish pop titans’ digitally de-aged avatars.

• In April, millions of YouTube viewers around the world watched live as AR birds and flowers enveloped the Coachella mainstage during a live set by Flume.

• Coachella introduced digital Fortnite clothing that responds to music heard within the game. Ariana Grande’s avatar has appeared in Fortnite; Twenty One Pilots’ avatars have been featured in Roblox.

(Source unless noted: Pitchfork)

Events: Netflix augments online with in-person

The reverse can also work as companies seek to bring events out of a solely digital space and engage fans through in-person physical experiences.

• Netflix has been emphasizing live, out-of-home experiences the past few years. (NYT)

• Some examples: a Covid-conscious “Stranger Things” drive-through in 2020; a heist experience where participants searched for a bank vault, tied to the series “La Casa de Papel”; a VR event for Zack Snyder’s zombie film “Army of the Dead.”

• “Bridgerton” Ball and co-sponsorships

• The 90-minute experience, in Washington, Chicago, and Montreal, is Netflix’s most ambitious real-world event to date.

• It aims to amplify “watercooler” buzz that has been elusive for streaming shows.

• Netflix partnered with Bloomingdale’s for a pop-up shop online and at the Manhattan flagship.

• Line of cosmetics from Pat McGrath.

• Soundtrack features pop hits played by a string quartet.

• Corresponding Netflix book club.

• Company says over 1 million people have attended events, and they expect numbers to increase significantly.

© Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Technology that goes beyond delivering on the functional and aspirational jobs of individuals: creates connections, augments abilities, encourages intentionality and creates a better use of time (well saved, spent, invested), energy and focus.

CONTEXT IS KING

Content is no longer king. Context is. As the attention recession deepens, effective experience strategies will increasingly be driven by technology, time, and situation.

INSIGHTS DRIVING THIS TREND

Prediction

• The contextual consumer is everyone. Customers value data-driven, smart experiences that individualize solutions for them.

• Customers, who have limited time and an abundance of choice, will focus on experiences that are meaningful and feel like time well saved, time well spent, or time well invested.

• Companies that see the customer as the source of value and purpose, and therefore focus on making the time customers spend with them extremely valuable, will generate new revenue and customers.

KEEP LEARNING

Hear how TruRating is using context to better understand customer experience feedback. The Experience Strategy Podcast: The New Era of Experience Management

© Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

27% of people believe personalized experiences are extremely important, but only 17% of people believe brands are doing this extremely well.

• Most customers say it is fairly or extremely important that brands are focused on demonstrating awareness of their needs, situations, and circumstances

• Context can be used to individualize experiences, to provide more engaging and relevant experiences, and to improve the performance of empowered customers.

Base: n = 1103 CX3. Please indicate whether you would generally be comfortable with sharing the following types of personal data with these types of organizations.

The rise of social commerce

What it is: Integration of social experiences and ecommerce transactions in a single path to purchase, enabled by a platform. (What it’s not: ads in social media that take you to a brand site.)

• Seller can be a brand (direct to consumer), influencers engaged by a brand (selling to followers), or individuals unaffiliated with brand (selling through their own networks).

• Experiences can be driven by

• Content (in-app store, shoppable post, mini-program) where it’s created by brands, partners, or consumers

• Interactivity (gamification, AR, live stream) in shopping experience

• Network, where people leverage it to obtain bulk discounts, drive sales, and earn commission (group buy, social shopkeeper, referrals, secondhand marketplace).

(Source: Accenture)

This human-centric approach to commerce can turn passionate consumers into advocates, marketers, and sellers. Brands’ understanding of their audiences can help them grow and benefit from the halo of trust the consumer-sellers create.

Social commerce also provides a resource for collaborating on the future of the brand that is more focused on what consumers need/want.

Context can build a bridge between brand and customer.

Consumers are more comfortable sharing data when the context feels appropriate.

The potential market size of social commerce

• Expected to triple to $1.2 trillion worldwide by 2025 with the US market accounting for ~$99 billion of that. Largest opportunities lie in apparel, consumer electronics, and home décor. (Accenture)

• 2022 forecast for US social commerce sales: $45.74 billion. (Insider Intellegence)

• 2022 forecast for Japan social commerce sales: $16 billion. (GlobeNewswire/Research & Marketing)

• 2022 forecast for China social commerce sales: $363 billion. (PRNewswire/Research & Marketing)

• Most mature adopters are in markets like China, India, and Brazil; they use a range of channels—live streaming, live chat, virtual shops, and virtual reality. They believe it improves the shopping experience. (Accenture) China is 10x the US market because their ecommerce platforms are so deeply integrated into the popular social networks and the ever-evolving WeChat environment. (Jing Daily) Additionally, the social media and ecommerce landscape is less fragmented, amid the sheer number of social buyers. (Insider Intellegence)

• Democratizing force for individuals and small businesses: 59% of social buyers more likely to buy from a small business through social commerce rather than online and 44% are more likely to buy from a brand they haven’t previously encountered.

• Still relatively nascent in the US market but 10% of omnichannel customers say they have already made purchases directly via social media and 45% of consumers say that social media influences their purchases. (McKinsey)

Consumers in developing countries are more likely to use social commerce.

8 out of 10 social media users in China use social commerce to make purchases for a given category, while most social media users in the UK and US have yet to make a purchase via social commerce. (Accenture)

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

Slack: Customer-obsessed and growing

Slack is a double winner in our book. It’s no surprise that in 2019, Forbes magazine named Slack one of the most customerobsessed companies. As a communication tool used by over 18 million people each day, Slack built its business on two key trends we highlight in this report:

1. Context: The product strategy was fashioned as a communication hub to contextually consolidate internal communications.

2. Small groups: As Slack’s popularity grows, it is increasingly used as the go-to space for interest groups to connect and communicate.

• In December 2020, Slack was acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion

• 156,000 organizations use the app

• Slack’s total revenue was over $855 million

Here’s what they’ve gained along the way:

in 2021

“Social media’s goal is to keep people on the platform. Creators’ goals are to drive revenue. Companies that allow both will win in the $105 billion (TBC) creator economy.”

-Wendy Wildfeuer, co-founder and CMO, MOTOM

MOTOM is a shopping platform that centralizes social feeds and streamlines social shopping by bringing channels together to better serve platforms, customers, and creators.

HOW TO INCORPORATE CONTEXT INTO YOUR EXPERIENCE STRATEGY

Design genius solutions.

Stupid. Dumb. Smart. Genius. The usability needs of digital natives have shifted. The expectation of simplicity of interfaces will be surpassed by sophistication. When genius solutions exist, customers feel they have superpowers.

NEXT-GEN CONTENT

will come in two types: AI-driven utilitarian content and highly immersive storytelling content.

Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

The Progression of Intelligent Experiences

Customer perceptions based on solution quality

The future is smart. Genius technologies endow customers with abilities akin to superpowers.

Use situational analytics instead of Net Promoter Score.

Two Truths

1. Increasingly, consumers choose channels, tools, and environments based on the situation they find themselves in and whether they think the experience will be good value for time spent.

2. Data analytics hit a learning plateau when the focus is about being responsive to people rather than understanding the situations that impact people and human behavior.

The Time Well Spent business logic

• Customers hire experiences to get functional, emotional, social, aspirational, and systemic jobs done for them. When the company focuses on the customer’s JTBD, the company begins the shift toward meaningful experiences.

• When “engagement’ is focused on the individual’s engagement with the experience, the company learns how to create “real engagement.”

• When the customer says the experience is time well spent, the company knows they have the right job, the right experience, and the right channel.

The individual or the situation?

APPENDIX

Work with us to prepare your customer or employee experience for the future.

Different Types of Engagements

The Stone Mantel Mission:

Increase the impact of your experience strategy.

We guide clients through current issues and challenges while building for what’s to come, via innovation, collaboration, education, thought leadership, and improved metrics.

Guidance and support

Research-informed facilitation and work done on your behalf by our team of guides, trainers, and leaders.

Stone Mantel is a research-led experience strategy company. We employ a variety of research methods from focus groups, oneon-one interviews, small group interviews, digital fieldwork, ethnographies, and mission research to innovations in panel research, eye tracking protocol, and a next-generation UX research platform.

We handcraft our research methodologies to best acquire the insights to develop the right strategy for your company.

We are dedicated to meaningful results—and to a better process for getting there.

Holistic, experiential business transformation

Discover, define, demonstrate, and act to develop and execute on impactful experience strategy and design.

WE EXCEL AT:

Identifying customers’ jobs to be done

Building better business models

Motivating people in meaningful ways

Bridging digital and place-based experiences

Creating customer-centricity transformation

Building channel value propositions and strategies

Measuring for time well spent

Employing data for greatest engagement

Discovering the experiences that matter

Cross-industry, forward-looking programming

Deep insights, sharing and innovation, concepting and solutioning.

We are at the forefront of experience research.

A Proprietary Methodology for Our Work: The Mantel Method

Selected Client Projects

• Top retirement-planning company designed smart tools to provide tailored guidance and financial empowerment for their customers

• Major US retailer built their omnichannel approach

• Manufacturer of RFID devices developed their smart, in-home experience

• Financial institution changed their CX program to focus on MX

• Restaurant chain created a new personalization platform for customers

• Hotel group developed thought leadership on customer journey that informed several digital initiatives

• Health insurance company changed how they measure patient success

• Health system developed a virtual health village of the future

• Major television network adopted a new approach to segmentation

• Most innovative university in the country developed new alumni programs and post-graduate student programs

• World’s largest beverage company created world-class employee engagement initiatives and solutions for small to mid-sized business customers

Expertise in customer and employee experience strategy. Experience across a range of industries, types of experiences, and jobs to be done.

Stone Mantel Taxonomy: The Five Archetypes of Needs

We help you identify critical jobs to be done, then design for the jobs that matter.

Jobs to Be Done Impacts the Whole Business Model

Does your company understand its customer segments and how to add value for each?

Does your company understand key customer JTBD and how the customer defines success?

Does your company understand how digital, hybrid, and IRL tools, platforms, and intermediaries impact customer relationships, channels, and revenue streams?

Does your company understand gaps in JTBD for its customers and how it can uniquely serve them?

Does your company understand customer journeys and how to eliminate pain points and add value within these journeys?

STARTING POINT.

Data Experience Design Is at the Heart of Smart Experiences

Data Governance + Member Value Is Critical for Smart Experiences

Don’t just focus on data governance and business value from data. Develop a corresponding roadmap for customer value from data collected and use data-sharing techniques and transparency to encourage data sharing.

At Stone Mantel we focus not only on designing customer-centric experiences, but also on how to encourage people to share data in ways that reassure them that their data will support and strengthen their journeys. Copyright © Stone Mantel 2023. All rights reserved.

UX and CX Testing Capabilities for Digital Experiences

A good user experience is a table-stakes feature. But it’s not enough to wow your customers. That’s why Stone Mantel incorporates both forms of testing into its research methodology.

UX

Testing

Purpose: Ensure optimal flow understanding, and guidance through the digital experience for the user

CX Testing

Purpose:

Ensure the digital experience delivers on key jobs to be done, unmet needs, and expected outcomes that are critical to your customer’s experience with your brand

We can help you deliver a rich digital experience. Our dual approach will produce substance, meaning, and even transformation to deliver real value for your customers.

You need UX testing and CX testing to ensure your digital experience is on point. Stone Mantel can do both.

Creating Your Roadmap for Experience Innovation

Developed quickly with a broad group of stakeholders

Transformation Vision Statement

• Clarifies and advances the vision, goals, key enablers, and focus areas.

• Ensures alignment among stakeholders and company purpose.

Holistic Roadmap & Getting Started Action Plan

• Key capabilities needed to get from current state and future state.

• Identification of priorities, dependencies, gaps, linkages, enablers, and barriers.

What Our Clients Are Saying

“The research that Stone Mantel conducted on our behalf was integral to the development of our digital point of view and our roadmap, which we have nearly completed today. The depth and breadth of the research instilled confidence in our board that we were moving down the right path and supported buy-in from our physician partners and clinicians.”

Gina Mangus, EVP of Strategy & Advancement, Flagler Health+

”There is a greater emphasis on the customer experience now. The most important thing is selecting a vendor that has proven results. Lots of people can do a journey map, but Stone Mantel focused us on future-state journeys and their presentation was excellent.”

Sonia McCollum, Digital Strategist, Southern Company Gas

“Tackling problems in financial services, we’re surrounded by similar organizations—fintech providers, banks, credit unions, and so forth. Too often, we end up ‘drinking our own Kool-Aid’ simply because that’s what’s around. The Collaboratives expands our horizons, challenging our thinking with new perspectives and experiences from consumer-focused professionals outside of our industry. This outside-in view, from groups that work with the very same consumers and users that we do but in completely different contexts, carries incredible value.”

Justin Jackson, VP, Product Management Integrated Payment Experience, Fiserv

What Makes for Great Engagements with Our Clients

We work hard on our relationships, and we’re proud of the results we achieve together.

• Our handcrafted approach makes it easy for clients to integrate our work into their work, teams, and culture. We do the heavy lifting, so they don’t have to.

• We love it when clients get as excited as we do about making a difference. We enjoy strengthening their knowledge and experience of design thinking and market research.

• Clients continue to benefit from our custom-developed strategic frameworks over time, to inform their thinking and create alignment. They also learn from the toolkits, playbooks and frameworks we have created over the years in our thought leadership programs.

• While a well-planned kickoff is key to any project, our clients know that ongoing communication is critical to ensure that interim deliverables and end results are actionable and exceed expectations.

• Essential to our handcrafted approach is aligning with and supporting client expectations for review and approval of materials and deliverables.

Experience Strategy Certification

Handcrafted Learning Journeys

In our certification program, we share our decades of expertise in a multi-modal immersive learning journey that teaches the frameworks, skills and concepts needed to lead and champion a customer-centric experience.

Customized for Immediate Application

Each cohort is limited to 40 participants, to ensure hands-on collaboration. Our instructors have decades of experience, and they guide and support each participant individually as they translate their learning into application.

Lasting Business and Customer Impact

The learning journey catalyzes employee and customer experience leaders to transform teams and entire organizations with deep and lasting customer-centricity.

Key Competencies Covered

• Defining Experience Strategy and how it relates to Marketing, Brand, UX, Product, and Operations

• Creating an experience-centric culture

• Innovating business models through Experience Strategy

• Leveraging Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) to drive innovation in experiences

• Creating Meaningful Experiences (MX) using the MX Toolkit

• Using Modes, Reflection, and Superpowers in experience innovation

• Designing customer journey maps that your entire organization will use

• Staging experiences

• Creating customer empathy: Next-Generation Personas and other techniques

• Smart and genius experiences: using Data Experience Design to better deliver on Jobs to Be Done and Individualization

• Individualizing experiences

• Measuring experiences for time well spent

• 12 weekly virtual recorded classroom sessions

• Complementary e-Learnings to reinforce the classroom topics

• Workbook exercises to explore how each lesson can impact your organization

• Audio lessons that demonstrate practical application

• Community Slack channel to extend and deepen learning

Cost $4,500 per individual. Custom pricing packages for teams.

• Succeeding at Aspirational “Jobs” and Meaningful Motivation

• Collaborating across functional areas to implement Experience Strategy Contact

If this report gets you excited about setting up your customer and employee experience to thrive in the future, reach out to us. We’d love to help you create a powerful impact. MaryPutman@stonemantel.co Stonemantel.co