I posted an article yesterday that showed that even when you think you are an asset-based or value customer you can also be, at some times in some situations, an experiential customer.  By experiential customer I mean that you, as a customer, will pay more for something because you value the experience that it gives you.

When I think about my career in funeral service – and I was probably successful in spite of myself because of the times I lived and worked in – I generally tried to create “value” first and did not think much about “experience”.  By that I mean that I tried to provide good funerals and merchandise at a fair value to the consumer.  In many cases funerals were pretty similar and served their purpose but did not give an exceptional experience to the consumer family.  As a matter of fact, I can remember the first “Experiential” situation that we had — it was a “Slide Show Presentation” set to music with about 50 photos of the deceased and his family.  Today, it is a simple power point presentation, but back in the late 1980’s it was an “experience” to the funeral public and they all talked about it.

We’ve seen it elsewhere — for instance, in wedding planning — where the experience has now overtaken the value in importance.  You don’t have to think any further than a “Destination” wedding to understand how important “experience” is in today’s consumer.

So, who is your target customer?  Let’s go back to when I started and look at who I believe was the consumer since that time.

1980’s — The people who died at this time were born around the turn of the last century.  They were born in a world that did not have airplanes and by the time they died they could fly from the U.S. to Europe in 8 hours and complain about the food and the movie.  They saw incredible change but were proper and followed tradition — church funerals with casketed burials was the norm.

1990’s —  Somewhat the same as the earlier group. . some grew up during the depression and value was important.  Probably the heyday of the sale of premium caskets as it, in a funny way, showed that they grew out of the depression and made it.

2000’s — Some of the World War II generation and while they were followers much like the generations ahead of them, their children – many who were helping plan funeral arrangements – were children of the 1960’s with ideas that were not always the same as their parents.  Think of the Vietnam War protests, giving birth at home, and the sexual revolution.  These “younger” consumers helped their parents make decisions different from the groups preceding them and really gave birth to the rise of direct cremation.  In my opinion, it is where the genesis of the experiential funeral came from. . . in that they “did not need” the experience of a funeral service and the value of cremation was good enough.

I now think that the idea of direct cremation that was so value based – in today’s Minneapolis newspaper I can find competitive advertising listing direct cremation at $1295 – that we have came full circle and the consumer is looking for an “experience” over that value and is willing to pay for it.

The rub – and challenge – for the funeral industry is how do we provide additional experiences for the family that they will value and pay for.  I think the step is to provide “cremation packages” for the survivors.  We know many things like thumbies, lockets, cremation glassware, a potential visitation without the body present and other things are important to many of our families that we serve.  If your base price is $1295 maybe you need to have another package at $2295 which includes some of those things – and that could just be the start.  I may be wrong, but I believe that many families – if given the options available – will, just as with destination weddings,  choose to pay more as long as they get satisfaction from the experiences you can provide.  Be creative!!!

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