Critical Success Factors for Experiential Marketing: Evidences from the Indian Hospitality Industry

With the continuous proliferation of communication media and frequently changing consumer expectations, the fight for capturing a prospect's mind-space has seen a radical shift from product or service orientation to a customerexperience driven approach. In the cluttered space of brands and advertising noise, consumer engagement is turning out to be the winning formula. The traditional product-centric positioning needs to be necessaril y complemented by emotional buying triggers encountered during the "moments of truth" to lead to consumer action and advocacy.

In this paper, based on existing literature and a primary research conducted on 17 luxury restaurants and over 200 customers and service staff in and around Mumbai, we have identified seven essential factors (physical ambience, food quality, interaction with service staff, interaction with other customers, price, service quality and theme) contributing to a positive customer experience. The study examines the contribution of the service elements to customer perceived value and tries to explore the service gap model for delivering experiential value across restaurants. Furthermore, using these insights on the psyche of the Indian consumer and his response to experiential marketing; the paper also proposes an indicative framework to successfully launch and sustain experiential marketing from the perspective of the hospitality industry in India.

Field of Research: Experiential Marketing in Indian hospitality industry