ABSTRACT:
Through a multiple-case study of seven German providers, we explore the architecture of commercial offerings of consumer experiences, such as wine-tastings, craft workshops, or wellness activities, which have both digital and physical components. Physical-digital experiences offer participants an opportunity to encounter many different sensations of an experience, as not all (e.g. taste, smell, touch) can be converted to digital form and not all are possible to experience physically (e.g. visual depictions of distant lands). Our empirical study shows that experience providers combine both physical and digital offering architectures by augmenting, substituting, porting, and excluding physical and digital components, a process that changes the value these experiences create for consumers and provides new means by which providers capture value from these offerings. We develop a theoretical model that explains value creation and value capture through the design and provision of physical-digital experiential consumer offerings that leverage physical-digital hybridity at multiple levels to enhance existing or generate new value pathways.
Key words and phrases: Digital innovation, physical-digital experience, experiential consumer offerings, value creation, value capture, consumer experiences, digitalizing experiences, experience economy