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White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, Kansas City, MO, USA

The importance of authenticity

In today’s world, consumers are quite discriminating for the businesses where they choose to spent their disposable time and money. One increasingly important characteristic that differentiates one business from another is authenticity. This includes all types of location-based entertainment centers, including family entertainment centers (FEC) and bowling centers.  

A recent survey of the U.S. consumers age 15+ by Iconculture (www.iconoculture.com/ US/ Index.aspx) shows the importance of this value. A strong majority agrees “being genuine and authentic is extremely important for me and for things and people in my life”. The value is ranked within the top 10 of 93 values by all generations, with Gen Xers being the most passionate about it as their fourth most endorsed value.

The following from Strategic Horizon’s website (www.strategichorizons.com/ authenticity.html) best describes the growing importance of authenticity to success:

“Fake. Contrived. Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic.

Do your customers use any of those words to describe what you sell or how you sell it? That is exactly how more and more consumers view what companies offer them. 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...

“So why Authenticity—and why now?

Because of the shift to the Experience Economy, goods and services are no longer enough; what consumers want today are experiences—memorable events that engage them in an inherently personal way. As paid-for experiences proliferate, people now decide where and when to spend their money and their time—the currency of experiences—as much if not more than they deliberate on what and how to buy (the purview of goods and services). And in a world increasingly filled with deliberately and sensationally staged experiences—an increasingly unreal world—consumers choose to buy or not buy based on how real they perceive an offering to be. Business today, therefore, is all about being real. Original. Genuine. Sincere. Authentic.”

To learn more about authenticity in your business, we recommend reading the book Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want (www.amazon.com/ exec/ obidos/ ASIN/ 1591391458/ ref=nosim/ wwwstrategich-20) by Joe Pine and James Gilmore (partners in Strategic Horizons).

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