Before diving into the topic, let's share a few consumption scenarios of young people that the older generation might deem "nice to have, but unnecessary": At Shanghai Joy City, groups of six or seven sit together, role-playing characters full of love, hate, and intrigue based on their scripts, spending 3-5 hours completing a murder mystery推理 game. Their sole goal is to become "Conan the Detective." Meanwhile, at Universal Beijing Resort, young people queue up to interact with the "chatterbox Megatron," even when mocked as "foolish humans," they revel in it, willingly becoming Megatron's fans... Beyond these scenarios, many other novel consumption behaviors are gaining popularity, such as KEEP's gamified "King of Fighters experience class" and the maid-café board game sessions at Flipped coffee shop. If we consider the logic behind these business practices from the perspective of "what exists is reasonable," whether they are marketing gimmicks or immersive consumption scenarios, these brands and merchants are all targeting the next mainstream consumption trend—the experience economy. If you can understand and are willing to try these joyful consumption behaviors, welcome to the "era of the experience economy." Image source: Internet In fact, the experience economy is not new; the concept has been around for over 20 years. However, as China's per capita GDP crosses the $10,000 threshold, mass consumption levels have significantly improved. Especially among the younger Generation Z, whose consumption tier sits at the top of Maslow's hierarchy, the experience economy is becoming increasingly prevalent. They are no longer satisfied with the single functional needs of products; instead, they consume for experiences and happiness, seeking social identity. Of course, the novel consumption behaviors mentioned above are just the narrowest manifestation of the experience economy. What is the true essence of the experience economy? How can it be applied to long-term brand growth? These are the two questions we will explore together next. Additionally, focusing on the value research of the experience economy, we have selected growth marketing cases from brands such as L'Oréal Group, New Hope·Huaxi Dairy, Tongcheng Travel, Cha Xiaokong, and Caishiweng. Combined with GrowthBox's research observations, we have distilled five hot growth strategies for the experience economy era:

  • Online interactive shopping guides replacing traditional monotonous shelves
  • Skinner box gamified random rewards
  • Subscription-based periodic purchase "feeding strategy"
  • Using metadata to deeply connect with users
  • Ultimate integration of online and offline user journeys Although these strategies are reusable and common, readers should evaluate their "effectiveness" based on industry characteristics and business model differences. After all, in the business world, there is rarely a "one-size-fits-all" solution, especially in an era of traffic saturation.

From "Traffic First" to "Experience First"

In 1998, the Harvard Business Review published an article by American scholars Pine and Gilmore titled "Welcome to the Experience Economy," formally introducing the concept of the experience economy: The experience economy is one where services are the stage and goods are the props, shaping sensory experiences and intellectual identity from life and context, thereby capturing customer attention, changing consumption behavior, and finding new survival value and space for products.[1] In other words, if one focuses solely on the product and service themselves, they will inevitably fall into homogeneous competition. But if brands create sensory experiences based on life and context, allowing customers to feel immense joy during consumption, they can escape homogeneous competition, find new profit growth points, and achieve the vision of finding increments within existing stock. If we deduce the evolution of economic forms from this, the experience economy is the fourth generation after agriculture, industry, and services. Under the experience economy, brands pay more attention to user feelings, playing the role of "atmosphere creators" for user experiences, delivering pleasant experiences. For a specific comparison, refer to the figure below: After reviewing the upgrades of the four economic forms, let's analyze the development of the experience economy in China. China's experience economy era began almost simultaneously with the service economy era, as an extension of the service economy. In 2001, we entered the service economy era, with the service economy contributing 48.22% to GDP, surpassing the industrial economy's 46.7% for the first time.[2] It was also around 2000 that the earliest batch of internet entrepreneurs began embracing internet technology. At that time, China's experience economy was still limited to digital touchpoint construction experiences. In the following decade, we transitioned from traditional internet to mobile internet. The experience economy began to mature with the development of communication devices, mobile payments, and big data technology, mainly reflected in the convenience of instant consumption experiences brought by online-offline integration. It wasn't until around 2018, with the introduction of new concepts like new retail, smart retail, and borderless retail, that the experience economy officially entered the mainstream development track. It was during this period that content platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu rose, coupled with the rapid penetration of e-commerce rates, Chinese consumer brands began their wars on the traffic battlefield. Even today, a startup formula has evolved in the new consumption industry: 5000 Xiaohongshu posts + 2000 Zhihu answers + Viya and Li Jiaqi product promotions = a new brand But as demographic and internet dividends gradually peak, brands that previously relied on "traffic first" are now facing backlash. The new consumption sector, from its extreme prosperity in the past two years to the cooling and decline in the second half of this year, reveals the emerging bubble. In the trap created by traffic growth, how can brands achieve endogenous growth? Our answer is that, driven by a "user-centric" strategy at the bottom, there needs to be a strategic shift from "traffic first" to "experience first." This strategic significance includes two levels: First, the "experience economy" can turn existing stock into increments, creating new profit space; According to McKinsey research, companies that excel in customer experience often have better customer insight and loyalty, and within two to three years, their revenue can increase by 5-10%, while costs decrease by 15-25%.[3] Second, the two-way interaction generated by the experience economy is more conducive to capturing user mindshare than one-way output. In the internet era, brands should not just seek one-time purchases but rather use interaction and engagement to gradually build consumer trust. Then, through the construction and optimization of user journeys, users are encouraged to actively participate in brand building and make repeat purchases. In other words, while building business experience (BX), it is also necessary to upgrade the customer experience (CX) system to achieve dual-wheel drive. To help brands escape the growth dilemma of the "traffic pool" and move towards a healthy "retention pool," we will next break down the five growth strategies under the experience economy, hoping to provide brands with inspiration for underlying principles and the compounding benefits of strategy application.

Five Growth Strategies in the Experience Economy Era

1. Online Interactive Shopping Guides Replacing Traditional Monotonous Shelves

Since the birth of the retail industry a century ago, brands have racked their brains to figure out how to get customers to "pick up products from the shelf" and quickly proceed to payment. The most frequent touchpoint between consumer brands and customers is the product shelf. In an environment of unlimited product choices and converging functions, it becomes increasingly difficult for products on shelves to capture user attention. Whether online or offline, merely increasing product exposure times is not enough; it still depends on the efficiency of each exposure—the form of the shelf becomes a key factor. Early shelf displays evolved from primitive street stalls to product displays in supermarkets, then to graphic detail pages in the e-commerce era, and now to the "interactive shelves" of short videos and live streaming. Under the interactive shelf strategy, products shift from single visual display to multi-dimensional audio-visual display, upgrading from single-sense call-to-action (CTA) to multi-sense CTA. Under mobile interactive shelves, shopping guide live streams and interactive services generate user experiences beyond the shelf itself, more effectively attracting and retaining customers. We can also understand that in the experience economy era, "people are the shelves," and products are relegated to a supporting "prop" role. The upgrade in shelf form ultimately leads to a tilt in user attention, shifting from point exposure to time-period exposure, increasing interaction opportunities with users, and ultimately improving conversion rates. Therefore, brands are increasingly focusing on CPE (cost per engagement) rather than just chasing CPM and CPA. Let's take Cha Xiaokong as an example to explore how it uses interactive shelves to amplify product advantages and achieve efficient conversion. First, a brief introduction to the brand background: Cha Xiaokong is a DTC tea bag brand born in Q4 2020, with its core product being ultra-extraction technology that allows cold-water tea brewing anytime, anywhere. In marketing, Cha Xiaokong naturally revolves around the product's core selling points, focusing on creating "outdoor tea brewing, office tea brewing, and water bottle tea brewing" native scenarios, and bundling products with a "portable cup" to reinforce the concept of convenient brewing. In terms of exposure formats, we also clearly observed the brand's gradual upgrade process. During the testing phase, Cha Xiaokong mainly used card ads, gradually upgrading to native multi-image formats. At that time, Cha Xiaokong's shelf display was still primarily graphic. After two months of stable volume growth, ROI exceeded 1, validating the advertising model. After initially exploring production data, Cha Xiaokong began experimenting with a new format of celebrity seeding video clips authorized for reuse, becoming the first brand in the tea bag industry to explore vertical video clip advertising. At this point, Cha Xiaokong began focusing on upgrading from single-sense CTA to multi-sense CTA interactive shelves. During the scaling phase, Cha Xiaokong tested the effectiveness of "people as shelves" through celebrity product promotions, began focusing on routine multi-sense CTA operations, and upgraded exposure formats again to video account live streaming, providing "interactive shelf" operations for new customer acquisition. During this period, their new customer UV accounted for 85%, reaching 42.5% of the overall live stream, breaking the notion that video accounts could only "serve existing customers." Interestingly, at that time, Cha Xiaokong's advertising optimization goal also shifted from click optimization to key page optimization, closely aligning with the upgrade logic from CPM to CPE we mentioned earlier. The final result was that with "key page visits" (i.e., video account live stream views) as the optimization goal, live stream viewing costs decreased by 32%, May live stream sessions saw a 30% cost reduction compared to April, total UV increased 4 times, and ROI reached 4. Cha Xiaokong's ad placement with "key page visits" (i.e., video account live stream views) as the optimization goal Cha Xiaokong's upgrade of shelf display in the WeChat ecosystem demonstrates the potential of mobile shelves for customer acquisition, while also helping Cha Xiaokong take the first step in accumulating user assets and achieving long-term conversion. At this point, you might ask: Cha Xiaokong is a high-frequency, standardized product, so interactive shelves can quickly take effect. But what about low-frequency, high-ticket items? That might be a different story. Actually, that's not necessarily the case. Here, we share an example of a lesser-known jadeite brand, Caishiweng, which quietly "makes big money" in the WeChat ecosystem through interactive shelves. Logically, jadeite, as a high-ticket, non-standard product, raises high trust costs for users who find it hard to distinguish authenticity. To address this, Caishiweng, during the cold start phase of its account, did not rush to establish strong links with new users but instead brought existing users from WeChat private domains into the testing phase. By leveraging existing customers to attract new ones, they encouraged loyal customers to share, like, and spread, completing the cold start. During the growth phase, they targeted video account live streaming, using Moments ads to directly connect to video account live streams. As we all know, many brands approach video account live streaming with a trial mindset. But this jadeite brand took it seriously, establishing a dedicated operations team with non-stop daily live streaming, 20 hours online. While most brands operate in two shifts, they ran three shifts. Simultaneously, they established multiple live streaming account matrices within video accounts, using enthusiastic shopping guide explanations to provide comprehensive, personalized displays of each product, encouraging users to place orders. Of course, besides video account live streaming, they also accumulated users in private domains, using 1-on-1 interactive communication with shopping guides to gradually drive repeat purchases. Currently, Caishiweng's return rate is less than 30%, far lower than the 70%-90% return rates of competing media, and they achieve an average of 3-4 orders per customer, a super-high repeat purchase rate. Through the Caishiweng case, we see the charm of online interactive shelves. They bring brands a sense of trust that was previously only available offline, but greatly enhance interaction and engagement with users, optimize user experience, and improve conversion efficiency.

2. Skinner Box Gamified Random Incentives

In 1938, Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner designed an experimental apparatus (Skinner box): when a mouse in the box pressed a lever, food would drop (reward delivery). When given a fixed reward, the mouse would lose interest after a while; but if the reward was changed to a random probability type (pressing the lever would randomly determine whether food dropped), the mouse would become obsessed, continuously pressing the button. This highly random mechanism also affects humans; unknown rewards are more likely to stimulate the production of dopamine, leading to dependence, or addiction. This is the underlying principle that can be traced back to the "blind box economy." Brands set game rules, use uncertain rewards to build a growth path, and ultimately allow consumers to achieve a certain level of accomplishment, creating "Wow Moments" that exceed expectations. Random rewards are typically used to cultivate a chain of continuous consumption behavior. In fact, the use of random rewards in the commercial field is not unfamiliar. The surprise eggs, Pokémon, and Little Raccoon "Hundred Generals" cards on convenience store and supermarket shelves are still items that kids "throw tantrums" to buy. Image source: Internet In the adult world, the blind box economy is also a popular preference among contemporary young people. According to QuestMobile's "2020 Z-Generation Insight Report," Z-generation young users, while pursuing high quality and cost-effectiveness, also place more emphasis on consumption experience and are willing to pay for experiential fun. The blind box design makes the purchasing process an interesting experience.[4] Let's take Tongcheng Travel as an example to see how it tapped into young people's consumption experience preferences and seized the secret of "random rewards" to break through growth difficulties. From the supply side, due to the pandemic, domestic and international travel was closed for a year, severely impacting the OTA (online travel) industry, leaving airlines with a large surplus of tickets. At this time, Tongcheng Travel saw a business opportunity, acquiring a large number of airline tickets at low cost. From the demand side, although short-distance travel and self-driving tours began to recover, the OTA industry remained weak. To sell the large inventory of tickets, Tongcheng Travel adopted the innovative form of "flight blind boxes," stimulating young people's suppressed desire for air travel due to the pandemic. In fact, discounted air tickets and hotels have always existed, but why did turning them into blind boxes cause a sensation and make young people's hearts flutter? This aligns with the random rewards brought by the Skinner box gamification we described earlier. As for how Tongcheng Travel successfully blew up the flight blind box, we will analyze it using the ASAS model summarized by GrowthBox. Attention Stage Tongcheng Travel chose two advertising methods: online Moments ads + offline outdoor ads/landmark buildings, while simultaneously promoting in its private domain communities. Specifically, on March 4th, the "Tongcheng Flight" official account published an article titled "98 yuan flight blind box, not satisfied? Full refund!" and the 98 yuan flight blind box officially launched on the mini-program. After launch, the results were not ideal. The reason was that the flight blind box initially used a "friend assistance" fission mechanism, but young people nowadays resent "forced socializing." After identifying this issue, Tongcheng Travel canceled the fission gameplay. Their new approach was to upgrade the reward mechanism of the blind box—adding the most requested "hidden items" like double flight tickets, round-trip tickets, and business class, increasing the stimulation. After the product upgrade, on April 2nd, a short video with the caption "Others got Sanya, Qingdao, Shanghai for 98 yuan, but I got Chengdu to Daocheng!!" went viral on Douyin. This video seemed like a complaint but was actually a "humble brag." Subsequently, more young people began sharing their "box-opening experiences" on social networks, and some even created blind box tutorials. At this point, the flight blind box officially became a nationwide sensation. Additionally, we observed that in Tongcheng Travel's offline ad placements, besides placing mini-program QR codes to guide users to scan and follow, they also prominently featured the "Search" VI, clearly consciously guiding users to search. Why is "Search" so valued and given dedicated exposure support by the brand? Let's look at Tongcheng Travel's gameplay in the Search stage. Search Stage Essentially, travel products represent users' travel decisions and are not a category that can be instantly converted into purchases. Whether in online or offline exposure scenarios, they are more akin to brand seeding, guiding users to actively search and go to the mini-program to understand the rules and details before making a purchase. This chain is reasonable and efficient. Additionally, the flight blind box gameplay is very novel, and users need to fully understand more rule information. As mentioned earlier, after the flight blind box went viral on social networks, many users naturally began actively searching for Tongcheng Travel on WeChat. Therefore, in the Search stage, Tongcheng Travel fully utilized WeChat's "Search" to capture traffic from various exposure channels, including natural traffic, and funnel it into the mini-program. Offline, in Tongcheng Travel's outdoor ads, besides placing mini-program QR codes expecting users to scan and follow, they also prominently featured the "Search" VI, clearly consciously guiding users to search. Online, precisely because of the importance of the search step, the brand invested effort in "decorating" it, setting up a Top bar, prominently highlighting activity information in the core position of the operation card, with a prominent button for one-click access to the mini-program, and also indicating the number of participants to stimulate clicks. Official area with prominent operation card data Data shows that during the entire flight blind box campaign, the UV click conversion rate in the official Search area exceeded 90%, 30% higher than the industry average; the operation card display data showed that over 350,000 people clicked "Learn More" to enter the activity page, a 75% increase compared to the first phase. Action Stage In the action stage, Tongcheng Travel first simplified the activity chain to the extreme. Specifically, users open WeChat, search for the [Tongcheng Travel] mini-program to enter the relevant interface; scroll on the mini-program homepage, find [Destination Blind Box], click to enter and fill in blind box information, pay, and wait for the blind box result. Secondly, Tongcheng Travel removed the "action barrier" in the final step. That is, if users are not satisfied with the destination city revealed by the blind box, they can directly apply for a refund. If satisfied, they can choose to lock the ticket and share it on major social platforms to show off. Share Stage In this stage, Tongcheng Travel fully utilized UGC content for spontaneous dissemination on public domain traffic platforms. Because the "blind box economy" inherently has novel and fun social attributes, the moment random rewards are realized triggers a sense of comparison and sharing among users. Those who draw a flight to the same province feel they've lost, while those who draw flights to Sanya or Shanghai feel they've won, both triggering emotions of complaint or showing off. This emotion drives user groups to express their views on social platforms. In the more private Moments, countless users spontaneously promoted the flight blind box, successfully breaking it out of its niche in a short time. In terms of results, this campaign achieved 1 billion exposures across the internet, with WeChat index nearly reaching 100 million, a 450-fold increase year-on-year; the peak daily search volume for precise search terms on WeChat Search exceeded 1 million, with a UV click conversion rate of 92.5% on search results pages. It is reasonable to predict that these spontaneous, free social exposures ultimately guide more users who were previously unaware of the activity to search, completing the closed loop of the above chain. In summary, Tongcheng Travel targeted the mismatch arbitrage space between supply and demand, used the random rewards of flight blind boxes to incentivize young people to participate, and turned unsellable tickets into an industry sensation and hit product. So, don't underestimate the reuse arbitrage of random rewards and the dividend of young people's emphasis on experience.

3. Subscription-Based Periodic Purchase "Feeding Strategy"

With the acceleration of life pace, contemporary young people no longer like complex product ordering; they prefer simple and direct decision-making processes. Driven by the consumption behavior of avoiding hassle, brands have to adopt a "feeding strategy," going out of their way to pamper fans. Subscription-based periodic purchase is one such method. From a business model perspective, subscription is a channel where brands can directly connect with users, and users can directly provide feedback to brands. The subscription economy is a user-centric DTC model. Fundamentally, the power of the subscription business model lies in not making users continuously choose to "stay," but rather defaulting to "stay." If consumers do not actively cancel, the service continues by default. When users first choose to subscribe, they form a "weak commitment relationship" with the brand. It is called a "weak commitment" relationship because subscription differs from pre-ordering. Under pre-ordering, users need to pay in advance, forming a "strong commitment" relationship with the brand. Under the "weak commitment" bond, subscription can design repurchase frequency based on the RFM consumption model, increase user stickiness, and cultivate user consumption habits. For users, subscription is based on their purchase habits, usage cycles, and product cycles to tailor subscription services. For users, this reduces decision-making costs and is more in line with usage habits, enhancing the experience. Abroad, subscription boxes are also very popular among young people. As mentioned in our previous case analysis, the American razor brand Dollar Shave Club, as early as 10 years ago, began offering users the ability to order online for as low as $1 per month, receiving five blades delivered to their door. To bring more surprise to the unboxing experience during delivery, foreign countries have even seen innovative combinations of blind boxes and subscriptions, such as Stitch Fix's women's clothing subscription blind box, where a stylist helps users pick a box of clothes monthly and delivers it directly to their door, creating endless anticipation and surprise. In China, the subscription "feeding strategy" is more common in the food and beverage sector, such as New Hope·Huaxi Dairy's promotion of "milk subscription periodic purchase" during the 618 campaign. Reviewing New Hope·Huaxi Dairy's core tactics during 618, they can be simply summarized into the following two points:

  • Improve wake-up efficiency for existing users while scaling up new customer acquisition
  • Push different products and subscription cycles to new and existing users A. Segment users and arrange advertising sequence New Hope·Huaxi Dairy segmented its 700,000 existing users. Using Tencent's data capabilities and its own resource package analysis, they "dissected" existing users into the following three targeted groups:
  • Users with subscriptions nearing expiration
  • Users who stopped subscribing within one year
  • Users who stopped subscribing over one year ago For these three groups, they arranged the advertising sequence based on activity levels—prioritizing renewal for expiring users; then waking up and reactivating stopped users; finally, expanding to new customers by targeting consumers interested in dairy products and fresh milk. B. Based on segmentation results, precisely push products and subscription cycles Specifically, for new customers, they mainly promoted star products, attracting subscriptions for 1-3 month short cycles with new customer discounts. For existing users, they focused on mid-to-high-end products, mainly to increase average order value. Additionally, their refined operations are reflected in matching different advertising chains for different products and target audiences, more effectively guiding conversion, for example:
  • Star best-selling single products directly jump to the mini-program order page, reducing loss;
  • Best-selling product aggregation pages mainly target new customers, offering more choices to increase purchase intent;
  • Mid-to-high-end products add product detail pages to deepen user understanding, guiding orders. Swipe left/right to see more. Source: New Hope·Huaxi Dairy marketing materials In terms of results, with this combination of tactics, New Hope·Huaxi Dairy achieved a conversion rate 3 times the industry average during the 618 promotion, with pure advertising new customers accounting for 60%, and private domain transaction volume in the WeChat ecosystem increasing 46% year-on-year. After-sales customer service achieved zero complaints and zero negative reviews.

4. Using Metadata to Deeply Connect with Young People

Generation Z is the internet-born generation, having grown up immersed in the internet, making them more susceptible to social media influence and consumption behavior. Therefore, their data records are like their consumption diaries. How can brands use metadata to precisely select their consumer groups and improve the efficiency of digital refined operations? First, let's briefly introduce the concept of metadata: Metadata, also known as intermediary data or relay data, is data about data, primarily describing the properties of data. By using data to connect with digital natives, more precisely selecting user segments, and improving user operation efficiency, metadata has become a more important cognitive asset for brands under upgraded privacy protection. It helps brands precisely define user segments, accurately perceive user needs, and ultimately improve conversion rates and communication efficiency between brands and users. In terms of audience insight, let's take L'Oréal as an example to see how these giants, accustomed to traditional mass exposure, solve precision marketing issues when going online. Specifically, L'Oréal Group first integrated internal user metadata assets, analyzed them to obtain insights into different user profile models, then used multiple data management methods to combine target audiences in multiple dimensions, and targeted ad creatives based on decision-maker profiles, thereby improving production efficiency. For example, its YSL brand, during the Qixi Festival, broke the traditional beauty marketing approach of only targeting women aged 18-35, recognizing that men also have gift-giving needs. So, YSL differentiated marketing for the same product in WeChat Moments based on "gender differences":

  • For women: Moments ad creatives highlighted the "alluring" effect after makeup application;
  • For men: Leveraging the Qixi Festival marketing atmosphere, the product was displayed in gift box form, stimulating men's gift-giving needs. By fully exploring the cross-needs of male and female consumer groups, YSL began preheating half a month before Qixi. A week before Qixi, they increased ad spending to further scale up. Combining their previous metadata insights, they also concentrated exposure in Tencent Sports, a male-active scenario, conducting secondary marketing through voice-overs and creative mid-rolls during NBA games. Additionally, they used female anchor KOLs' influence for social exposure on Weibo. In summary, L'Oréal leveraged its own brand data insight advantages, combined with multiple data integrations to enhance decision-making and insight efficiency, thereby strengthening strong links with consumers. By better understanding young people, they successfully opened their interest gaps and further expanded their target consumer groups.

5. Ultimate Integration of Online and Offline User Journeys

Through the elaboration of the previous four strategies, we believe we now have a basic understanding of the gameplay for enhancing user experience in the experience economy era. At this point, attentive readers may have noticed that the previous four strategies emphasize more from an online perspective. But in fact, from the literal meaning of the experience economy, experience requires personal involvement, which necessitates decision-makers to expand their perspective to the entire domain. The "seamless experience" of online and offline is also the ultimate goal of user journey integration. According to Nielsen's insights, "In today's new retail environment, we can observe a trend of rapidly increasing marketing touchpoints, information sources, and channels. The world of new-generation online consumers will present a more complex, fragmented, and ever-changing appearance."[5] Under the trend of fragmented decision-making and channels, brands need to enhance their integration capabilities, "glue together" users' "time fragments," allowing users to enjoy a "seamless fusion" of heavy experience and heavy convenience. To address the traditional challenges of inefficient offline channel traffic diversion, management efficiency, and delivery conversion, brands can migrate the "location traffic" of online and offline user journeys to redefine offline business models. Online, brands can focus on exposure and traffic diversion; offline, brands focus on experience and service upgrades, and use this to bring users back online for continuous exposure and service provision, guiding customers back offline, completing the user journey loop. Let's take Kidswant, which just listed on the ChiNext board, as an example. As shown in the figure below, Kidswant successfully achieves a closed user journey loop through marketing digitization, store digitization, and shopping guide digitization, combined with over 1,000 store events annually. Most notably, Kidswant upgrades offline store shopping guides into digital content distribution terminals, integrating them into the online and offline user journey, reaching consumers across all channels, maintaining long-term interactive relationships to promote continuous repurchase, converting customers into loyal members, thereby enhancing customer LTV. When users enter a Kidswant store, parenting consultants immediately confirm their user profile and consumption needs. During the process, shopping guides accompany users throughout, educating them on parenting knowledge and recommending brands that meet their needs. In between, they seize opportunities to guide users to download the Kidswant app, add the shopping guide's personal WeChat, and push the Kidswant official account on WeChat, completing the "digital gift package" touchpoint task, thereby building a repurchase system. In our view, the essence of this step is that Kidswant's over 6,000 shopping guides, relying on over 400 stores nationwide, distribute electronic flyers to complete user cultivation action guidance. According to data obtained by GrowthBox, Kidswant's member conversion rate from cultivation steps is approximately 40%. After cultivation, a "new customer 1-yuan purchase" hook promotes first purchase conversion, with shopping guides covering new customers in just 10 seconds. Most notably, Kidswant's borderless integration of user departure scenarios. When users leave the store, Kidswant uses online digital tools to promote repurchase. The app extensively uses automated marketing and precision marketing technologies, providing appropriate discounts to appropriate users at appropriate times, distributing promotional content to achieve online community operations and direct online repurchase transactions. In the WeChat private domain, Kidswant relies more on shopping guides using personal WeChat to push educational and service-oriented content to users, building trust relationships, generating sufficient user stickiness, and ultimately achieving the distribution of activity-oriented content, prompting users to return to stores. Through this step, Kidswant successfully achieves the integration of online and offline scenarios. In summary, Kidswant's ultimate integration of user journeys mainly relies on its system of over 400 stores, upgrading over 6,000 store shopping guides into digital content distribution terminals, integrating online and offline user journeys, reaching and serving consumers across all channels, maintaining long-term interactive relationships to promote continuous online repurchase and continuous return to stores, converting customers into loyal members, thereby enhancing customer LTV.

Omnichannel Growth Benchmark: From ROI to ROX

Through the above case summaries, we have constructed a cognitive system upgrade under the experience economy from five dimensions: exposure formats, user incentive mechanisms, user delivery experience, consumption behavior data insights, and ultimate integration of online and offline user journeys. But we need to emphasize that the goal of an experience strategy is to grow with people while continuously creating beautiful and valuable experiences, not merely to obtain financial returns. Making money is a result, not a goal. Here, we draw on the experience return model from the book "Experience Thinking" to share an insight: in the experience era, the future growth benchmark for brands will shift from ROI to ROX. Through the above model, we can see that Return on eXperience (ROX) is a dynamic model for analyzing long-term experience returns, composed of higher purchase amounts, more people, deeper identification, and longer-term relationships. Whether building the overall brand experience or forming a symbiotic relationship between brand and people, it is a long-term process, not achieved overnight. The familiar ROI is a static method for analyzing periodic investment returns, focusing on short-term production effects. In the future experience economy era, it may gradually become ineffective, and the challenge for brands to achieve positive ROI will become increasingly difficult. So, in the shift from ROI to ROX, how can omnichannel growth be achieved? In the user-centric underlying strategy we introduced earlier, we can view it as the "Tao" (way), the five growth strategies as the "Shu" (tactics), and the next step is to find the "Qi" (tools). We believe that from the AIPL chain perspective, Tencent Ads will be the "Qi" for all omnichannel marketing. Its vast omnichannel resources—WeChat (Moments, Official Accounts, Mini Programs), QQ, Tencent Kandian, Tencent News, and Tencent Video—hold natural advantages. Additionally, WeChat, with its massive user base, is the fundamental bond for achieving "more people," "deeper identification," and "longer-term relationships" in the ROX model. Tencent Ads itself is also moving towards the benchmark of omnichannel growth, pioneering the industry's first "marketing competition that rewards innovative exploration of omnichannel growth"—the "2021 Tencent IN Innovation Smart Marketing Award." The cases used in this article (Cha Xiaokong, Caishiweng, Tongcheng Travel, New Hope·Huaxi Dairy, L'Oréal Group) are the winners of the second edition of this competition's "Growth Marketing" category. By restoring and analyzing how the "top students" in the Tencent ecosystem leverage their brand advantages in the era of traffic saturation, using public and private domain resources within the Tencent system to achieve growth nirvana. While pursuing business growth, these brands, through the ultimate integration of "Tao, Shu, and Qi," coexist and grow with young users in the experience economy, achieving endogenous growth under a long-term value retail system. Source: GrowthBox (ID: growthbox2) Author: Xilan Kapu (Researcher: Leo) References: [1] "The Experience Economy" | [US] B. Joseph Pine II & James H. Gilmore. China Machine Press. March 2012 [2] "Experience Thinking" | Huang Feng & Lai Zujie. Tianjin Science and Technology Press. April 2020 [3] "Shaping Experience, Accelerating Growth: Uncovering Growth Opportunities from Customer Experience" | McKinsey. March 2019 [4] "2020 Z-Generation Insight Report" | QuestMobile. January 2021 [5] "China New Retail White Paper" | Nielsen. August 2017 -END-