What Elements of the Hbr Pine and Gilmore Article Are in the Westin Case?

What elements of the HBR Pine and Gilmore article are in the Westin case?

Pine and Gilmore’s HBR article shows that firms can develop a competitive advantage by transitioning from selling services to selling experiences to selling transformations. Westin was doing just that through the implementation of two components from Pine and Gilmore’s article: mass customization of offerings and enabling employees to act on their stage.

Pine and Gilmore state in their HBR article, “the forces of commoditization grow stronger every day.” This was true of the hospitality industry during the time the Westin case was written as firms were standardizing processes to compete on price. Westin developed a competitive advantage through the mass customization of their services, specifically with their “personal renewal” strategy. At the firm level, Westin provided each hotel $500 to $1000 to meet customer needs that often arose. Examples of these uses included creating “treasure chests” of items that customers often forget at home, greeting guests returning from runs with towels and bottled water, and recording shows for guests when they were unable to return in time to watch. Each of these examples helped Westin build customer loyalty in a highly-commoditized industry.

Another strategy Westin employed from the Pine and Gilmore article was enabling their employees to “act” (or work) on a stage. Westin set their associates’ stage through the Sensory Welcome Program. Lobby interactions were on a stage surrounded by the scent of white tea, the sound of ambient music, mood lighting from Philips, and flower arrangements from Bloom. Once the stage was set, Westin empowered their employees to act on that stage. Westin first renamed their employees, “experience engineers.” Westin did this to give them a sense of ownership in each customer experience and empower them to excel in customer interactions. This cultural shift fed into the new training program that taught these experience engineers to “read body language, to watch for emotions, to instinctively engage with guests, to anticipate their needs, and to make them feel special.” Equipped with these tools, these new experience engineers could treat each interaction as a scene on a stage and improve the overall experience for each customer.

All of this bundles up into Westin’s journey from selling a service to an experience to a transformation. Westin’s entire idea of “personal renewal” focused on customers feeling “better when [they] leave a Westin than when [they] arrive.” No longer is their service providing shelter to customers but instead making each customer the best version of themselves. Per Pine and Gilmore, Westin was selling a transformation.

2. How is the Westin Hotel and Resorts performing in the competitive landscape?

Consumer research in the late 1990s showed