I’ve know for some time that we are living in an “Experience” economy.  Yes, even while we need to spend a larger portion of our dollars on necessities because of the inflation of the past years. . . . .the “Experience” economy has continued to thrive.

Whether it is going to a weekend spa, or a high-cost sporting event, or a Taylor Swift concert, those “experiences” are highly sought after and are still selling in our current state of affairs.  Amit Kumar, a University of Texas professor of marketing and psychology who has studied “experiences” says this in this article from The Hustle, “Experiences also often reflect a person’s sense of self, “an investment that contributes to who we are.”

But, one of the points brought out in The Hustle article is that over 1/3 of “Experience” customers are now feeling let down because of the cost of that “experience” in relationship to the value received.  The article calls out a new word of those who have not been happy with an experience because of the price — “Experiangst”.

The article also says this, “Experiangst is similar to buyer’s remorse. Experiangst is dissatisfaction that strikes before, during, or after an experience. Experiangst can remind you of something else you should’ve bought.”

As I read the article it popped into my head that the “funeral experience” could cause “Experiangst” in families that don’t believe that they received the positive experience that they thought they would get. . . . . Regardless of how we as funeral pracitioners feel about the pricing of our services, I’m sure that there are those consumers who believe the cost of the services that they select is not an inexpensive transaction.

In those cases, and especially if funeral homes cannot deliver the expected “experience” we leave ourselves vulnerable to this wave of “Experiangst”.  And that angst could show up as poor social media reviews or bad word of mouth comments by clientele.

Experiangst might also be reflected by families wishing that they had chosen a lower-cost alternative, such as direct cremation after going through a full-service funeral.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

From my point of view, delivering the expected value to every client is a tough task.  It’s not that funeral homes and funeral directors don’t deliver that value, but it also depends on the clients expectation of what the funeral home will be doing.  Many times a clients’ expectation is just more than we realize. . . and sometimes almost impossible.  Yet, if we cannot deliver to that expectation, the angst comes out.

In the article, Professor Kumar also points out that “. . .experiences are social and long-lasting” and our clientele needs to remember that “. . . what I think is important to point out from a psychological perspective is that our experiences actually do endure. They actually live on in our memories. They live on in the stories that we tell other people.”

Because these experiences live on and are told over and over, it is imperative that the client gets satisfaction.  It’s not only true in funerals. . .it is true in sporting events and big-time concerts.  A concert goer that paid $1000 for a ticket maybe only gets a $500 percieved value satisfaction and that causes the angst. . . . It’s not always the performance, but the performance scored against the price paid that is the true value metric for these consumers. . .

Seeing $1,995 direct cremation rates advertised when you’ve just paid $15,000 for a funeral service can fuel a depressed value metric and invoke an angst in the consumer.

Experiangst — it’s a new word in my vocabulary and a word that continues to remind funeral homes to remember we have to strive to, at a minimum, meet our clientele at “their” satisfaction point that will fulfill the experience that they are expecting of us.

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