from a metaphysic of the consumer to an anthropology of consumption: a novel methodological approach...

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From a metaphysic of the consumer to an anthropology of

consumption: A novel methodological approach to the study

of food and beverage consumption

This study explores the demand-supply dynamics characterizing the HoReCa

sector (that is the consumption of food and beverages “away from home”). In

particular, through a transactional analysis of a sample of over 12,000 consumers

in a selected points of sales, our study proposes an innovative, experience-based

approach to the study of the drivers influencing consumer behavior in HoReCa. In

particular, this study adopts an inductive approach based on empirical

observations and data about the behavior of the HoReCa consumers in various

consumption occasions, for different product categories and at different times of

the week. The most important point of this study is that the empirical research

carried out prepares the ground for a proposed new study method based on three

variables, which are servitisation, time and space. Such variables, in turn, are

operationalized through a number of useful indicators that provide applicable and

comparable measures for assessing the demand–supply dynamics within the

HoReCa sector.

Keywords: HoReCa, consumption, services, experience, time, space.

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Introduction

Despite the existence of a substantial number of studies on the consumption

processes in different markets, there is a dearth of academic papers dealing with

the “away-from-home” food and beverage consumption (also known as HoReCa).

Such a lack of attention is particularly surprising if one looks at the significant

economic value of the HoReCa market, which equals to 74.7 billion euros (2014

data), compared with approximately 66 billion euros in 2008, which is the

equivalent to 35% of Italians’ yearly expenditure on food (FIPE, 2016). The

present research builds not only on the economic value of the HoReCa market,

but also on the idea that HoReCa has been defined by Ray Oldenburg as the

“third place”, after home and the workplace, where individuals discover their

sense of community and interact with others.

Starting with the basic assumption that HoReCa consumption is driven by

social and cultural factors, we advance the apparently counterintuitive idea that

that HoReCa tangible products should not be considered as the unique driver of

customer experience, but rather as “experiential facilitators”, i.e., as one of the

many elements that shape the overall customer experience. On the basis of this

idea, we adopt an inductive approach to assess HoReCa consumption processes,

which relies on the observations of consumer behavior at the points of sales

(hereafter, POSs). Such an approach is highly innovative, especially in the

HoReCa market, because it is opposed to the typically used deductive approach

based on a-priori categorization of HoReCa places (bars, restaurants, cafè, and so

on) and consumers, typically segmented using socio-demographic and

psychographic variables. We posit that a deductive approach fails to grasp the

complex and multi-dimensional aspects of HoReCa consumption, which are

instead captured by an inductive approach. As such, this study aims to offer an

important methodological contribution to the study of consumption processes in

the HoReCa market.

Empirically, we conducted an analysis on transactions carried out by a sample

of over 12.000 consumers at a POSs located in Northern Italy.

1. Customer experience in HoReCa consumption

HoReCa consumption is inherently characterized by a quite strong

experiential dimension. In light of this, according to Miao and Mattila (2013),

“food consumption needs to be examined from a broader sociological perspective

beyond product acquisition”. According to Gentile, Spiller and Noci (2007, p.

397), “the customer experience originates from a set of interactions between a

customer and a product, a company, or part of its organisation, which provoke a

reaction. This experience is strictly personal and implies the customer’s

involvement at different levels (rational, emotional, sensorial, physical, and

spiritual)”. In other words, the term customer experience (CE) identifies a

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descriptive model of what the consumer experiences during the process of buying

and consuming goods. A noteworthy study on CE is that by Verhoef et al. (2009)

in which the authors investigate key drivers of the CE, namely the social

environment, the service interface (which includes the use of technology for the

provision of services and the possibility to co-create and personalize the service),

the POS environment and the range and price of products and services.

Building on past work on CE, we claim that the experience associated with

HoReCa consumption has three fundamental dimensions: (1) servitisation,

defined as the combination of the physical product and the intangibles of

experience, (2), time and (3) space. In other words, servitisation refers to the idea

that the physical product is one of the components of the consumption experience,

not the driver of the experience itself. This is due to the fact that the dynamics

characterizing HoReCa consumption make the product seem almost

“anonymous”. Time essentially refers to consumption occasions, that is when the

consumption takes place, distinguishing between breakfast, lunch, aperitif and

dinner. Finally, space indicates the place where consumption takes place, leading

to distinction among the various sales formats (vending machines, take-away

kiosks, POSs with service, and the like).

In sum, we propose that CE in HoReCa is triggered by the occasion,

determined by the context and defined by consumer attiude. In other words, CE is

strongly influenced by socio-cultural factors whose effect on experience outcome

is quite unpredictable. Advancing this idea, however, means to undermine the

classical theories of demand segmentation. The post-modern tribalism context

(Maffesoli, 2004) in which the consumers live prevents the attribution of pre-

conceived meaning to their own experience and consequently goes against the

idea of a segmentation based on a classification that, while being multi-varied,

does not consider experience. Therefore, inherent in our framework is the idea

that HoReCa consumption adheres to a new formulation of the principle of

uncertainty that goes more or less like this: it is impossible for us to understand

the quantitative data of the act of consumption or the experiences of the consumer

at the very moment in which it occurs; that same quantitative data can describe

different experiences and, conversely, same experiences can be described by

different quantitative data. Becoming aware of this characteristic of HoReCa

consumption means recognizing the impossibility of getting to a merely

descriptive conclusion which does not take account for the experience and,

consequently, to accept the need to move from a metaphysic of the consumer to

an anthropology of consumption.

2. A conceptual framework for the analysis of HoReCa consumption

The study of the parameters that define consumer behavior has a long and

complex history involving constant field testing. Then again, the entire social

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structure lent itself to being grouped into phenotypes and to being described using

subordinate syntactic models. Consider that when we think of the last 40 years of

the 20th Century we associate each decade with Hippies, factory workers (operai),

“Travoltini” (1970s disco goers), “Paninari” (middle-class youngsters who

embraced consumerism in the 1980s), Yuppies, Hedonists and Beatniks, to

mention but a few. With the development of communication networks and the

rapid rise of phonations at the expense of metaconstructions, society also broke

down and became more conformist. However, on the research front, rather than

questioning the main principles, we preferred to adapt our methods to the

contexts. If the creation of phenotypes was initially an inductive process, the last

decade has seen a preference towards a deductive analysis using the previous

model as our starting point. If it is true that by using an inductive approach might

exposes researchers to many risks, it is also true that a deductive process has an

intrinsic pre-determined synthetic root. In other words, the real danger is that of

making genotypes created with DNA laboratory, unless we ask ourselves why

reality does not conform to the model that has been developed. This is the

metaphysics of the consumer; the logical consequence of an analysis of social

dynamics, which, due to constantly simplifying its complexity, has over-

structured its modelling and has ended up losing its descriptive capacity. Faced

with this aberration the suggestion is that we should go back, in the HoReCa

consumption analysis, to an anthropology of consumption. It is only a question of

accepting the new principle of uncertainty mentioned above, by defining a

method of empirical research, of inductive inspiration, which allows us to infer

consumer behaviour starting from the situations related to the contexts. It is worth

remembering that these contexts do not end with the “bill”, but “what happens to

customers after they leave the restaurant is also part of their overall experience

with the restaurant” (Miao and Mattila, 2013).

In this research endeavour it is important to observe how the new

technological platforms have contributed to redeveloping the way we interact

with others and with ourselves. In fact, the Web 3.0 does not mean “surfing the

Internet with a smart phone” all over the world, but it represents the new social

and syntactic connection among people. In this sense, the digital divide is an

important factor in social discrimination; it is not the recreational implications

that are the focus of our studies, but the marginalising effects of the inability to

access information. If information constitutes the new basis of social

relationships, the consumption phenomenon, as a social act, is obviously strongly

affected by this. It is in this new context that we should focus on the need to

review the ways in which we analyse consumption phenomena.

By adopting the scenarios of the Game Theory we can address the problem as

follows. Talking about “consumer satisfaction” means to accept both the

existence of an information deficit to the detriment of the consumer, and almost

complete information in favour of the strongest player, in this case the industry.

Clearly, in this situation, the game needs to be defined in dynamic terms, with

sequential moves by the players, and not in a cooperative way, because it is far

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more advantageous for one side. However, the increased possibility to access

information anywhere has immediately changed the rules of the game. Today, we

need to play a game with almost perfect information and more symmetry between

the industry and the consumer. In this situation the most convenient way to play is

to collaborate. In fact, in the presence of reduced information asymmetries and, to

an extent, organisational asymmetries, getting along well is a far more satisfying

strategy. Then again, incorrectly, the paradigm on which the sharing economy is

based is an example: injecting trust, which is the logical requirement of

collaboration, into a supply system, means to make goods, which would

otherwise be underused, accessible.

The methodological proposal presented in this study is based, on the one hand,

on the definition of the parameters of supply and, on the other hand, on the

definition of the parameters of demand. With regard to the supply aspect, the aim

is to identify objective data that could be defined in quantitative terms, which

enable us to analyze the value drivers of the HoReCa consumption phenomena.

Specifically, in line with what we presented in the theoretical part, the

methodological proposal is based on the three main dimensions of HoReCa

consumption that is servitisation, time and space.

With regard to servitisation, our methodological proposal involves placing the

various distribution channels on a continuum which goes from complete

standardization to complete personalization.

With regard to time, this parameter breaks down into:

frequency, operationalized as the number of regular visits dependent

on the consumption occasions;

intensity, operationalized as:

o the average value of each consumption episode, based on a

study of the value of the average sales receipt;

o the measurement of the peak times, based on the analysis of the

number of sales receipts issued per hour

o the quantification of the peak times by hour and consumption

situation.

Space is represented by the POS. With reference to the distinction suggested by

Herzberg (1966) between hygienic and motivating factors, the main hygienic ones

are:

the degree of internal and external cleanliness;

the preparation time of food and beverages, which should take 2 minutes

for cocktails, 1 minute for dispensing a beer, up to a maximum of 2

minutes for table service (depending on the number of customers), up to

a maximum of 2 minutes for taking the order, and a maximum of 6

minutes for the preparation and cooking of pizzas and hot dishes.

Among the motivating factors, we considered staff’s friendliness, how

pleasant the environment is, the sensory experience, the retail-tainment and

special events.

With regard to demand, we considered the following data:

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the ratio of customers to passers-by, both direct (individual POS) and

indirect (comparison between different POSs), to measure the value of

the location;

the time spent looking in to define the in-store communication policies

of the establishment;

the time spent in the queue for the till;

the time differential between consumption at the bar or at the table;

the correlation between customer flow, value of the sales receipt and

products purchased in order to modify either the staffing levels

required or the servitisation;

the analysis of internet traffic during consumption to understand what

the consumer thinks while he or she is inside the POS;

the integration of the analysis of sales receipts with climatic and social

variables;

video analytics to assess the participants and to define the various types

of experience.

All of the above data can be collected in non-collaborative contexts, without

being intrusive, and by mere provision of a free Wi-Fi service.

3. Drivers of HoReCa consumption

We argue that it is possible to condense the act of HoReCa consumption into

three main drivers:

servitisation;

time;

space.

3.1. Servitzation

The term servitisation does not simply define an entity consisting of physical

goods and additional services, but identifies a genuine new product in which the

physical and the intangible form an indivisible union. In fact, while this holistic

vision has the importance of a descriptive synthesis, it brings with it some

problems from the point of view of the analysis of the consumption phenomenon.

We will break down the measurable drivers in a different section of this article

but for the time being we will only focus on physical goods in the social context

of HoReCa consumption.

Physical goods are what makes the act of consumption possible; they turn it

into a concrete entity as part of a quantitative choice which can be described

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objectively. In the context of HoReCa consumption, however, it is important to

distinguish between generic goods, as we have defined them, and goods

identified by a brand. If, in fact, the aim of the product is to turn a cultural action

into a physical entity, the comforting function of the brand in the context of F&B

(food and beverage) goods has the tendency to fade until it no longer makes

sense. The dynamic of HoReCa consumption as social action which is

inadvertently stimulated by the physical goods, makes the product anonymous.

This phenomenon, which is self-evident in draught-dispensed products (so-called

draught beverages), is even more evident when one thinks of the act of

transforming demand into something material, which, at best, identifies an

undefined category of product or situation (a beer or happy-hour) and hardly ever

applies to a specific brand.

In order to conduct a more complete research study, we should cite a few

examples in which the brand has become synonymous with an entire product

category or a consumption situation (e.g. Crodino for a non-alcoholic aperitif,

Spritz for an alcoholic happy-hour, or Coca Cola for a soft drink), turning a non-

specific intention into a specific request. However, due to its pervasiveness, the

contextualisation of the brand has lost its intrinsic brand identity and, therefore,

could be interpreted more as a loss of brand value, which is, however, an issue

for the manufacturer who thus sees the unwitting dispersal of the money spent on

promotion, rather than as a way of branding the consumption situation.

The above is shown in the data featured in Table 1. Assuming that at least one

type of drink should always appear at least once on a sales receipt, for the

obvious reason that you do not eat without drinking, while you can drink without

eating, we analysed the F&B linear combinations. The analysis showed that:

a preferred combination does not exist. On the contrary, food and

beverages are totally unrelated;

the F&B combination, in the Italian situation, is a genuine “food

diphthong”, subject to personal rules and dependent on the fleeting

moment of the experiential context.

The conclusions resulting from the above data suggest that in the away-from-

home F&B consumption there are no rules allowing us to determine that the

consumer's choice of a drink is linked to a specific food in a given context.

However, this conclusion raises two considerations which have important

implications:

1. the impossibility of studying away-from-home consumptions starting from

the product in the physical sense leads to the need to use CE, separated

from the product, as a new parameter to explain the away-from.home

consumption processes;

2. if the product has lost its capacity to explain phenomena, then it is even

more true that a subset of the product, i.e. the brand, cannot be considered

as the driver of the consumption experience: rather it becomes a component.

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DINNER

AFTER

DINNER

MINERAL WATER

119 Linear combinations with other product categories

erceologiche

154

1042 Sales receipts 1048

83 In combination with pizza/sandwiches 101

108 In combination with meals 118

DRAUGHT DRINKS

148 Linear combinations with other product categories

merceologiche

207




BOTTLED DRINKS

76 linear combinations with other product categories 94




BOTTLED BEER

63 Linear combinations with other product categories 81




Table 1.F&B Combinations

3.2. Time

Time is defined by the consumption situation. The situation, considered from a

social perspective, has three main drivers:

the influence of recurring external events, which is why, for example, we

witness an increase in the consumption of Guinness on St Patrick’s Day;

physiological needs;

social or work contexts. This aspect deserves further consideration.

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Consumption is an essential act for the development of a social structure.

A consumption that is so strongly grounded in society has a reciprocal

relationship with society: on the one hand it influences its dynamics but,

on the other, it is affected by society’s forces. Immersed in a world of

clouds (Popper and Kreuzer, 1984), more than clocks, with an artisan

consumer that acquires styles and tastes, F&B goods no longer define

social classes but define individual styles. In relationship terms, the way

in which we spend time together is no longer (simply) a strict question of

belonging but a process of individual self-creation that is constantly called

into question and negotiated and, therefore, not pre-defined.

3.3. Space

The space in which the act of consumption occurs is, of course, influenced

by the situations and is defined by the POS in which it takes place. If we

consider the POS as a kind of secular cathedral where the consumer celebrates a

kind of social mass, it means that we are liberating HoReCa consumption from

the dynamics of price and placing it in the universe of retail-tainment: the POS,

which confers an aesthetic value on the acts of consumption, becomes the

physical space where the dynamics of society take shape and achieve

completeness. Being the stage on which our social life is enacted, the POS

fulfils a magical role (Bauman, 2011), bestowing history, identity and

connections on the ever-changing performance of our social gatherings (Augè,

1999; Sassoli, 2008).

4. Description of the empirical research

Our empirical research has been conducted in a non-cooperative context,

which means that consumers were anonymous and unaware of the research study

taking place, and is based on data from from cash-register sales receipts. We

decided to go to a single POS, which is situated at the mid-point between the

Milan–Piacenza road and the Brescia-Mantova road. Customers are served either

at the tables or at the bar and the offering includes a full food and beverage menu.

Data were gathered in the period between weeks 19 and 30 in 2016 considering

dinner and after dinner as consumption occasions. We analysed the following product

categories: mineral water, pre-packed drinks, juices, beers, wines, liquors, non-

packaged drinks, cocktails, sandwiches, pizzas, traditional dishes, and coffees.

Consumers analyzed were 12.555 with 4.643 sales receipts. The analysis was

divided into three consumption methods (at the bar, food and beverages at the

table or just beverages at the table) and three clusters during the week (from

Monday to Thursday, from Friday to Saturday, and Sunday).

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5. A methodological approach to the analysis the HoReCa market

Our methodology is aimed at determining the parameters of CE that could

allow to measure this construct in a quantitative manner. Such parameters should

be easy to use and act on by POS managers as well as the F&B distrubutors and

the industry.

More specifically, analyzing consumption situation by type of experience

from a methological perspective means to identify precise consumption

occasions, such as breakfast, happy-hour, lunch, impulse, pre-dinner, and dinner

after dinner and to segment consumption situations by type of experience, for

example work-related event, getting together with friends, and so on. Well, in this

research study we did not look at the type of experience but only consumption

occasions.

From an operational perspective, the focus on consumption occasions allows

to work with significantly smaller data samples compared with traditional

quantitative statistical analysis. In the Italian context, for example, the sample

could be limited to no more than 300 POSs across the country, which has clear

cost benefits.

Once defined the boundaries of our study in this way, the advantages of

involving all the members of the HoReCa supply chain become quite obvious:

the industry can intervene in consumer experience through below-the-

line marketing initiatives in which the brand is implicitly chosen

according to the servitisation;

the distributor becomes a facilitating platform of information services;

the manager “modifies” the appearance of his/her own business

according to experiential considerations, cheaply and in a way that can

be easily changed, rather than making logistic or architectural changes at

an unacceptable cost.

To delve more specifically into the quantitative parameters proposed in this

research for the measure of consumption occasions, they can be distinguished into

those for the supply and those for the demand.

On the supply side, the following are proposed:

servitisation;

time;

space;

On the demand side, the following are proposed:

Consumption situation;

Experiential methods.

5.1. Servitization

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In HoReCa consumption context, more than in any other context, the product

should be redefined in terms of “servitisation”, as previously defined.

Operationally, servitization can be measured through some proxies. In our

research, we considered the different distribution formats and the product

categories placed along a continuum that goes from pure standardization to pure

personalization. Figure 1 offers a graphical representation of such two proxies.

Standardization

Take-away

kiosk

POS, table service

Vending

machines

POS

No table service Personalisation

Standardization F&B

At the bar

Draught-

dispensed at

the bar

Draught-dispensed

Served at the table

F&B

To take away

At the table Personalisation

Figure 1. Servitization between standardization and personalization

5.2. Time

Time has been operationalized first of all in terms of frequency of meal

consumption, ranging from minimum frequency (corresponding to after-dinner

meals) to maximum frequency (corresponding to breakfast) (FIPE, 2013).

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Additionally, time has been operationalized in terms of intensity, measured as

follows:

average value of consumption, through a study of the average value of

sales receipts (FIPE, 2013);

measurement of peak times, through a study of the number of sales

receipts issued per hour;

number of peak times per hour and consumption situation, through a

contextualized analysis of previous values. This last parameter also

represents a proxy for the level of logistical saturation of the supply

system in question

This analysis allows us to came up with some objective and measurable

proxies for evaluating the importance of the consumption contexts as well as to

measure and define concrete opportunities to manage the peak times and visits to

the POSs. Indeed, considering the products and the techniques used to deliver the

service deduced from sales receipts, and the analysis of standard delivery peak

times, it is possible to determine the workload that is effectively achievable by the

organisation in any given period of time. This means for example that a catering

establishment seating 250 and with 20 members of staff in total in the course of

an evening generates BOD and COD values equivalent to that generated by 90

residents in a day measured in biodegradable substances channelled through the

sewers.

5.3. Space

The final driver of the supply system generally corresponds to the POS. In order

to identify the constituent parts it is a good idea to create a model of the

categories identified by Herzberg in the organisational set-up. Therefore, we can

determine space in terms of hygienic and motivating factors.

Among the hygienic factors, we consider:

internal and external cleaning. In this area we should mention (ISPO,

2012) the desirable degree of cleanliness of a POS is rated at around 9.3

on a scale of 1 to 10. On the other hand, the actual level of cleanliness is

only 7.5 on the same scale. This numerical discrepancy has not,

however, had a negative impact, which means that the POSs are

generally considered clean. This is a very important conclusion if we

take into account the average impact that a standard catering

establishment has on the environment. Indeed, leaving to one side noise

and light pollution the data shows (see Wikipedia entry for “Population

equivalent”):

o 1 Population equivalent (PE) for every 3 covers;

o 1 PE for every 7 bar customers;

o 1 PE for every 3 permanent members of staff.

This means for example that a catering establishment seating 250 and with 20

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members of staff in total in the course of an evening generates BOD and COD

values equivalent to that generated by 90 residents in a day measured in

biodegradable substances channelled through the sewers;

food and beverage preparation time. In this case the evidence is inevitably

approximate because it refers to a standard POS. Essentially, we can

quantify it as follows:

o cocktail preparation: 2’. In this case we extrapolate the data

from the AIBES tables which estimate a maximum time of 4’

for the preparation of a cocktail with 7 ingredients;

o dispensing a beer: 1’30” for an average beer served presentably

(field study);

o dispensing a soft drink: 1’ (field study);

o table service: from 1’30” to 2’ based on the number of waiters

and the layout of the establishment (field study). This parameter

is also a proxy for measuring the level of service;

o order placement time: from 1’30” to 2’ (field study);

o pizza preparation time: 3’ for the preparation itself and 3’ for

cooking (field study);

o hot dish preparation time: 3’ for the preparation and 6’ for

cooking (field study);

o sandwich preparation time: 1’30” (field study).

The precise definition of these drivers enables us to attribute the precise

value to the complete range of services which constitutes the intangible aspect of

servitisation.

Among the motivating factors, we consider:

o the politeness of the staff;

o the attractiveness of the environment;

o the sensory appeal;

o retail-tainment and other events.

All these drivers are gathered from proxies from studying the internet using

specialist analytical tools (TripAdvisor, et alia).

As far as demand-side parameters are concerned, we decided to study

consumption habits and behaviours without becoming intrusive. In a market that

produces 45,000 apps a month, it becomes very difficult to engage in any kind of

direct dialogue with the Consumer. Therefore, we have to pursue different

strategies because in HoReCa consumption the aim is to “spend time together”, not

to search the Tnternet. We should consider the following measurable parameters:

a direct ratio of customers to passers-by (single POS) or an indirect ratio

(comparison between different POSs) can be used to assess the value of

the establishment;

how much time you spend outside the establishment in order to form an

impression of what the place is like;

the length of the queue at the cash desk;

the time difference between bar service and table service and the

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corresponding price difference in order to decide which type of service is

most appropriate;

correspondence between the number of customers, the value of sales

receipts, and products purchased in order to assess the number of staff

needed and the level of servitisation;

analysis of internet use during the period of consumption to understand

what the consumer is thinking while he or she is inside the POS;

analysis of internet use during special events;

analysis of sales receipts during different weather conditions and social

events;

Video Analytics in order to assess different customers and to evaluate

their experiences;

an analysis of the timing of consumer visits and where they sit in the

POS.

All this data can be gathered without the knowledge of the customers, without

being intrusive and, by providing a free Wi-Fi service, it is also possible to

operate a sophisticated loyalty programme.

6. Conclusions

This research is different from all previous similar analyses under three crucial

aspects:

the database analysed consists of certified documents within an objective

framework;

it has been conducted in a non-collaborative context;

the empirical analysis was used to support a theory which, based on the

most important studies on the topic of HoReCa consumption, reached

counter-intuitive and, at times, original conclusions.

From the analysis of consumption processes the need to identify the new

descriptive reference parameters in CE has emerged. However, having CE as our

starting point can bring unforeseen consequences:

CE is detached from the product, suppressed in servitisation, and deeply

embedded in society as a shared experience and belongs more to the

relational aspect rather than to the economic aspect. This shift has three

main consequences:

o traditional demand segmentation has suddenly lost its voice,

unable to explain consumption phenomena;

o supply segmentation no longer serves any informative purpose,

as it has been rendered worthless by the social contextualization

of CE;

o the product has become an experiential layer, giving up its role

of driver of the experience.

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A first conclusion that can be drawn, and perhaps the most important one,

refers to demand targeting. If, on the one hand, we demonstrated the loss of

cognitive value in traditional consumer segmentation we cannot, on the other

hand, accept losing the possibility to develop an information system capable of

offering some generalizations regarding the data collected. What we call into

question, in fact, is not the principle which is submitted to segmentation, but the

parameter which is the subject of our analysis, the consumer, and the method

applied, which is extremely deductive. That consumption is a social process is

certainly not new. The obvious consequence is that, as Pierce says, the consumer-

signal is “something which equals someone times something divided by certain

aspects or capacities”. As long as society was described in terms of stratified

differentiation, therefore attributable to a series of approximate hierarchical

relationships, abstraction worked, but since the end of the 1990s society has

changed. As soon as the ways of spending time together started to favour

functional criteria as opposed to hierarchical criteria, the consumer as synecdoche

of consumption ceased to be representative, hence the need for a new knowledge

driver, namely CE, emerged. For this reason, we must now ask ourselves how we

can define a research study method of CE which is both rigorous and

operationally applicable and that delivers useful results from a corporate point of

view. What we propose in this study is a vision of HoReCa F&B consumption no

longer as a disconnected set of “consumption situations”, but rather as

“experiential connections”.

This framework has various important implications:

it shifts the emphasis away from functional characteristics, the dinner, to

experiential ones, for instance “with friends”. The important difference

is that the former have a price, while the latter have a value;

the servitisation proposal is aimed at satisfying experience and,

therefore, it is necessary to define some preliminary experiential paths.

In this process the industry’s marketing departments should be engaged

in a series of innovative, fundamentally important below-the-line

operations (e.g. the creation of a brand hot spot, of guided experiential

paths, and so on);

the development of an experiential path is not the preserve of a single

member of the supply chain. Therefore, it is possible to develop a home-

grown commercial and marketing policy which is dedicated to HoReCa;

at this point, the consumer, whoever he or she may be, only has to

specify the experience he or she wants to have, because that will

determine his or her levels of satisfaction.

A second conclusion refers to supply segmentation. Although supply

segmentation has lost its capacity to inform consumption processes, it still retains

a strong position in purely commercial operations. In other words, if it is true that

the understanding of consumption phenomena no longer uses the distinction of

POSs by type of supply system (day, night, or evening bars), mainly due to the

inherent expansion of supply offered by various commercial concerns, it is also

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true that there are entire product categories whose ideal commercial outlet is

identifiable by means of specific types of key supply. Therefore, our proposal is

to improve supply segmentation but restricting its use to the sphere of commercial

operations where having “boots on the ground” is fundamental.

A third conclusion that can be drawn refers to the product and, consequently,

to the brand. From the standpoint of the product, if it is true that it loses its role as

driver of consumption experience, because it cannot be separated from a

combination of tangible and intangible services, it retains this role in the act of

purchasing. Otherwise known as brand vulgarization, which we explained at the

beginning, although almost inconsequential as far as CE is concerned, it plays a

vitally important role from the point of view of sales. This means that the

traditional functions of the above-the-line marketing play the role of “external

involvement in consumption processes”, while the sales function becomes a key

factor in the management of the SKUs.

A fourth conclusion refers to engagement processes. If the driver of the

consumption process, in F&B HoReCa contexts, is the experience, then loyalty

and customer engagement processes are a consequence of this. This conclusion,

however, forces us to review the function of Branded Apps and intangible

processes of consumer engagement. For this reason, we should stress that 60% of

consumers prefer to visit (35%), or to have direct telephone communication

(25%) with the retailers themselves, relegating the other forms of communication

and relationships to insignificant levels (15% SMS, 14% e-mail and only 8% in-

app messages) (Mobile Ecosystem Forum, 2016). This data explains the difficulty

of popularizing and implementing Branded Apps and other hi-tech ways of

retaining customer loyalty. In other words, we can argue that the role of Branded

Apps, and similar things, is secondary to, and not determined by, previous

personal experience. Inverting this sequence has given the practices of consumer

engagement a role which does not suit their purpose, which is to consolidate an

experience that a person has already had, and not to try to persuade them to try

something out, as happens all too often.

17

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