Tesla Isn't Selling a Car, It's Selling an Experience

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What Tesla Gets That Apple Understood Before It
Tesla Cybertruck Tesla Isn't Selling a Car, It's Selling an Experience 3660a1d9ba8d405eae89065aaf9640de

By Liraz Margalit | Sep 9, 2021

Tesla is approaching a playground that previously only Apple played in. Take a look at Apple's products. The functionality is no better than competitors' products. Yet the company has managed to brand them as status symbols. Customers are perceived as sophisticated, technological and elitist. Purchasing an Apple product means belonging to this high-end group.

Apple has created a situation where a person can be assigned desirable character traits, based only on the fact they have a product with the famous Apple symbol. iPhones have now become a popular and even standard commodity.

Tesla is the new iPhone. In this case, the group also includes people who cannot buy a Tesla, but who would sacrifice just so they can ride this vehicle and associate themselves with the features that accompany it.

Building Customer Loyalty Through a Common Enemy
One thing that helped set Apple apart from other computer brands was its ability to create an enemy in the minds of consumers. Renowned psychologist Henri Tajfel discovered that by establishing minor distinctions between two groups of people he could artificially create loyalty within the groups. Apple achieved this by targeting Microsoft as the foe, while also distinguishing Apple products as the anti-PC solution.

Tesla's enemies are vehicles with internal combustion engines and big automakers. Many EV drivers today derive an emotional attachment from driving something that isn't your typical gas-powered car. Another advantage for Tesla is the fact that it offers customers something different: new tech from a new company. This is similar to Apple of days past, which offered a different tech platform than PCs and a small user base which identified with being "different."

The second group of Tesla buyers includes affluent men who want to feel young. The mid-life crisis has become a code name for jokes about men buying a Mercedes with an open roof or looking for a young woman. The Tesla makes it possible to get through the mid-life crisis in style.

The third, and smallest, group is made up of people who fell in love with the story Tesla tells, in the vision of Elon Musk. Tesla has a great story, perhaps the best on the market. A story about investing in sustainability, green energy and a sustainable future where transportation is electric and energy is renewable.

Joining an Exclusive Club
Tesla's strategy is different from that of other car importers. It produces covetousness through the fact that it does not run a campaign. In addition, it has no PR, no test rides for those interested in purchasing it and no advertisement. If you wish to buy Tesla you will have to order the vehicle online. This strategy causes Tesla consumers to actually belong to an exclusive group of people, a kind of closed and elitist community. I recently heard a woman laughing, saying that riding with her husband was a nightmare: whenever he saw a Tesla passing by, he shouted – here’s another Tesla!

In the age of abundance, where we suffer from information overload, it is much easier to produce desire and interest when a product brands itself as exclusive. This was Gmail's strategy in the beginning when it allowed people to join its mail service only through a friend's invite. Today, Clubhouse has adopted this strategy, which requires an invite from an existing user to use it.

Although you do not need an invitation to buy a Tesla, if you want a test drive, you need to know someone who has a Tesla. All the buzz around Tesla has led to the rapid and spontaneous development of a community addicted to the brand — which includes drivers and fans on social media, telegram and WhatsApp — who are interested in expanding the discourse regarding Tesla. They are the best marketers there are.

Reminder: You're Selling Experiences, Not Products
Consumer culture in the West has changed in recent years. It's shifted from the purchase of products and services to the consumption of experiences. This trend will only get stronger after the pandemic. The period of crisis and social distancing led to a reassessment of consumption habits.

An extensive survey by the research firm Global Web Index, in which consumers were asked what they would prefer to purchase in the near future among product categories, found 27% would prefer the purchase of experiences over the purchase of products. Despite the expected global recession, and even though people will purchase fewer material products, there seems to be no harm in the consumption of experiences.

If in the past the functional benefit from the product was the main consideration in the purchase, today the consumption of experiences is a way of life, a way of self-realization and a way of fulfilling fantasies. The restaurant does not sell nutritious food, but a gastronomic experience. Nike does not sell running shoes, but the magic formula to achieve anything you want in life (Just do it).

An experience doesn't occur in the physical world, it occurs in the mental world. This is why the value of the experiences is completely detached from the product itself. Our fantasy world has enormous buying power, even though it has very little to do with objective reality.

The rules of competition have changed. Companies that do not understand this will be out of the game forever. Successful companies trade in our experiences, but not only that. The more successful a company is, the smaller the connection between what it provides and the emotional experience it evokes. Although the reviews praise Tesla in terms of instrumentation, ease of use and performance, Tesla is mostly an experience. The marketers there knew how to sell us a great story

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About the Author

Liraz Margalit, PhD, is a digital psychologist, customer & user behavior specialist, and an international keynote speaker. She integrates cognitive psychology and behavioral economics perspectives to analyzes consumer behavior and deliver actionable insights for business stakeholders.

https://www.cmswire.com/digital-experience/what-tesla-gets-that-apple-understood-before-it/
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ajdelange

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Liraz Margalit, PhD, is a digital psychologist, customer & user behavior specialist, and an international keynote speaker. She integrates cognitive psychology and behavioral economics perspectives to analyzes consumer behavior and deliver actionable insights for business stakeholders.
If you'd just put that at the beginning instead of at the end I wouldn't have wasted 5 minutes.
 

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One thing that helped set Apple apart from other computer brands was its ability to create an enemy in the minds of consumers.
Lost me right here. Both in the case of Apple and Tesla. When Apple was in it's growth curves you would read empty think pieces like this too.

Both Apple and Tesla are about experience, but it's not about being bitter about something else, it's simply about user experience. Think back, when Apple was hitting it's strive, think about how bad the user experience was on Windows and Windows CE. Apple didn't need to create an enemy, they had a far better user experience. Tesla is similar.

The idea that you can make something that is simply more pleasant to use and people will migrate to it is completely alien to some journalists.
 

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The marketers there knew how to sell us a great story
Article snippet.

Exhibit A: Tesla’s CT marketing campaign after the reveal.

Exhibit B: I did not know I could not test drive a Tesla? I guess being Allowed to take out a model for up to an hour is considered more as a loaner than a test drive.

So many interesting conclusions in the article. Conflating many points.
 

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Most Applications Crash If Not Then Operating System Halts

I often thing about Musk vis-a-vis Jobs and clearly there are commonalities. The one that keeps coming to mind is the story in which someone told Jobs the customers wouldn't want a particular feature he was proposing to which he respionded "The customers don't know what they want. I haven't told them yet."
 


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Invention is the method of introducing unknown features. Ignoring voice of customer (VOC) allows competitors to perceived improved feature when user experience is factored in.

Jobs was a visionary. I appreciate many of Apple’s products, do not like other apple products and absolutely dislike their charge cables. While society tends to hold those who past away on pedestals, Jobs is not the best example of a saint,
 

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Crappy article. I for one have test driven Tesla's two different times at my local dealership!
 

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Tesla doesn't have dealerships.
So what would you call it? They process sales there, albeit through the website it is still on location, they service cars there, and they also keep a handful of test models for test drives...

Semantics is all.
 


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So what would you call it? They process sales there, albeit through the website it is still on location, they service cars there, and they also keep a handful of test models for test drives...

Semantics is all.
I see your point. NADA may differ with you though.... ?
 

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If you'd just put that at the beginning instead of at the end I wouldn't have wasted 5 minutes.
You read faster than me. That was a waste of 5 minutes of my time to get through about half of it, and look at the comments to confirm it was trash. If she had done some research and found out you can take a Tesla out for a drive, after they've been in the marketplace for a while. I may have read more. Yes marketing is real, and I agree, Tesla has demonized the OEM's and dealer networks. But that's easy to do when they treat us like cash cows.
 

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They process sales there, albeit through the website it is still on location,
That in itself says the sale isn't processed there but rather wherever the server is located. If you buy your Tesla at home whilst seated on the throne the same thing exactly happens.

Beyond that "dealership" has a very specific meaning within the auto industry. A dealer is an entity completely distinct from the OEM who buys cars from the OEM and sells them to consumers. What goes on at a Tesla "salon" is entirely different.
 

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Tesla has demonized the OEM's and dealer networks.
The OEMs and dealer networks have tried to prevent Tesla from selling cars.

Lawsuits in the multiple states to prevent Tesla from doing business so they can keep their legalized monopolies.

I don't think this relates to the article at all.
 

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The OEMs and dealer networks have tried to prevent Tesla from selling cars.

Lawsuits in the multiple states to prevent Tesla from doing business so they can keep their legalized monopolies.

I don't think this relates to the article at all.
I agree with you, The OEM's, Dealer's, and UAW all are fighting Tesla to maintain their way of doing business. And yes, that also helps to make them a common enemy for all of us, as that article was pointing out. Also why most of us look at Ford Lightning and all other vehicles with a bit of prejudice. That's marketing.
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