Strengthening Competitive Advantage of Rural Businesses with E-commerce and Experience Economy Strategies

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Escapist Experiences

Escapist experiences require that the customer actively participate in the events of a real or virtual environment. The customer shapes or contributes to the experience, which offers the customer a way of taking on a new persona.

ex04

Accommodation/ B&B
Murder mystery dinners held in a B&B provide an evening of mystery and intrigue. Each guest plays a character and attempts to solve the murder while being served a delicious gourmet meal.

http://www.bbonline.com/ky/maplehill/ murdermystery.html

ex03

Restaurant
A family-run restaurant offers a wide variety of activities for its customers, which make them feel like ranchers by bottle feeding cows.

http://www.flyingb.com/

ex02

Retail
Visitors can rent a bike and camping equipment for an overnight trip to nearby Mauch Check Lake, thus, escaping from thier routine life.

http://www.bikejimthorpe.com/

Rural Tourism
A small farmhouse offers a mini maze for little kids to wonder through alongside a cornfield maze adventure for adults.

http://www.longandscottfarms.com/

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These materials were developed as part of the Southern Rural Development Center’s National e-Commerce Extension Initiative. They are based upon work supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Award No. 2005-45064-03212

Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Southern Rural Development Center.