A Dutch farmer took a different approach for selling his vegetables with his concept EtenPerMeter.nl (Dutch) (English). He tries to sell his commodities (because that is what potatoes are) as an experience. You as a consumer come over the farmer and for one day you may feel what it’s like to dig in the mud, looking for your potatoes and onions. At least that is the positive feeling he tries to sell. Back to nature! You then pay for your vegetables per meter you’ve worked. (€ 0,75/mtr). Since you do all the work, you pay significantly less than in a normal store. 
Although the transaction here is rather straight forward, the approach is quite innovative. In a normal situation where commodities are being sold as an experience it is by creating an exceptional good service around it. Think of selling coffee in such a pleasant environment as Starbucks. The creating of such a warm atmosphere with all the branding and so on, is more expensive for a company. To earn back all this efforts, Starbucks asks significantly more for his coffee. And if you do it right you can ask even more what leads to large profits margins. This Dutch farmer did manage to take away a service and sell that as an experience. He enlarged his profit margins, not by first making more costs, but by cutting down on labor expenses. As for now, Etenpermeter seems to be a big success.
EtenPerMeter.nl sells vegetables (commodities) as an experience
Rancho Bernardo Inn, an un-experience in practice
In a sector where everybody is fighting to offer the most positive experience as possible, the Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego tries to compete by offering just the opposite. Instead of luxury retreats, customers can choose the ‘survivor package‘. For only 19 dollar a night one can sleep in a room without a bed. By doing this they offer some type of un-experience where a company just tries to solve a customers problem without extras. Hereby they strip the normal hotel experience down to a basic service. 
Many companies already showed that there is money to make on bad or negative experiences. Recently we gave 10 other examples of initiatives that are doing just that. Ryanair for instance tries to focus solely on getting you from A to B without the expectation of any positive experience. Often a business model can arise out the inversion of the so called differentiating aspects or USP’s of a competitor. What could you invert of your competition to boost your own business?
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