People Aren’t Buying Products. They’re Choosing Experiences.
Marketing Implications in an Experience Driven Economy
By Emily Krause, Founder, Amped Up Marketing
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to present at the Eastern Winery Expo in front of an audience of winery owners and operators who are navigating one of the more challenging moments their industry has seen in decades. The numbers are hard to ignore: nearly half of Americans say they plan to drink less alcohol in 2025, a 44% increase from 2023. Among Gen Z, that figure jumps to 65%.
And yet, the wineries positioned to grow aren't necessarily the ones with the best wine.
They're the ones with the best experience.
That distinction matters far beyond the wine industry. It's reshaping how consumers decide to spend their time and money across nearly every category. The big question buyers are asking today isn't "Is this good?" It's "Is this worth it?"
The Shift from Product to Experience
For decades, marketing was built on a simple premise: tell people what you offer and why it's good. Lead with quality. Lead with features. Lead with price.
That framework still has a role, and yet it's no longer the deciding factor.
Today's consumer is making decisions based on something harder to quantify and far more personal. They're asking themselves how it will feel to show up, to walk in the door, to hand over their card. They're evaluating anticipated experience before they've had it, and they're making that call in seconds.
This is especially visible in industries where the product itself is almost secondary to the atmosphere around it. Hospitality. Retail. Professional services. And yes, wine.
When a winery's tasting room is thoughtfully designed, when guests feel welcomed and unhurried, when the experience extends well beyond what's in the glass, people spend more and come back. When it's transactional, they move on.
The Value Conversation Has Changed
There's a common misunderstanding about the word "value." In many business conversations, it gets used as code for discounting, for offering more at a lower price point. That's a narrow and often dangerous interpretation.
Value today means delivering something that feels worth it. Worth the drive. Worth the babysitter. Worth the Saturday.
Research backs this up in a meaningful way. 3/4’s of consumers who increased their spending on experiences in the past year say they feel they get more value for their money from experiences than from products. These aren't thrill-seekers throwing caution to the wind. These are deliberate buyers who have made a conscious choice about where their discretionary dollars go and why.
Among households earning $100,000 or more, the shift is even more pronounced. 44% of high earners say they spent more on experiences in the last year than they did the year before. These are exactly the buyers that premium and high-touch service businesses are trying to reach.
So the question for any business isn't how to compete on price. It's how to signal that the experience you deliver is worth the investment.
This Isn't Just a Wine Problem
The winery context provided a compelling case study, and the pattern holds across industries.
Hospitality and travel are perhaps the clearest example. Americans are expected to spend an average of $10,600 on trips and vacations in 2025. A record 5.2 billion people are projected to fly this year. The growth isn't being driven by the cheapest seats or the most efficient itineraries. It's being driven by a hunger for something memorable. Nearly 3/4’s of travelers now specifically seek out authentic, local experiences, a shift the travel industry has started calling "slow travel."
Retail is feeling this shift in a big way. Foot traffic in stores that lead with product and price is declining, while immersive retail concepts (stores that double as experiences, brands that offer community and belonging alongside a product) are finding traction. The brands winning aren't necessarily the ones with the best goods. They're the ones that make the act of buying feel like something.
For Professional services firms, clients are increasingly choosing lawyers, financial advisors, accountants, and consultants based on how easy it is to work with them, how clearly they communicate, and how confident they feel in the relationship. Price matters. Reputation matters. And so does the experience of being a client, start to finish.
In Healthcare and wellness, patients are making decisions about providers and practices based on how they feel when they walk in, how quickly things get resolved, and how understood they feel. And patients are choosing alternatives to traditional practices. The clinical quality of care is the baseline expectation. The experience is what differentiates.
What the Wine Industry Can Teach Every Business
Back to the winery conversation. Here's what I shared with that audience: 50% of the U.S. population lives within a day's drive of East Coast wineries. That's not a niche market. That's an enormous opportunity rooted in proximity and, increasingly, in a cultural appetite for exactly the kind of in-person, sensory, social experience that a winery can deliver.
The wineries that are growing aren't necessarily producing better wine.
They're making it easy and compelling to visit.
They're designing for all guests, not just the wine enthusiasts.
They're making their spaces photo-worthy and their programming worth talking about.
They're giving people a reason to linger, and a story to tell when they leave.
That is a marketing and brand strategy challenge, not a viticulture one.
And it's the same challenge facing a professional services firm, a boutique hotel, a specialty retailer, or a nonprofit trying to engage donors in a more meaningful way.
What This Means for Your Marketing
Most marketing still focuses on what is being offered. The shift that matters is moving from what to how it feels.
If someone reads your website, your social media, or your email, can they picture what it would actually be like to work with you, visit you, or engage with you? Can they feel the experience before they've had it?
If the answer is unclear, you're leaving decisions to chance. Here are a few questions worth sitting with:
What does it actually feel like to engage with your business? Not what you intend it to feel like. What does it actually feel like? Are there friction points you've stopped noticing? Are there moments of delight you're not capturing or communicating?
Are you showing it clearly? Real people, real moments, real outcomes are far more persuasive than polished copy. Video in particular is no longer optional. Reels on Instagram generate 2x the impressions of static posts and more than half of those views come from non-followers. That's reach that copy alone cannot generate.
Are you making it easy to say yes? Uncertainty is one of the biggest barriers to a buying decision. Clear visitor information, visible policies, answers to the questions people are already asking, and a sense of what to expect all reduce the perceived risk of trying something new.
Lead with the Experience
The businesses gaining ground right now share a few things in common. They have a clear sense of what makes their experience distinct. They communicate it consistently. They create moments people want to share, and they make those moments easy to share.
None of that requires a massive marketing budget. It requires clarity, intention, and a willingness to show your business the way your best customers already experience it.
People are not simply buying what you offer. They're choosing how they want to spend their time. Make that decision easy for them, and you'll be hard to compete with.
Emily Krause is the Founder and Chief Marketing Strategist at Amped Up Marketing, a marketing strategy consultancy serving professional services firms and nonprofits. She presented “Harvesting Opportunity: Strategic Marketing and AI Innovation for Wineries” at the Eastern Winery Expo & Conference in March 2026.