Customer experience management Heineken

With a revenue of 19.257 billion euros it can be said that Heineken is serving a big portion of the beer consumers in the world. The revenue of the company has increased with almost 20% since 2010. Therefore, it can be stated that Heineken is aware of the needs of its customers and knows how to fulfill these. The introduction of customer experience management has had a big impact on these outcomes. Heineken uses their customer intelligence to refine its marketing strategy, and ultimately reach more customers.

Heineken is making use of big data analytics, which is actually nothing more than enormous databases with the statistics of customers and suppliers in stores and shops all for the sake of understanding the customer behavior. Additionally, Heineken is highly active on social media nowadays. The company has 138,000 Instagram followers, 135,000 Twitter followers and 20,541,752 likes on Facebook [ CITATION Soc16 \l 1043 ]. The ability of Heineken to create such a big database of customer’s knowledge was because the company decided to implement strategic partnerships with Facebook, Google +.

One of the interesting techniques Heineken uses to create insights in store behavior is the Prime Sense sensor technology. The technique lets Heineken see if customers standing in front of the shelves in the stores. Capturing this data can be useful when Heineken wants to develop marketing strategy based on visuals. For example, they can change the packaging of the products or different placement in the stores[ CITATION Mac14 \l 1043 ].

Another technique Heineken uses to manage their customer’s experiences is the creation of beer bottles with LED lights in the bottom called Heineken Ignite. The ordinary bottles of the Heineken brand are already special compared to other beer brands. However, with Heineken Ignite the company tries to create additional valuable experience for its consumers. The bottles are using led lights and sensors to light up with the sound of the music during a specific event like a concert. The main purpose of this experiment was to create more social interaction during the consumption of beer by applying modern technology. The housing of the bottles is created by 3D printers which is placed at the bottom and contains an electronic chip. When the music plays, the system starts to work and is connect to an overall digital system which makes the bottles light up. Additionally, clincking two bottles of Heineken results in a mini light show, putting the bottle on the table sends it to its rest mode[ CITATION Jon13 \l 1043 ].

The ultimate experience for Heineken consumers must be the official Heineken Experience in the city of its headquarters; Amsterdam. The Heineken Experience is a tour created by Heineken to give an insight in the history, production process and the atmosphere of the brand. The tour is very popular among tourist as well as the Dutch population. The objective of Heineken was to let the consumer literally taste the company. During the tour the customers understands what Heineken differentiates itself from any other (beer) brand. As outcome of this marketing strategy it can be stated that consumers will feel more loyal, connected and satisfied after the Heineken Experience[ CITATION Hei16 \l 1043 ].