Vol. II, No. 5, September 2024
Our basic instinct of imitation is not always so beneficial
As humans, we are programmed, hard-wired, to imitate what other humans are doing, starting with our parents. Even at birth, we imitate; we have this built-in mechanism that allows us to imitate both movements and facial expressions we see in other people, especially our parents.
Humans' powerful instinct for imitation dwarfs the aping abilities of other primates. Human imitation transfers information and culture, including behaviors and customs, between individuals and generations.
Although imitation has substantial benefits, as it has allowed us to survive and prosper as a species, our strong programming to imitate can get in the way of business success.
The issue is quite simple. If you decide to develop an agritourism business and imitate an existing one, you could imitate a model that won't lead to your agritourism success. Unfortunately, the instinct to do so is powerful.
In the not-too-distant past, imitating an existing agritourism venue was less risky, as the world and the out-of-home (OOH) leisure culture and landscape were slowly changing. Even if the model you imitated was several years old, chances are leisure and entertainment culture, and competition wouldn't have changed much.
Unfortunately, that is no longer the case, as we now live in a world of rapid and accelerating change, especially since the pandemic. Most of the agritourism venues you find today are, in a sense, really yesterday's models, as they were conceived, designed, and developed in the past when the culture and landscape of OOH leisure were different. What you see today is the result of the world in the past, not the present, and for sure, not the future when your agritourism venues will open and needs operate successfully for years.
Today we live in a fast-changing world with a tidal wave of new competition for consumers' leisure time. Far too many out-of-home and screen-based digital experiences are chasing too little consumer discretionary leisure time. To compete, new agritourism venues need to be far more innovative. They need to understand trends so their agritourism venues will launch in the future, where the leisure culture and landscape will have evolved to something different than today. Existing agritourism venues need to change to stay competitive in the future.
Our company invests heavily in trends research, including trend spotting. We review research across multiple consumer industries, including at-home and out-of-home entertainment, food service, consumer goods, retail, travel, and hospitality, to name just a few, to understand today's consumers and developing and evolving trends. This allows us to design and produce agritourism projects for our clients that will be future proofed.
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