An intangible benefit created in a sake standing bar
While hanging out at the Tukishima area with my friend, she introduced me to a flourishing stand-drinking sake bar called Tunematu Hisazoushouten.
I found it’s a very smart strategy to increase intangible benefits for customers there. Stand-Sake drinking business style has gotten popular in the recent years. There are some reasons. The first one is you can enjoy many specific Sake brands and quality at a friendly price. The second is you can have an opportunity to talk with unknown people and share a good time with them.
Enjoying a reasonable price for drinking high quality sake is a solid evidence of the tangible benefit for a focus group such as the old-fashioned Sake lovers who require a full glass of sake like around 180 ml. A bar or Izakaya targeting this segment of customers carry on this business model to get a brand awareness from them. This kind of bar focuses on providing such practical benefit rather than the soft benefits like decore and trendy side dish menus.
But Tunematu Hisazoushouten’s brand value is different from the traditional style standing bars. It seems to pursue more of the intangible benefits than the tangible ones. The amount of sake in a glass is not full, like less than 100 ml. Because of the smaller volume, the price of each sake is cheaper, maybe 20~30% less. But if you compare the price with those of the old type standing bars, for the same serving, Tunematu Hisazoushouten’s price is 20~30% higher. Here is the case to clarify my idea: An old-fashioned bar’s price is Y780 for 180 ml while Tunematu Hisazoushouten’s is Y500 for 100ml, which would be around Y900 for 180ml.
(The price policy of Tunematu Hisazoushouten is not straitforward, rather tricky!)
In addition to this price policy, Tunematu Hisazoushouten uses modern designed glasses to serve sake. The shape of the glass diverts the drinker’s mind from noticing the volume of the served sake to enjoying the comfortable design.
Because of these two intangible strategy, a young trend-seeker in the sake lover cluster is encouraged to unconsciously order and drink more sake than intended. On top of this, they also order complementary food to match each flavor of additional sake brands.
I would say Tunematu Hisazoushouten has mapped out their strategy very smartly and consequently creates customer engagement to get brand recognition from this said focus group. In other words, Tunematu Hisazoushouten provides value through the customer’s experience rather than drinking sake itself.
I would say this business model can be featured as the so-called experience.