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This paper aims to contribute to the area of museum experience research, by exploring how consumers build stories to tell different experiences generated from a visit to a museum and by viewing these inductive findings in the light of recent research on consumption experiences (Lanier and Rader, 2015).

A qualitative study is conducted. Twenty-three narratives were analysed relating a visit to ZKM museum in Karlsruhe (Germany) using narrative analysis techniques, as they are suitable to capture sensations, emotions and feelings.

ZKM museum emerges from the analysis of the narratives as a cradle for stochastic experiences (Lanier and Rader, 2015). The narratives develop several episodes that correspond to performance and liberatory experiences. A reconceptualization of the museal experience is proposed as a mesh of performance, stochastic or liberatory episodes, that capture the subject’s perspective.

The study was limited to students who were 19-23 years of age and to one museum. Future research should include a wider age group and other museums.

The findings provide useful insights for curators, educators and exhibit designers staging museal experiences.

The findings provide a better understanding of different experiences occurring in the same experiential context and their meaning from the subject’s perspective.

Lanier and Rader (2015) typology has not yet been tested in a museal context. The findings suggest that the same context can generate a set of various episodes (performance, liberatory, stochastic) within a given experience. From a methodological perspective, the results show that qualitative approaches are relevant to segment the museal offer based on sought experiences.

Based on a “Fill-the-Bottle” (FTB) challenge, this research explores how experiential design can help cause-related marketing. This study aims to show that experiences designed as anti-structural and anti-functional can raise awareness through action.

The authors study a corpus of 52 introspective journals and 60 pictures about the challenge, which entails filling empty bottles with cigarette butts from the streets as quickly as possible, then sharing pictures of the bottles on social media.

The anti-structural design of the experience activates the participants’ experiential system, and the social interactions between the participants and pedestrians construct meaning for the experience. The results further indicate that as follows: individuals’ frames of reference can explain whether they perceive the experience as liberatory or stochastic; anti-structural design can serve cause-related marketing by focusing on three stages: doing, showing and sharing; and experiential marketing can serve societal and social causes.

This research involved a single field. Further research with more heterogeneous participants would be insightful. The power of experiential marketing to serve meaningful and collective causes should be encouraged. Further research should be conducted to understand and conceptualize these collective attempts to fight the dark sides of consumption.

In line with Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) advice to stage memorable experiences by working cautiously on cues, the FTB challenge analysis indicates that by focusing on material evidence and staging a specific sequence of doing something about it, showing everyone what is being done and expanding visibility by sharing artifacts of the action on social media, one can actually make people think about and remember the action.

The “do-show-share” design that the FTB challenge uses can be relevant for many cause-related marketing efforts because it operates on both individual and collective levels.

This research offers a new perspective on experiential marketing by studying how experiences designed to be anti-structural can renew social, cause-related marketing tools.