Companies are jazzing up plant tours and store visits to build a customer loyalty.
Visitors to Ford Motor Co.'s new truck plant are shaken as a multi-ton metal-
41 stamping press slams being shut. Heat rains down from welding sparks, followed
42 by the cooling mist of a paint shop. At Ford's historic Rouge manufacturing
43 trucks complex Dearborn, Mich. , many tourists will watch the assembly of F-150
44 pickup from the safety of a mezzanine with 16 feet above the factory floor. They
45 will also get up a much more personal feel for the action through multi-sensory
46 special effects spilling out of 360-degree screens in an accompanying video tour.
47 The ＄14 for admission price also buys a history lesson about the 87-year-old
48 Rouge property, in where Henry Ford once cranked out the Model A and baffled
49 union activists, and a display of Ford vehicles is through the ages. The finishing
50 touch: an 80-foot tower from which it's possible to look out over a 10-acre lawn
51 that covers the complex's "living roof", as well as the surrounding it crab-apple
52 orchard, bee-hives, and solar panels. Ford's fancy ＄30 million visitor center is the latest example of what experts call "experiential" marketing.