Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 288 pages
• Published by: Harvard Business School Press
• Edition: 1st Edition September 24, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1591391458
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1591391456
• Book Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Weighs: 1.3 pounds

Reader Reviews
This is the latest in a series of several books (notably The Experience Economy: Work is Theater and Every Business a Stage and Markets of One: Creating Customer-Unique Value through Mass Customization) in which James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine focus on what Peter Drucker once identified as one of the greatest challenges any business faces: How to get and then keep profitable customers? Their thesis in this latest volume is that marketers need to address the problem of managing "the perceptions of real or fake held by the consumer's of [an] enterprise's output - because people increasingly make purchase decisions based on how real or fake they perceive offerings. These perceptions flow directly from how well any particular offering conforms to a customer's self-image." In this volume, Gilmore and Pine examine "the authenticity of economic offerings, not the authenticity of individuals in personal relationships, something people also greatly desire but the subject of many other tomes." They cite two exemplars in particular - Disney and Starbucks - because no company "has more affected our collective view of what is real and what is not" than has Disney. As for Starbucks, no other company "more explicitly manages its perception of authenticity, making direct appeals to authenticity in every way" Gilmore and Pine define this new discipline. Here are some of the specific issues they address with rigor and eloquence: 1. The appeal of "real" 2. The drivers of the new consumer sensibility 3. Three axioms of authenticity 4. Five genres of authenticity 5. Two "time-honored standards" of authenticity 6. Ten elements of authenticity 7. How to be what you say you are 8. How to continue to be "true to self" 9. The nature, extent, and interaction of five key "real/fake polarities" 10. How to sustain the authenticity of what is offered Decision-makers in any organization (regardless of its size or nature) are provided a comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective program by which to address and resolve these and other issues. Of course, even if Gilmore and Pine were in residence, actively involved in the design and implementation of such a program, assistance, it cannot succeed unless the given offering is and remains inherently authentic, That is, it fully meets (if not exceeds) the given consumer's perceptions of the benefits claimed for it. Comment | | (Report this)