Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want

Description

Contrived. Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic. Do your customers use any of these words to describe what you sell or how you sell it? If so, welcome to the club. Inundated by fakes and sophisticated counterfeits, people increasingly see the world in terms of real or fake. When deciding to buy, consumers judge an offering's (and a company's) authenticity as much as if not more than price, quality, and availability. In Authenticity, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that, to trounce rivals, companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, non-profit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers' perception of authenticity.

Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine are co-founders of Strategic Horizons LLP, a 'thinking studio' that combines the best of consulting firms, think tanks, and acting workshops to help companies design all-new say of adding value to their economic offerings. Together they authored the bestseller, The Experience Economy, and edited Marketing of One and Pine himself wrote Mass Customization.