Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want

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. They would rather buy something real from someone genuine rather than something fake from some phony. 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, nonprofit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers' perception of authenticity by: recognizing how businesses fake it; appealing to the five different genres of authenticity; charting how to be true to self and what you say you are; and crafting and implementing business strategies for rendering authenticity. The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers' intensifying demand for the real deal.

Author: James H. Gilmore, B. Joseph Pine II
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 10/18/2007
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.37lbs
Size: 9.51h x 6.36w x 1.22d
ISBN13: 9781591391456
ISBN10: 1591391458
BISAC Categories:
- Business & Economics | Marketing | Research
- Business & Economics | Decision Making & Problem Solving
- Business & Economics | Consumer Behavior | General

About the Author
James Gilmore and Joseph 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.