Synopses & Reviews
Caveat venditorlet the seller bewareWhile marketers look for more ways to get personal with customers, including new tricks with big data,” customers are about to get personal in their own ways, with their own tools. Soon consumers will be able to:
Control the flow and use of personal data
Build their own loyalty programs
Dictate their own terms of service
Tell whole markets what they want, how they want it, where and when they should be able to get it, and how much it should cost
And they will do all of this outside of any one vendors silo.
This new landscape were entering is what Doc Searls calls The Intention Economyone in which demand will drive supply far more directly, efficiently, and compellingly than ever before. In this book he describes an economy driven by consumer intent, where vendors must respond to the actual intentions of customers instead of vying for the attention of many.
New customer tools will provide the engine, with VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) providing the consumer counterpart to vendors CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems. For example, imagine being able to change your address once for every company you deal with, or combining services from multiple companies in real time, in your own waysall while keeping an auditable accounting of every one of your interactions in the marketplace. These tantalizing possibilities and many others are introduced in this book.
As customers become more independent and powerful, and the Intention Economy emerges, only vendors and organizations that are ready for the change will survive, and thrive. Where do you stand?
Review
Named a Best Business Book for 2012 in strategy+business magazinea must-read book
” TechCrunch
Doc Searls has written a very thoughtful book on the intention economy and the promises it holds for both vendors and customers.” Forbes
Searlss vision raises provocative questions for companies and for marketers.” strategy+business magazine magazine
This is a thoughtful, well researched book with a compelling thesis and call to action for marketers.” Decision
a brilliant piece on free markets and the Internet” Linux Journal
Do yourself a favor. Read The Intention Economy by @dsearls. Its a very quick study in what VRM means for both brands and consumers.” Business 2 Community (business2community.com)
The fine distinction between consumer and customer is at the heart of this insightful look at how some companies, like Trader Joe's, are moving in the direction of the "intention economy," where the desires and needs of individual customers primarily determine what the vendors offer.” Fort Worth Star Telegram
its fun, insightful reading for anyone interested in becoming self-actualized, liberated customers.” SocialMedia.biz
Finally a thoughtful, hype free book worth reading about digital marketing, the relationships we have with vendors, and a vision for a better future where we have greater control of our personal data.” ZDNet
ADVANCE PRAISE for The Intention Economy:
JP Rangaswami, Chief Scientist, salesforce.com
Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data companies collect from them and how they use it. Thats the way the draft of the US Governments planned Privacy Bill of Rights begins. If you want to understand what this really means, then Docs book is the place to start. In fact, if you want to understand anything about whats really happening with customers, this book is for you. An excellent read.”
Seth Godin, author, We Are All Weird
Profound, far-reaching, and one of those books people will be bragging about having read five or ten years from now.”
John Hagel, Co-Director, Center for the Edge; coauthor, The Power of Pull
This book provides a much-needed road map for a profound shift in global markets. Vendor Relationship Management will turn markets as we know them inside out. Searls, as the key architect of this new movement, provides a compelling view of both why and how these changes will occur. You cannot afford to ignore this book."
Esther Dyson, angel investor
From Docs mouth to vendors ears! Doc Searls describes the economy the way it should be, with vendors paying attention to individuals wants and needs. I see a few such business models emerging, and I hope Searlss book will incite a rush of them.”
Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., co-authors of Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage
Deliciously skeptical of todays business models, Searls paints a compelling picture of the future. And if youre a business manager, The Intention Economy is essential reading. Think of it as an API for dealing with empowered customers. ”
Clay Shirky, author, Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus
No one has a better sense of the changing relationship between vendors and the rest of us than Doc Searls. In The Intention Economy, he explains the networked economy and your place in it, whoever you arebuyer, seller, advertiser, user.”
Synopsis
Who owns the marketplace? Is it businessor the customer?
According to Doc Searls, widely-read journalist and blogger and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, customers are on the verge of becoming truly free and independent actors in the marketplace with the power of telling vendors what they want, how they want it, and where and when they should be able to get it. This imperative shift in customer power will alter the balance of the market and usher in what Searls calls the intention economy.”
In the book, Searls lays out a map for an economy driven by consumer intent, where vendors canand mustrespond to the actual intentions of customers, instead of simply vying for customer attention in hopes of selling them what they might want. In the intention economy, individual power increases, demand drives supply, and information precedes money. Only the vendors and organizations that are ready for the change will survive, and thrive.
In fact, says Searls, this paradigm shift has already taken place in many concrete waysfor example, how "vendor relationship management" is supplanting "customer relationship management." And there are more indications on the horizon that the tipping point is not far behind.
The Intention Economy maps out the implicationsboth immediate and far-reachingfor business and the world.
About the Author
Doc Searls is senior editor of Linux Journal, coauthor of
The Cluetrain Manifesto, and one of the worlds most widely read bloggers. In
The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman calls him one of the most respected technology writers in America.” Searls is a fellow at the Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an alumnus fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he continues to run ProjectVRM.