Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want

by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591391458
• ISBN13: 9781591391456
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Maddock Douglas endorses "Authenticity" as a masterpiece

I've been pimping this AWESOME book to many of my big brand clients - it is a powerful reinforcement of the idea that strategic clarity = authenticity. Iconic, American brands that are committed to "living what they believe," embrace this "Authenticity" ideology - the book illustrates it very well....the reality is that they (the great brands) are a rare breed....most do not leverage the potential authenticity that they have..instead only pay it lipservice....perhaps because they don't know the value or know how to define it let alone leverage it - after reading this book however, they will be well aware - at that point however, its a matter of caring enough to do something about it....if they don't know how, this book can fix it....if they don't care, that's a whole other matter. Every leader should read this book - it separates the essential from the important. Loved the book!!!! I can see why its in TIME magazine.

Afraid to even open this book

"The Experience Economy" by these same authors was such a brilliant, prescient, scholarly but accessible, important book that I was afraid to crack this one open. Almost certainly I would be dissapointed with this one, I thought. Not the case. They have taken the next step in defining and predicting the upcoming key trend and metric for measuring and building nearly every business endeavor. Again, scholarly but applicable and accessible, it reads almost like a page turner/textbook. This is not oxymoronic but you must read it when you are actually awake and capable of thinking. It's hard to imagine that this book will not be quoted and used as a field manual for so many fields much as their previous work.

Create Authentic Value

This truly is a tour de force that deserves the potent descriptors of "groundbreaking" and "defining a management discipline." This may be a challenging read, not due to the writing per se, but because of the newness and depth of the subject. Gilmore and Pine's take on authenticity is novel enough that the reader may not have the mental hooks in their management theory framework to immediately hang the new ideas. But this is exactly what I would expect from the definition of a new management discipline. The book builds the case for authenticity as a dominate consumer sensibility. From there, the construct framing the realness and fakeness of economic offerings forms the foundation for all that follows. Rendering authenticity takes authenticity out of the realm of ambiguity and into the realm of explicit definition. This process addresses the essence of business-organization identity and the underpinnings of the value of its offerings. The author's approach to rendering authenticity is a uniquely substantive approach to 1) exploring and defining your identity, what it is "you will be true to", 2) defining your total offering "to be what it says it is," and 3) the possibility of joining these two together for greater synergy, forming a more powerful authentic offering. The book culminates with an approach to acting into the future. This approach employs the authenticity framework and the juxtaposition process used to understand and render authenticity, but extends it to explore an unlimited number of dimensions to spur the creation of novel value. This book is a `must read' for those responsible for strategy and creating unique value in businesses of all types.

Authenticity: What it Means to be Real

Approaching this book was for me like waking up on Christmas morning and rushing to the tree in search of the gift you've asked for since last December 26th. It reminded me of an excerpt from the well-known children's story "The Velveteen Rabbit", by Margery Williams: "What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." As a devotee of Pine and Gilmore's "The Experience Economy" - I have enjoyed repeated readings of the book, listened to the book on CD, read dozens of articles and books inspired by this breakthrough work...and, as a result, found myself eagerly awaiting the release of this highly-touted follow up book. My diligence was rewarded with a cogent, thoughtful apologetic for the Pine and Gilmore (or, in this case, the Gilmore and Pine)view of what consumers are looking for--and more importantly--why... If you have the courage to suspend your preconceived ideas about "How Customers Think", and be willing to set aside your current ideas of how you should be "Managing the Customer Experience"--there is much to draw upon and learn from the carefully and thoroughly researched and documented perspectives in this book. I heartily encourage bold business thinkers to join the growing ranks of individuals who have found insight and inspiration in this work!

How to manage consumers' perceptions of real or fake offerings

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.