The Next Economy : Will You Know Where Your Customers Are?

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: Elliott Ettenberg offers a wealth of new tools and strategies that you can apply to your business. His focus is on marketing, but not in any traditional sense. Instead, he analyzes how the technological advances of the 1990s have altered the competitive landscape and proposes an inventive and practical list of post-New Economy business practices. We [...] strongly recommend this book not only to marketing professionals, but also to anyone charged with developing business strategy.


Rating:
Summary: Rather Chilling Economic Portrait of the Future
Review: Ettenberg is not Orwell's equal when it comes to writing a classic dystopia, but that is not to blame Ettenberg.

Ettenberg's idea is simple--the old ways that dominated much of the 20th century are outdated, the "new" economy ideas have vanished since 9/11, and what is to come is something different, a paradigm shift.

The focus will transition from shareholders to customers (this is new? Hasn't a mantra been satisfying and keeping the customer?) In fact, forget the mass market, Ettenberg argues. Go for that one niche. Oh, and rich and poor in the U.S. will resemble the Third World.

Guerrilla PR: Wired by Michael Levine also preaches how to reach consumers in the new age, but hardly portrays the darkness that Ettenberg preaches like a fundamentalist Baptist preacher full of fire and brimstone.

I take comfort in the belief that no individual knows the future, including Ettenberg. While his work makes for a powerful read, I find the full implications of his words are chilling.

Rating:
Summary: Best Marketing Book for Students
Review: I am a student in Marketing at Queens, and I have never read a more comprehensible and insightful book then "The Next Economy". Ettenberg writes in a fashion different from every other business book that I have read. The book is great because it is not boring or repetitive. The author has something to say, and he says it clearly and in a concise manner. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand what the future has in store for marketing, and it is a must-have for all marketing students.

Rating:
Summary: Escapee from a time warp?
Review: This book is puzzling. On the one hand, it opens with an interesting analysis of contemporary demographic trends. That analysis is, to my eye, the most useful part of the book. Surprisingly, limited attention is given to how younger age cohorts, even one that represents nearly as much of the US population as the Boomers, are entering the high product demand phase the Boomers are exiting. This cohort represents an excititing opportunity for marketers that is basically ignored.

The book asserts that the 5Ps are no longer relevant. I interpret the provided analysis to suggest instead that the failure resides in the inability of many companies to design effective marketing strategy.

The discussion of "want based" marketing appears to have been written 20 years ago, put into deep storage, and just escaped from its cryogenic vault. The notion of marketing to consumer "wants" rather than "needs" has been a fixture of principles of marketing texts for at least 20 years. The advocay of VALs - as a methodology useful for illuminating consumer "wants" -- is also about 20 years old. SRI just introduced VALS-III to remedy shortcomings of VALS-II. Ettenberg proposes an update to the time proven 5Ps (or 5Cs, depending on how you prefer to express them). At the core, Ettenberg seems to be trying to reposition the core of marketing as relationship management. That, too, is a standard feature of contemporary marketing principles texts. Further, the book emphasizes marketing of traditional tangible goods (e.g., bread). More contemporary value offerings -- such as services or transformations -- receive limited attention. This is surprising given the demographic analysis with which the book opens. Could the predicted decline in Boomer consumption of conventional goods merely reflect increasing consumption of services and transformations?

Rating:
Summary: Escapee from a time warp?
Review: This book is puzzling. On the one hand, it opens with an interesting analysis of contemporary demographic trends. That analysis is, to my eye, the most useful part of the book. Surprisingly, limited attention is given to how younger age cohorts, even one that represents nearly as much of the US population as the Boomers, are entering the high product demand phase the Boomers are exiting. This cohort represents an excititing opportunity for marketers that is basically ignored.

The book asserts that the 5Ps are no longer relevant. I interpret the provided analysis to suggest instead that the failure resides in the inability of many companies to design effective marketing strategy.

The discussion of "want based" marketing appears to have been written 20 years ago, put into deep storage, and just escaped from its cryogenic vault. The notion of marketing to consumer "wants" rather than "needs" has been a fixture of principles of marketing texts for at least 20 years. The advocay of VALs - as a methodology useful for illuminating consumer "wants" -- is also about 20 years old. SRI just introduced VALS-III to remedy shortcomings of VALS-II. Ettenberg proposes an update to the time proven 5Ps (or 5Cs, depending on how you prefer to express them). At the core, Ettenberg seems to be trying to reposition the core of marketing as relationship management. That, too, is a standard feature of contemporary marketing principles texts. Further, the book emphasizes marketing of traditional tangible goods (e.g., bread). More contemporary value offerings -- such as services or transformations -- receive limited attention. This is surprising given the demographic analysis with which the book opens. Could the predicted decline in Boomer consumption of conventional goods merely reflect increasing consumption of services and transformations?