Rating: 
Summary: Welcome, lets share moms dessert
Review: ... In this book, the authors start with simple and straightforward examples of such instances and come up with a framework for converting seemingly ordinary products into extraordinary experiences. They explain a value model that one needs to understand to transform a commodity into a valuable offering and to convert a feature or functionality into a priceless experience. The concept of the Experience Engagement Process- Discover, Evaluate, Acquire, Integrate and Extend- covers the full spectrum of customers' journey in search of value and provides opportunities for designing and delivering the exact mix to maximize customer delight. The Experience Event Matrix is explained very well with an example of a visit to a salon for a haircut. This book looks at enhancing value of the products and services that we offer. Bottom line gains are substantial compared to the incremental costs that are often associated in such valuable offerings. ...
Rating:
Summary: Everyone in business should read this book
Review: Everyone talks about experience, but few have been able to explain how to create customer experiences that make a difference to the bottom line. LaSalle and Britton have solved the mystery. The secret, according to them is well defined and communicated value surrounded by exceptional experiences. They make their case with clearly explained and supported theory and then follow it up with elegant frameworks to both determine value and identify and score each customer experience. Unlike many business books, it's easy to see how what they present can actually work in the real world. If I were to find fault with the book, I'd have to say there is a marked lack of negative examples and sometimes failure is a powerful teacher. It is also a puzzle to me why it is promoted as a marketing book when it clearly has strategic value far beyond marketing. Regardless of these minor flaws, I think Priceless has value for all areas of business, and to quote Donald O. Clifton, Chairman of Gallup International from the book jacket "Ours will not only be a more productive world, but also a better one for those who take these tools to heart and apply them. I wish everyone would read Priceless." I agree.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone in business should read this book
Review: Everyone talks about experience, but few have been able to explain how to create customer experiences that make a difference to the bottom line. LaSalle and Britton have solved the mystery. The secret, according to them is well defined and communicated value surrounded by exceptional experiences. They make their case with clearly explained and supported theory and then follow it up with elegant frameworks to both determine value and identify and score each customer experience. Unlike many business books, it's easy to see how what they present can actually work in the real world. If I were to find fault with the book, I'd have to say there is a marked lack of negative examples and sometimes failure is a powerful teacher. It is also a puzzle to me why it is promoted as a marketing book when it clearly has strategic value far beyond marketing. Regardless of these minor flaws, I think Priceless has value for all areas of business, and to quote Donald O. Clifton, Chairman of Gallup International from the book jacket "Ours will not only be a more productive world, but also a better one for those who take these tools to heart and apply them. I wish everyone would read Priceless." I agree.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Value!
Review: For those who think that Value is just about structuring a good financial deal, Priceless by LaSalle & Britton will open your eyes to a wealth of new areas for consideration. I found this book to be very useful and delightfully well written with good examples and checklists throughout. It's an excellent catalyst to broaden the thinking on how to improve the value of a product or service.
Rating: 
Summary: Tell Me Something New Please
Review: I bought this book based on Robert Morris's review and the fact that he is a Top 10 Reviewer. Unlike Mr. Morris, I felt cheated by the slim 167 pages of "Priceless" and its lack of overall value and new insights for the experienced marketer and reader of business books. Yes, authors LaSalle and Britton do present their models - the "Experience Engagement Process" and the "Experience Event Matrix" - as vehicles for businesses to understand consumer experiences. These models do not represent original thinking. In their own words, the Experience Engagement Process is adapted from a consumer decision-making model developed by Johan Arndt and consists of five stages - discover, evaluate, acquire, integrate, and extend - through which the customer moves during consumption. As a prospective buyer of this comparatively expensive book, you should consider your own level of knowledge about consumers. If the following "insights" are unknown to you, then the book is an okay survey primer of basic thinking about American consumers. Its findings are not new news in corporate America, 2003. As an example, in the 20 pages devoted to explaining the "Experience Engagement Process" model, you will learn that :"In the United States today, consumers are inundated with literally billions of 'discover messages'. In fact, some believe we're suffering from information overload. . . " In summary of the 'discover' portion of their model, the authors conclude that: "Knowing when, where, and how to put your offerings in front of the customer is key to creating an effective discovery experience. Consumers today are so inundated with advertising and promotion that they've become blind to much of it and are often unimpressed by what they do notice. . . To attract today's consumer, the discover phase must be less about the offerings themselves and more about the Value Experiences those goods and services can provide. This is true in any market and with any type of customer, no matter where the impulse to buy begins. Your job will always be to facilitate discovery by speaking directly to the fit between your product or service and the value your customers are seeking. Once you have their attention, you can move them to the next phase of the Experience Engagement Process." Being an experienced marketer and informed businesswoman, I know the above information and wanted something more from this Experience Engagement Process model. In my opinion, many of the examples used in the book contained flawed analysis. Let me give you two examples: In a discussion of the importance of understanding aesthetics as an important product attribute, (P. 89) LaSalle and Britton sight the fact that when one "walks into the fresh product department of a grocery store your eyes are treated to a landscape of color - bright oranges, vibrant Red Delicious apples, sunny yellow bananas, and fat purple grapes cascading over the edge of their bin. Everything looks perfect, and on closer examination every piece of fruit and every vegetable nearly is. In the produce business, great care is taken with appearance because grocers know that visual appeal sells their products. That's why some fruits are dyed to give them a brighter, more appealing color . . ." This is factually correct, but it ignores the exploding market in organic food, fueled by growing numbers of women and men consumers who are concerned about just what companies actually spray on food to make it look so beautiful. Today's consumers determine value with competing and often conflicting preferences. I expected a reference to the very successful, aesthetically-appealing Whole Foods Market as an example of the sophistication necessary to address these conflicting preferences. Alas, I was left in the dyed-fruit aisle. Home Depot offers my second example of what I believe is over-simplistic analysis in this book. The authors endorse and wholeheartedly embrace the "guy-focused" atmosphere of Home Depot. (P. 132) The book acknowledges that a new, more feminine Value Group is interested in the design services for kitchen and bath, but Home Depot has successfully managed to make "the ladies feel at home, without losing the atmosphere equity it worked so hard to achieve with its male customers." The authors ignore the fact that today's woman wields a lipstick in one hand and a hammer in the other. Women now make half of the purchases in Lowe's and Home Depot stores. Lowe's recently surveyed single women and found that 9 out of 10 feel comfortable using power tools, and 77 percent own at least one. Home Depot this year began offering how-to-classes catering to its female customers. More then 43,000 women nationwide took part in its first Do-It-Herself Workshops. More important, in 2002 single women bought 18 percent of homes, while single men purchased 9 percent. This is the reality that the Home Depot business faces today, and I'm not sure that the authors conclusion that the "guy-focused" atmosphere should be protected, is the best long-term strategy. I suspect that Home Depot has already figured this out and will devise a winning solution. Besides, the "ladies" enjoy some sawdust on occasion. Sorry to sound nitpicky about facts and sources, but the Paris Miki retail chain (p.116) is not a $750 billion company, substantially larger than Rite Aid (p. 117) at $14 billion and referenced on the following page. And in turning to notes about the "medical devices service company" discussed on p. 126, the "Ric Deterding, telephone conversation with authors, 24 February 2001" note told me nothing about the original source. What authors? What book? These are just two examples of sloppy journalism. Frankly, I expected more from a book published by the Harvard Business School. Unless understanding consumer buying habits is totally new territory for you, buy Gerald Zaltman's "How Customers Think: Essential Insights Into the Mind of the Market." He will teach you something you don't already know. Linda Enke
www.leadingindicators.com
Rating:
Summary: Too bad it's slanted and overly promotional
Review: LaSalle and Britton have put together some useful ideas for marketers and customer service specialists on how to turn something relatively ordinary, such as a stuffed animal or a hotel stay, into something ultra-special and memorable that buyers will want to repeat and recommend to others. What got in the way of an otherwise fine book for me is that in quite a number of places, they rave about companies as only public relations or sales people normally do - telling you only one side of the story. For example, on pages 31-33 they say that people who shop at this very online bookstore feel that their voice is heard, because of the computer programming that delivers a "customized" experience. What they are overlooking is that if you truly have an individual problem, it's extremely difficult to get it taken care of here. There are many other examples that have the idealized tone of PR rather than real-world observation. If this doesn't bother you, you'll have a more positive reading experience than I did.
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Summary: The Holograph of Value
Review: MasterCard commercials effectively dramatize a distinction between the cost and the value of human experience. In essence, this is what LaSalle and Britton have in mind when explaining in their brilliant book how to turn ?ordinary products into extraordinary experiences? for consumers. They organize their material within two separate but related sections: in the first, they examine the interaction of customers, value, and experience; in the second, they explain how almost any company can prosper in what James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II characterize as ?the experience economy,? in their book so entitled. But HOW? By offering a product or service which, according to LaSalle and Britton, fills a consumer?s need for freedom, adventure, and a sense of well-being. My own rather extensive background includes market research on what consumers value most. Those surveyed ranked ?feeling appreciated,? ETDBW (i.e. easy to do business with), and enjoying the experience were ranked highest. Those responses are consistent with what LaSalle and Britton have learned. What astonishes me (and perhaps them as well) is that only recently has the importance of sensory experience been recognized, relative to purchase decisions and to consumer perceptions of those from whom their purchases are made. Bernd Schmitt and Alex Simonson?s Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel,, Think, Act, and Relate to Your Company and Brands was first published in 1999. In it, they examine a number of different companies (e.g. Nokia, Procter & Gamble, Apple Computer, Volkswagen, Siemens, Martha Stewart Living, and SONY) which demonstrate the fundamental principles of what they call ?experiential marketing.? They were praised as pioneer thinkers (which I certainly do not dispute) when, in Part Two of their book, they focus on what they call Strategic Experiential Modules (SEMs), each of which has its own distinct structures and principles which must be understood by each manager. SEMs include sensory experiences (SENSE), affective experiences (FEEL), creative cognitive experiences (THINK), physical experiences and entire lifestyles (ACT), and social-identity experiences (RELATE). Schmitt and examine each, explaining how to achieve the effective integration of all four. LaSalle and Britton share my high regard for Gilmore and Pine as well as for Schmitt and Simonson (among others) but break critically important new ground in Priceless by providing a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective system by which almost any company can increase and enhance the appeal of almost any product or service. More specifically, LaSalle and Britton identify and then explain a series of interdependent components throughout Chapters 1-6 which comprise what they call the ?Priceless Roadmap.? By the end of their book, they have enabled their reader to understand the relationship between value and experience (including emotional as well as sensory experience) by showing the link between them and customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and (most preferable of all) customer evangelism. They trace the series of events which a customer experiences during the consumption process. Most important of all, with precision and clarity, they demonstrate how a company can deliver value through experience by focusing on three key attributes: product, service, and environment. It would be a mistake to assume that this book was written primarily (if not exclusively) for marketing executives. Every value, principle, strategy, and tactic which LaSalle and Britton examine is directly relevant, for example, to increasing and enhancing the appeal of any workplace and to strengthening relationships between and among those within it. I also think this book will be of substantial value to senior-level executives as they embark on mid-range and long-term planning (i.e. up to 36 months at the most) because organizations as well as consumer products and services, and indeed individuals, can achieve greatness only if guided and informed by a ?Priceless Roadmap? in one form or another.
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Summary: my comment
Review: Priceless is a good book I recommend people who are interested in marketing to read. The paragraph is easy to read and understand. There are lots of examples in the book trying to illustrate some theories which are hard to explain in words only. After I read the book, I appreciate some examples very much, only some small adjustments have made, the total result would be different. For example, there¡¦s an example is talking about how the product display on the shelf. Stores always place the products in a very high shelf which customers are difficult to get the one on that top of the shelf. This would waste resources if customers have to ask the staff for help in every time. So that, the store place a ladder near the shelf which the customers could get the product themselves. The most interesting example in the book is talking about the dessert¡XBanana. The dessert is not a very special one, but it is very expensive and many customers come to the restaurant just for this dessert. This is because the dessert was made in front of the customers. This special serving way creates an extraordinary experience to the customers, and this the dessert seems has a special value to the customers. To turning the ordinary products into extraordinary experience, one of the critical points is trying to understand the customers¡¦ needs and provide something exceed the customers¡¦ expectation which could delight the customer and make a memorable experience to the customers.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent framework
Review: Priceless presents a framework that can be effectively used to analyze any business - i.e. look at the entire experience of interacting with that business from the customer's point of view. Simple you say? Well, yes. The greatest insights always are. But what sets this book apart is that it not only gives you a powerful lens through which to view the world, it also gives you step by step instructions on how to use it and tons of examples. Every time I interact with a business now, I find myself wishing they had read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing new
Review: Quite disappointed. Nothing new. Recommend "How customers think" and "clued in" instead of this one.
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