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Title: The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage by James H. Gilmore, Eric Conger, Joseph Pine, Eric Conger, B. Joseph, II Pine ISBN: 1-56511-350-0 Publisher: HighBridge Company Pub. Date: January, 2000 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 2 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.3 (27 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Business as Performance Art. Yes!
Comment: As co-author of the cluetrain manifesto .......... I'm often asked by companies how they can implement the ideas we talk about. This book is a great place to start. Unfortunately, the listing here leaves out the subtitle: "Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage." That's what got to me. Acknowledging the role of serious play in serious commerce is long overdue, but The Experience Economy makes up for lost time. While most business books are little more than literary Sominex, this one will stretch your head in new dimensions. Even if you disagree with bits, it'll wake you, shake you, make you think.
At first, I was put off by the notion of the Internet as "the greatest force for commoditization known to man." This is only true when the net is seen as an extension of the broadcast model: think TV. But that's the wrong approach, as the authors later make clear: "Cyberspace is a great place for such experiences, but many businesses still don't get it. They're heading into the commoditization trap, trying to figure out how to better sell their company's goods and services over the World Wide Web, when in fact most individuals surf the Net for the experience itself."
E-commerce as performance art, I love it! So step right up, boys and girls, and get your ticket to the Pine & Gilmore Masque. The show's just about to begin!
Rating: 3
Summary: The Divergence of Theory and Reality
Comment: The book takes a very logical, reasoned approach towards the theoretical next steps of economic expansion. It reasons that margins drive profits and that by constantly searching for higher margin offerings, a company will naturally improve and increase its profitability.
The logic is understandable... Commodity goods have small margins, as they are undifferentiated from each other and relativly easy to reproduce. Manufactured goods take things one step further, providing higher margins due to some level of product differentiation and brand specificity. Above that are Services, where the products don't last long enough to be copied and are customized enough to prevent easy manipulation. The higher margins should lead to higher profitability and better staying power. Fair enough.
Where the book's logic becomes strained, however, is where it strethes out towards the next generation of higher margin offerings, "Experiences." While it is true that experience companies my be able to provide higher margins than can older economy companies, experience companies tend to suffer from a fatal flaw that has infected many of the companies praised in the book. That flaw is the utter lack of repeat business generated by most experience economy companies.
Take two of the companies mentioned in the book as companies to emulate -- Planet Hollywood, the restaurant chain, and Peapod, the online grocery store. Planet Hollywood is under bankruptcy protection, because people are simply unwilling to pay through the nose repeatedly for the same experience over and over again. Peapod ran out of cash and is limping along only after being bought out by a Dutch firm. Hardly two stellar companies to emulate when searching for ever expanding profits.
Throughout the book, by expounding the virtues of ever expanding margins, rather than focusing on goods, services, and 'experiences' that people would be willing to repeatedly pay to have, the authors make the mistake of ignoring the overall forest for the sake of a single tree.
In the real world, experience companies know their limitations and create their pricing scheme to represent that fact. Amusement parks sell season passes for less than the cost of two visits -- acknowledging the fact that people may pay more for experiences, but only once, and repeat business depends heavily on making the repeat worth the cost.
Had the book focused more on successful ways for experience economy companies to thrive, rather than spending its time drolling on about the virtues of failing companies with the right plan, it would have been far more believable and enjoyable.
Rating: 5
Summary: a fresh and novel view of the current business trends
Comment: this book is definitely out of the ordinary: it proposes a novel (to me at least) view of the current economy trends and well illustrate an equivalence between the work environment and the stage of a theatrical play.
Worth reading it.
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Title: Experiential Marketing : How to Get Customers to SENSE, FEEL, THINK, ACT, RELATE to Your Company and Brands by Bernd H. Schmitt ISBN: 0684854236 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 16 August, 1999 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title:Welcome to the Experience Economy by II B. Joseph Pine, James Gilmore ASIN: B00005RZ7M Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 24 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $6.00 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $6.00 |
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Title:The Experience Is the Marketing--A Special Report by James H. Gilmore, B. Joseph Pine II ASIN: B00006JMDC Publisher: BrownHerron Publishing Pub. Date: 26 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $8.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $8.95 |
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Title: Customer Experience Management: A Revolutionary Approach to Connecting with Your Customers by Bernd H. Schmitt, Bernd Schmitt ISBN: 0471237744 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 31 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Markets of One: Creating Customer-Unique Value through Mass Customization (A Harvard Business Review Book) by James H. Gilmore, B. Joseph Pine ISBN: 1578512387 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: February, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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