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Sellers, beware. Buyers are losing
their patience, and you're losing their trust. It's only a matter of time before
they start hiring agents to represent them in many of their commercial transactions.
This startling proposition lies at the heart of Net Worth, the highly anticipated
new book from John Hagel, co-author of the international best seller Net Gain.
Here Hagel teams with Marc Singer to identify a powerful source of sustainable
revenue through the Internet, one with potential to upend the relationship between
businesses and their customers and challenge our fundamental beliefs about marketing,
brands, and value. Until now, consumers have watched
big businesses track, rack up, and sell customer information, mostly for corporate
gain. Personal data about buying habits, income levels, and credit card usage
has been a boon to telemarketers, database marketers, and direct mail merchants.
The result for consumers is frequently an onslaught of junk mail, invasive soliciting,
and unwelcome advertising. But no more. In Net Worth,
Hagel and Singer argue that consumers are mastering new technologies to capture
their own information and deny access to others without their consent. Net
Worth describes this convergence of commerce, technology, and consumer frustration
as the incubator for a new kind of business -- an information intermediary or
infomediary -- that seeks to protect customers' privacy while maximizing the value
of their information assets. So that companies can get
a jump on navigating this still-unfamiliar terrain, Net Worth lays out
the underlying economic and competitive dynamics that will foster the emerging
business of the infomediary. Hagel and Singer show how consumers will release
their personal information, when they can profit from doing so. Companies playing
the infomediary role will become agents of constomer information, marketing such
data to businesses on consumers' behalf and protecting consumer privacy. Infomediaries
will help people to demand -- and receive -- value in exchange for data about
themselves. Net Worth explains why strategies
for capturing customer information and mining it for value are essential to succeeding
in the on-line world. Senior managers of today's leading corporations, as well
as fast-moving entrepreneurs, can benefit by forming new partnerships with customers
in matters of information capture and privacy. Infomediaries, with their portfolios
of closely held privileged information, will soon begin to intermediate between
sellers and buyers. Those farsighted players who capitalize now on becoming infomediaries
will generate new revenues and increased market value for their firms.
Yes, sellers, beware. John Hagel
III is a principal in McKinsey & Company, Inc.'s, Silicon Valley office and
leader of the firm's Electronic Commerce Practice. He is the co-author of Net
Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual Communities. Marc
Singer is a principal in McKinsey's San Francisco office, where he co-leads the
firm's Continuous Relationship Marketing Practice.
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