Net Worth: Shaping Markets When Customers Make the Rules - Hardcover

Hagel III, John; Singer, Marc

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875848893 ISBN 13: 9780875848891

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, 1999

Synopsis

Net Worth explains how businesses can benefit by forming new partnerships with customers in matters of information capture and privacy. Consumers are losing patience with companies that use personal data about buying habits, income levels, and credit card usage for corporate gain. What consumers need is a new kind of business--an information intermediary or infomediary--to protect customers' privacy while maximizing their information assets. Companies playing the infomediary role will become agents of customer information, marketing such data to businesses on consumers' behalf and protecting consumer privacy. John Hagel, co-author of the bestselling Net Gain, teams with Marc Singer to lay out the underlying economic and competitive dynamics that will foster the emerging business of the infomediary. Net Worth identifies the convergence of commerce, technology, and consumer frustration as the incubator for the infomediary business, as consumers seek to release their personal information only when they can receive value in exchange for their data.

About this title

About the Author

John Hagel III is a principal in McKinsey & Company, Inc.'s Silicon Valley office and a leader of the firm's Interactive Multimedia Practice. He is the coauthor of the bestselling book Net Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual Communities.

From the Back Cover

"A practical, insightful manual that shows how to implement the visionary ideas of Net Gain. This is the kind of book you want to keep out of your competitors' hands." --Esther Dyson, Chairman, EDventure Holdings, and author of Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age

"The Internet is truly a new medium, and most writers miss its impact. Hagel and Singer demonstrate convincingly that profile-based and intermediated marketing are the new drivers of revenue in the digital age." --Eric Schmidt, CEO, Novell, Inc.

"Mass communication on the Web will ultimately favor the proverbial 'little guy,' and John Hagel explains why. Showing how individuals will gather and use information to manage relations with Corporate America, Net Worth turns the Internet on its head. Companies trying to capitalize on the global network can learn much from this book." --Tom Gardner, Cofounder, www.fool.com

"As we all seek to 'monetize community' effectively and compassionately, the timeliness of this book almost scares me. Hagel once again pushes us forward by suggesting a business relationship for community that recognizes the richness and complexity of the consumer relationships that we've already sewn." --Bo Peabody, President and CEO, Tripod, Inc., and Vice President of Network Strategy, Lycos, Inc.

"Hagel and Singer display a depth of insight and level of understanding seldom seen in works on Internet commerce. Net Worth is a road-map for success into the new century. I hope none of my competitors read it." --Trevor Dow Traina, President and Founder, CompareNet

"Net Worth may be the single most important book yet on the Internet economy. If Hagel and Singer are correct--and I believe strongly that they are--then infomediaries will be at the epicenter of a fundamentally new way to create relationships between consumers and marketers." --Jeff Levy, Cofounder and CEO, RelevantKnowledge, and Vice Chairman, Media Metrix

Reviews

Looking at the future of e-commerce, Hagel (coauthor of Net Gain) and Singer, both principals in the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, add a provocative twist to the conventional view that those companies with the best information about their customers will be the most successful. They examine not only how companies can acquire information about consumers but also, crucially, how consumers can control dissemination of their personal information and even charge companies for their use of it. To the ever-expanding e-commerce lexicon they add a new term: "infomediaries." These third parties will serve both consumers and marketers: consumers will use infomediaries to help them find products at the best price, avoid unwanted product pitches and protect their privacy; in turn, via the use of sophisticated filters, infomediaries will be able to provide targeted consumer profiles to companies. The companies will then be able to anticipate consumers' needs and offer them appropriate products. While some companies, such as Intuit or AOL, currently perform some of these functions, the authors predict that the infomediaries are likely to be new companies formed by partnerships between existing firms?most likely between companies with large consumer databases and newer, more Internet-savvy entrepreneurial ventures. Well-written and full of scenarios of how these infomediaries will develop, this book will interest marketers and those consumers who are eager to explore the electronic frontiers of the economy. 50,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Following up on his Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities (LJ 3/15/97), Hagel and new coauthor Singer suggest a mechanism for preventing the "privacy backlash" to electronic commerce building among consumers. "Infomediaries," a new business venture category, will protect individual consumers, keeping them anonymous by integrating their confidential information into "classes." These infomediaries will facilitate transactions for customers, for a commission. Travel agents, private bankers, personal shoppers, and other services already perform part of the function the authors envision. Because of the large capital investment required to start such a venture and the need to reach a critical mass of clients quickly, infomediaries will probably come from combinations of existing companies, Hagel and Singer suggest. AOL, Yahoo, Motley Fool, Mediconsult, Amazon.com, Microsoft, and L.L. Bean, with their existing customer relationships and profiles, are proposed as logical choices. An interesting concept, but the authors' faith that infomediaries will work together to set standards and that consumers will trust them borders on naivete.?Susan DiMattia, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0875848893
• ISBN 13: 9780875848891
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336