Don’t Just Relate—Advocate!: A Blueprint for Profit in the Era of Customer Power

Chapter 4. Customer Power Is All Around You

In the past two chapters, we’ve seen that the Internet drives customer power, and that it results from more information, new options, and simplified transactions. This power, along with industry trends, has tipped the balance toward trust-based marketing in the travel, auto, and health industries (see Table 4-1 for a summary). But almost every industry is feeling these effects to some degree. Customer power and its reactions are all around us. In this chapter, we will see how this power is reflected in finance, real estate, insurance, job placement, retailing, industrial marketing, and other industries. We can expect these trends to continue as a convergence of forces makes the old push tactics less ...