The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge
And while the Net has already transfored business and socicety throughout the world, it has done so mostly on the supply side, with tremendous innovations in production, supply chain management, marketing, sales, and other functions.
.. But much has not yet changed. The legal frameworks for doing business online are as absurd and broken as they were in the age of shrink-wrapped software. Margketing and sales have made great efforts to become “conversational” and “social,” but customers in too many cases are are still “assets” to be “managed.” Implicit in this mentality is a belief that the best customers are captive ones and that therefore a “free market” for customers means “your choice of captor.”
This twisted norm will end because free markets require free customers.
Also:
Free customers are more valuable than captive ones.
Because I am accustomed to work both as a researcher and as a writer of linky posts and essays on the Web, I include many more footnotes than you’ll find in most other business books.
.. Many old-line business categories, such as banking and brokerage, are now considred fourth-party services, for the simple reason that they work primarily for individual customers.