Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information

Customers in the information age are no longer at the mercy of marketers and advertisers; much more important are the opinions of friends and loved ones who evaluate the “absolute value” of a product rather than the “relative value” of a marketing message. Simonson, a marketing professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and Rosen (The Anatomy of Buzz) aim to help marketers and strategists make better decisions about how to reach consumers when the flow of information is no longer up to them. Marketers used to work with a time-honored set of assumptions: the importance of a company’s brand, the effect of loyalty, customers’ irrationality, option paralysis, and the need to carefully position products. But the goal is now about tracking what people want, then providing it. The new framework (“Influence Mix”) includes the customer’s preferences, beliefs, and experiences; input garnered from other people; and information services, and marketers. The authors cover the decline of branding; the challenges for review sites (such as Amazon, Yelp, and Zagat) trying to maintain their credibility; the ability of smaller businesses to create transparency through user reviews; the declining importance of both “sophisticated” countries and brands; and the degree to which customers trust each other, not marketers. This accessible, data-rich study should help businesses make the crucial shift from a focus on perception to word-of-mouth marketing. Agent: James A. Levine, Levine/Greenberg Literary Agency. (Feb.)