The Shopper Economy: The New Way to Achieve Marketplace Success by Turning Behavior into Currency [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

90% of shoppers say they know what they'll buy before getting to the store, and 75% say they are smarter shoppers than they were a year ago. Why? Technology advancements and the recession induced value shopping has dramatically changed how shoppers make their buying decisions.
In the Shopper Economy, Liz Crawford does an exceptional job of diagnosing the changing landscape and more importantly, simply and clearly articulating the implications and tangible opportunities for marketers.
Leveraging consumer behavior as the "new currency" is brilliant! A must read for any marketer challenged by today's consumer behavior shift. Well done Liz!

Catherine Roe, Head of CPG, GOOGLE

Just finished The Shopper Economy -- a quick and important read for all of us who spend our days trying to understand, measure and evaluate the changes in consumer marketing and communications. Take it to the beach over the weekend and on Monday everything will seem more clear!

Liz Crawford offers an innovative and interesting twist on traditional views of consumers, marketing and success. That twist is that rather than focusing in the customer, we need to think more about the shopper. Crawford points out that shoppers perform the 'labor of marketing' and therefore need to be compensated for that labor. Crawford then completes this idea with four behaviors that form the currency and basis for compensating shoppers. Those behaviors are: attention, participation, advocacy and loyalty.

Shoppers, labor of marketing, currency, and behavior become the central themes and considerations throughout the rest of the book and it chapters. Each chapter concentrates on an aspect:

Chapter1 - Foundations of the Shopper Economy outlines the fundamentals of Crawford's argument and defines the shopper economy.

Chapter 2 - The Shopper is the Medium turns the table on traditional media and marketing by considering the shopper as the focus rather than the customer.

Chapter 3 - The New Path to Purchase outlines a new approach to marketing and sales effectiveness that literally hammers the old `marketing funnel' into a wheel that defines the shopping cycle.

Chapter 4 - Around the Wheel outlines the six steps around the shopping wheel: Awareness, consideration & evaluation, navigation, selection & purchase, consumption and advocacy.

Chapter 5 - Valuing Advocacy builds from notions of net promoter scores and discusses approaches to build and support advocates and mavens.

Chapter 6 - Advocates and Evangels concentrates on the personal side of these important roles and what it takes to encourage advocates and evangelizers of your offerings.

Chapter 7 - Valuing Participation looks at ways to drive participation in the brand, product or consideration process. It looks at technologies like shopkick and other forms of gamifcation.

Chapter 8 - The Product as Souvenir introduces the critical idea of experience design or XD. This is by far one of the best chapters in the book.

Chapter 9 - Loyalty sees this critical marketing concept from the perspective of "commitment to buy" rather than a personal affiliation with a product or brand. It offers insight into new requirements for loyalty programs.

Chapter 10 - Valuing Attention looks at issues related to online media and marketing particularly in the realm of social media. This is not a social media book per se, but the coverage here is helpful.

Chapter 11 - Marketing Implications for the Near Term offers and reviews 10 implications for marketers based on the ideas and principles in the book.

Chapter 12 - A Glimpse Ahead projects the impact of future technologies including the Internet of things - that Crawford calls the Internet of objects will have on marketers and the future.

From the chapter recap you can see that this book covers a lot of ground and some of it quite unevenly.

According to the introduction, this book grew out of an article written for a trade publication. That genesis shows in some places as latter chapters feature Q&A interviews with marketing and sales leaders that really do not deliver the type of insight and depth required for the topics. Also the book focuses on a few social media and technology tools that narrows rather than expands the author's arguments. These challenges are not insurmountable, but they are something to consider, as the earlier chapters are considerably stronger than the latter ones.

Overall, recommended for people looking to understand the changing nature, structure and priorities of marketing in a digital, dynamic and crowded world. Crawford offers a welcome different perspective to this environment one that is provocative in its assumptions and helpful in seeing the future terms of competition.