Customers Rule!: Why the E-Commerce Honeymoon Is Over & Where Winning Businesses Go from Here

Blackwell and Stephan apply their considerable experience in buying behavior to the reality of the last several years and find most e-commerce endeavors wanting. Their message is simple: focus on providing a smooth, trouble free experience end to end and you will be far ahead of the pack. Sounds simple, and it isn't. Implementing this concept takes serious capital and serious experience.This book is a good read for B2C companies online and offline. Its treatment of B2B is thin, and not really worth digging out. It already feels a bit dated, but it is still an absolute "must read" for retailers.

Roger Blackwell's Customers Rule! tells why the e-commerce business thrill is over, and how adaptable business structures may take advantage of these changes in customer buying habits. The Internet has proven to be not a revolutionary retail changer but an adjunct to traditional retail marketing approaches, and this explains how companies may profit from changes, using case history analyses to pinpoint blended strategies which work.

The title, though provocative and tantalizing, is accurate.Authors Blackwell and Stephan are unabashed celebrities of the art and science of consumer behavior. It is no surprise whatsoever that the arguments and conclusions in the book are academically sound, intuitively resonant and empirically valid. It is no coincidence, either, that the style is personal, engaging and authoritative without being authoritarian. The resarch shows; practical current examples are used to cut through media hype and Wall Street analysts' obsession with trendy, flashy technology. Jump on the train, they say: the next e-business train leaving the station- all of them will take you to profits and increased market caps. WRONG! The book asks the difficult questions: Does the e-business integrate with the bricks and mortar reality of creating value for the customer? Does it make for a delightful experience? Does it make the customer want to keep coming back again and again? All this is necessary, but not sufficient. Does your e-business strategy create profit? Can this profit stream be sustained? Does it complement your current channels of supply chain management and does it lead you towards trhe new world of demand chain management? Does your strategy differentiate you from your competition? Can you sustain your advantage? The authors are technology savvy, but not mesmerized by it. The book offers insights into what strategies will work and which ones will fail and why. I recommend this book to MBA students everywhere. It is a survival handbook. Business persons will find the book practical and relevant.It will save them a lot of grief. The authors have their feet planted firmly in reality. They remind us: " e-business is no substitute for knowing what works in business and why." I learnt from this book and am giving copies to my colleague business profesors.

Customers Rule by Roger Blackwell and Kristina Stephan offers those of us in business a common sense view of serving the market, and our customers through a variety of market channels. Many previous books that I have been exposed to predicted the death of the bricks and mortar retailers and total domination by e-tailers. I'm not sure I ever completely believed that, but it was sure easy to get caught up in the excitement of that idea when Wall Street reinforced it with outrageous multiples. Today's market realities would certainly support a text blasting an exclusive Internet B2C, and even some B2B business models and exchanges, which seem to be having trouble getting off the ground.What I appreciated about Customers Rule is the balanced approach that the authors took to guide me through a thought process that a sound and successful strategy for today and the future is to mingle both an "old" and "new" economy view towards serving our customers. They direct us towards a methodology for the sale and branding of our business that uses all of the assets and applications we have to offer whether we are retailing or manufacturing.It is this blending of past, and current successful capabilities coupled with what the Internet and e-commerce can bring to our business that made this book worth my time and dollar investment.I recommend you also read this exciting new book and help your company succeed.

Roger D. Blackwell, a professor of marketing, teams with Kristina Stephan, a VP at his consulting firm, to dissect the dot-bomb crash - a phenomena they blame on a lack of solid business fundamentals. While they affirm that most pure-play dot-com business plans don't work, Blackwell and Stephan emphasize that businesses can benefit from incorporating new technologies with traditional methods of appealing to customers. In other words, don't use technology for technology's sake; use it to improve your logistics, financing, sales techniques and service to do a better job of providing what customers want. Although we are certainly at the beginning of a deluge of post-bubble books, we [...] strongly recommend this early entry, which resonates with simple common sense.