The network is your customer

 by David L. Rogers. This practical handbook contains more than a hundred cases and examples of innovative approaches that businesses can use to enhance their digital customer networks. Rogers (Center on Global Brand, Columbia Univ.) clearly explains customer networks and the different levels of sophistication among them. Core customer network behaviors include the ability to connect to networks, to find valuable content in them, to match network experiences to customer needs, to communicate with others in networks, and to act together purposefully. Rogers emphasizes emerging trends: for example, future networks will make us "more human." Moving from professional experts to the collective knowledge of networks, as in the Wikipedia model (see Macrowikinomics by Dan Tapscott and Anthony Williams, CH, Jan'11, 48-2788), is another trend this reviewer found interesting to mull over. The book's core notion seems to be that organizations should become veritable Tom Sawyers, with their customer networks whitewashing their fences. Rogers provides many examples of such actively contributing networks. The "increasingly social internet" with its "reciprocal, dynamic and participatory" relationships is the basis for such customer network strategies. See related, Larry Weber's Marketing to the Social Web (CH, Nov'07, 45-1559), which has a broader sweep than customer networks. --Choice (Check Catalog)