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Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences [Hardcover]

Steve Diller , Nathan Shedroff , Darrel Rhea
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)


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Book Description

December 31, 2005
We’re now hip-deep, if not drowning, in the ‘experience economy.‘ Here‘s the smartest book I‘ve read so far that can actually help get your brand to higher ground, fast. And it‘s written by people who not only drew the map, but blazed these trails in the first place.”
–Brian Collins, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Brand Integration Group

In a market economy characterized by commoditized products and global competition, how do companies gain deep and lasting loyalty from their customers? The key, this book argues, is in providing meaningful customer experiences.

Writing in the tradition of Louis Cheskin, one of the founding fathers of market research, the authors of Making Meaning observe, define, and describe the meaningful customer experience. By consciously evoking certain deeply valued meanings through their products, services, and multidimensional customer experiences, they argue, companies can create more value and achieve lasting strategic advantages over their competitors. A few businesses are already discovering this approach, but until now no one has articulated it in such a persuasive and practical way. Making Meaning not only encourages businesses to adopt an innovation process that’s centered on meaning, it also tells you how. The book outlines a plan of action and describes the attributes of a meaning-centric innovation team. With insightful real-world examples drawn from the Cheskin company's experience and from the authors' observations of the contemporary global market, this book outlines a plan of action and describes the attributes of a meaning-centric innovation team.

Meaningful experiences—as distinct from trivial ones—reinforce or transform the customer’s sense of purpose and significance. The authors’ vision of a world of meaningful consumption is idealistic, but don’t be fooled: this is a straightforward business book with an eye on the ROI. It shows how to bring R&D, design, and marketing together to create  deeper and richer experiences for your customers.  Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences is an engaging and practical book for business leaders, explaining how their companies can create more meaningful products and services to better achieve their goals.


Editorial Reviews

Review

We’re now hip-deep, if not drowning, in the ‘experience economy.‘ Here‘s the smartest book I‘ve read so far that can actually help get your brand to higher ground, fast. And it‘s written by people who not only drew the map, but blazed these trails in the first place.”
–Brian Collins, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Brand Integration Group

From the Back Cover

We’re now hip-deep, if not drowning, in the ‘experience economy.‘ Here‘s the smartest book I‘ve read so far that can actually help get your brand to higher ground, fast. And it‘s written by people who not only drew the map, but blazed these trails in the first place.”
–Brian Collins, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Brand Integration Group

In a market economy characterized by commoditized products and global competition, how do companies gain deep and lasting loyalty from their customers? The key, this book argues, is in providing meaningful customer experiences.

Writing in the tradition of Louis Cheskin, one of the founding fathers of market research, the authors of Making Meaning observe, define, and describe the meaningful customer experience. By consciously evoking certain deeply valued meanings through their products, services, and multidimensional customer experiences, they argue, companies can create more value and achieve lasting strategic advantages over their competitors. A few businesses are already discovering this approach, but until now no one has articulated it in such a persuasive and practical way. Making Meaning not only encourages businesses to adopt an innovation process that’s centered on meaning, it also tells you how. The book outlines a plan of action and describes the attributes of a meaning-centric innovation team. With insightful real-world examples drawn from the Cheskin company's experience and from the authors' observations of the contemporary global market, this book outlines a plan of action and describes the attributes of a meaning-centric innovation team.

Meaningful experiences—as distinct from trivial ones—reinforce or transform the customer’s sense of purpose and significance. The authors’ vision of a world of meaningful consumption is idealistic, but don’t be fooled: this is a straightforward business book with an eye on the ROI. It shows how to bring R&D, design, and marketing together to create  deeper and richer experiences for your customers.  Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences is an engaging and practical book for business leaders, explaining how their companies can create more meaningful products and services to better achieve their goals.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 152 pages
  • Publisher: New Riders Press (December 31, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0321374096
  • ISBN-13: 978-0321374097
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,412,044 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Great book...a must read! David Studeman  |  2 reviewers made a similar statement
Some times you buy a book because the title seems relevant to you. Alcide Cex Club  |  2 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars heron preston review March 2, 2006
Format:Hardcover
loved the book. a great, informative read. as a college student currently studying design+management at parsons, this book made me excited about my future. here are some highlights:

1. Footworks:

In the book, the authors develop a ficticious company, Footworks, which they use to build examples from. This is a cool method to teach because you can watch Footworks grow throughout the progression of the book. You can also visualize how their ideas would really be implemented within a company.

2. Defining Innovation Culture:

They build an innovation team, and speak about every person making up that team. They talk about their importance of creating meaningful experiences, their responsibilities within the company and why they should be on the team. These are some of the people:

Brand Management, Sales Management, Information Tech (IT), Human Resources (HR), CEO, Marketing Management and Research, Design and Development.

3. I think the most important of all is how they really deal with defining "meaning" which is something that took me a couple chapters to really grasp. They speak about how important it is for businesses to really figure out which meaningful experiences their customers value. Then it breaks into delivering that experience which really connects on a personal level making them integrate that experience into their lives. A meaningful experience would be how a vegetarian FEELS when he / she practices vegetarianism.

4. There's psychology involved, which goes past working with products and services into for example, deciding whether the new CEO of your company should be male or female and whether or not they're athletic. "Just as tribes, traditions, and objects brought order and `rightness' to people in previous centuries, a company and it's offerings may now play that role as well by solidifying a relationship at the deepest possible point in the human psyhce and personality. It's a potent place for a company to be".
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Good, practical advice January 20, 2006
Format:Hardcover
I picked up this book at CES and read it from beginning to end. The authors' present an intriguing theory and they back it up with very detailed explanations of "how to." Well worth the money and $$ for anyone looking to innovate in a crowded marketplace.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Making Meaning January 21, 2006
Format:Hardcover
As a professional who helps companies succeed by connecting with their audiences through branding, I highly recommend Making Meaning. In today's world, those managers who truly understand that "it's all about the customer and their experience with your products, your services, your organization", will be the ones left standing. Great book...a must read!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars No Meaning
Some times you buy a book because the title seems relevant to you. Unfortunately i was looking about something rare... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Alcide Cex Club
2.0 out of 5 stars A bunch of Introductions, but no real beef - yet at times inspiring..
Even though the book has a good aim, and has chosen a very challenging subject that is at most of emerging nature currently, still the authors manage to shoot all over the fence... Read more
Published 17 months ago by ExperienceDesigner
3.0 out of 5 stars Great...if it were only still 2007
If you have never thought much about customer experience this book certainly is a good starting point. Read more
Published on May 1, 2010 by W. Hecht
3.0 out of 5 stars yikes-typos and bad grammar abound
Just finished the hardcover version. Perhaps it has been corrected in paperback form, but numerous proofreading misses and flat-out poor grammar distracted me to such a degree that... Read more
Published on November 19, 2009 by motor city
3.0 out of 5 stars Good business perspective for IT folks
Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences is a book about understanding and crafting meaning customer experiences for businesses. Read more
Published on February 1, 2009 by Regnard Raquedan
4.0 out of 5 stars Useful concepts and methods for companies that want to succeed in the...
This book has valuable ideas regarding how to drive innovation in today's experience economy. It was written by a group of experts from the field of experience design who have... Read more
Published on December 27, 2008 by Julio Terra
5.0 out of 5 stars Extrordinary Book
This is a extraordinary book written by very experienced professionals.
I do reccommend for those who wants to know about the real customer values... Read more
Published on April 5, 2008 by Carlos L. Guevara
5.0 out of 5 stars A business case for meaning in design
If you've been following Nathan Shedroff's work to build a conceptual framework for experience design then you will find this book to be his next step, but with an emphasis on... Read more
Published on July 10, 2006 by James Preston
3.0 out of 5 stars Important idea, unimpressive narrative
This book makes a minor contribution to the literature on customer experience management. Its raison d'etre is that there is potential for "meaning" in customer experience that can... Read more
Published on March 21, 2006 by Robert S. Becker
4.0 out of 5 stars A powerful way of thinking about design.
As a visual communicator, I found the book thought provoking, stimulating and insightful. It is quite simple to negotiate, and absolutely matches my instinctive but unfocussed... Read more
Published on February 26, 2006 by James De Vries
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