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Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences (Paperback)
 
 
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Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences (Paperback) [Paperback]

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

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Book Description

February 15, 2008 0321552342 978-0321552341 1
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.

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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 and Mather Worldwide Brand Integration Group

"This delightfully clear book is intended to help companies connect real people by placing meaning at the center of a company's "culture of innovation." With wit, intelligence, and humor, Making Meaning is about as far as one can get from the rapaciousness of soulless consumerism. Louis Cheskin must be smiling!"
-Brenda Laurel, Ph.D., Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems

"A visionary, eye-opening book that tackles the critical emerging question: When everything is possible, what is necessary? Authored by top leaders in the field, it is a must-read for anyone looking towards the future, for it brilliantly illustrates one of the promising keys to business success."

-Marco Steinberg, Associate Professor, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design

"Turning the ordinary into meaningful is at the core of this innovative book about how to enrich customer experience through powerful insights. It analyses universal meaningful experiences derived from global research. The marketing strategist, the brand manager, the market researcher, the designer, and many others will find in these pages inspiration for actionable improvement of products and services.Making Meaning holds the secrets of powerful marketing. Thank you, Steve, Nathan, and Darrel, for bringing this book to life."

-Felipe Korzenny, Ph.D., Director of Graduate Studies, Communication; Director of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication, Florida State University

"Making Meaning is a 'whole brain' innovation process that makes a whole lot of sense."

-Brad Casper, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Dial Corporation

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.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 160 pages
  • Publisher: New Riders Press; 1 edition (February 15, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0321552342
  • ISBN-13: 978-0321552341
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #433,573 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

17 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars heron preston review, March 2, 2006
By 
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
By 
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
By 
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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