The One to One Future (Paperback)

~ Don Peppers (Author), Martha Rogers (Author) "In late 1991 the telegraph industry's life was taken, suddenly and brutally, by the facsimile machine..." (more)
Key Phrases: dry cereal market, fax bulletin board, fax mailbox, American Express, Emerald Club, Nissan Canada (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What will life be like after  mass marketing? Today, technology allows us to sell more goods to fewer people, which is far more efficient than selling fewer goods to more people. Peppers, an advertising executive, and Rogers, a marketing scholar, set out their new marketing paradigm in detail. A one-to-one competitor focuses on "share of customer" rather than the mass-marketer's "share of market." Learn to collaborate with the customer to build loyalty and build your opportunities for future profit. The strategies in this book work as well -- maybe even better -- for small companies as for the blue-chippers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Book of the Year"
--Tom Peters

"Peters was wrong. This is not the book of the year. It's not even the book of the decade. It's one of the two or three most important business books ever written."
--George Gendron, Inc. magazine

The book that's revolutionizing marketing in the '90s."
--David Weinberger, Wired

"A unique perspective on the fundamental, structural changes that technology is already bringing to the real world of business competition."
--Esther Dyson, President, EDventure Holdings

"Hands down...the best marketing book for the interactive age."
--Andrew Jaffe, Vice President and Executive Editor, Adweek -- Review

"Book of the Year"
--Tom Peters

"Peters was wrong. This is not the book of the year. It's not even the book of the decade. It's one of the two or three most important business books ever written."
--George Gendron, Inc. magazine

The book that's revolutionizing marketing in the '90s."
--David Weinberger, Wired

"A unique perspective on the fundamental, structural changes that technology is already bringing to the real world of business competition."
--Esther Dyson, President, EDventure Holdings

"Hands down...the best marketing book for the interactive age."
--Andrew Jaffe, Vice President and Executive Editor, Adweek

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 429 pages
• Publisher: Currency (December 14, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385485662
• ISBN-13: 978-0385485661
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #575,269 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant concepts; desperately needs an editor., June 28, 1998

By A Customer

Peppers and Rogers may be the pioneers of one-to-one marketing techniques (or maybe even not), but they're terrible book writers. I've read their articles on the same topics, and they're much more concise. In the book, you learn all you really need to know in the first few paragraphs of each chapter; the rest is just regurgitation. I eventually gave up; I just couldn't read it anymore. You'd be better off reading a few articles, or someone else's books, unless you have an extremely high attention span or no background whatsoever in the concepts they discuss. They're very smart people, but if you've already learned the basics, this book will waste your time.

34 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What is a "Relationship?", May 14, 2000

By	Theresa Welsh "The Seeker" (Ferndale, Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    (VINE VOICE)

Peppers and Rogers wrote a pioneering work on reaching customers, that taught marketers to look beyond "segments" to the individual people who actually bought their products or services. But they make an essential mistake in confusing the customer's familiarity with a particular business with having a relationship. Relationships exist between people who know one another, and a business relationship is one in which the customer deals with the same provider for each transaction. An example is a personal trainer you go to each time you work out, or a using the same accountant (not just the same accounting firm) for many years at tax time, or going to the same hairstylist, even following her when she moves to a new salon. These are real relationships, but phoning a catalog company and talking to a different person each time, even if that person can check your past orders and already has the billing information, is NOT a relationship.

Using technology to make a transaction more efficient can be a service to customers. People do not always seek a relationship with their provider; sometimes they want anonymity, and the idea that the provider organization "knows" all about them can be scary. Only by distinguishing between real relationships and the kind of "pseudo-relationship" that Peppers and Rogers advocate can you sort out these issues.

To learn more about the concept of "relationship" versus the more common service encounter (between customer and provider who do not know each other and do not expect to interact again), read The Brave New Service Strategy by Dr. Barbara A. Gutek and Theresa Welsh. They postulate a service model that consists of a triangle of Customer, Organization and Provider (COP).

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Marketing Strategies for the Future, January 16, 2000

By	frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

Clear and well-written exploration of market share approach to marketing versus the one-to-one approach to marketing. Explained well, and backed up with solid and very applicable examples.

It's important to remember that this book prepared the way for current Internet-based/personalized approaches to marketing. To a current marketeer, it may feel a bit dated (many of the examples are dependent on using snail mail and fax machines) but it given how many large IT projects are centered around database marketing, it's worthwhile reading for a lot of professionals and technical workers who may be missing part of the point of the systems they're developing.