From The Publisher

• Meet the "centaur": today's hybrid, "converged" consumer   
  • Not just bricks. Not just clicks. They want both—and more. Meet the 400,000,000+ "centaurs" worldwide who'll make or break your company  
  • "Customerization": when and how to customize—and when not to  
  • How to combine standardization, mass customization, and personalization—profitably

   

• Community: Physical to virtual and back again   
  • Centaurs are social animals: you must be wherever they choose to socialize

   

• Channels: "Call, click, or visit"   
  • How to support high-value relationships that cut across multiple market channels 

   

• Competitive value propositions: reshaping the value equation   
  • Strategies for leveraging all your new sources of value, from entertainment through innovative pricing to peace of mind

   

• Choice tools: "Give me search engines and tools to make better decisions"   
  • How to cope with the empowered consumer  
  • Beyond the silo: Refocusing technology, marketing, and business strategy on the "centaur"—and on transforming the organization  
  • Processes, structure, people, incentives, technology: aligning your entire organization to serve tomorrow's best customers

   

• Case studies: beyond theory to reality 
  • How today's smartest enterprises are meeting the challenge of the centaur

Today's consumer is a centaur: a new hybrid who's mastering the latest technologies but is still driven by age-old human desires and motivations. "Cyberconsumer" business models ignored human reality: that's why they failed. But "back-to-basics" ignores the deep changes the Internet has wrought. The genie's out of the bottle: your customers have profoundly new expectations—and you have powerful new tools for delivering on them. 

Convergence Marketing Strategy illuminates the "centaur," showing what today's customers can do, what they're choosing to do, how they're evolving, and where they're headed. Jerry Wind and Vijay Mahajan identify "5Cs" at the heart of the new consumer relationship: customerization, community, channels, competitive value propositions, and choice tools. 

Convergence Marketing: Strategies for Reaching the New Hybrid Consumer