- Unbound
- Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (Feb 1997)
- ISBN-10: 1578515270
- ISBN-13: 978-1578515271
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Building relationships with customers has been a buzz phrase in many business circles for years. Now John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong declare that's not enough. They make a strong case that business success in the very near future will depend on using the Internet to build not just relationships, but communities. The payoff, they maintain, will be phenomenal customer loyalty and high profits. But, they warn, this race will definitely go to the swift. Here's a cyberspace book that could make your business future. Not everyone agrees with Hagel and Armstrong, but with stakes so high they deserves a serious reading.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Net Gain identifies where the next level of value lies on the Internet and lays out the first economic model to quantify the revenue potential and the investment required to build a successful virtual community. From the offerings of commercial online services such as the Motley Fool Investment group to Internet communities of book lovers, Net Gain offers a multitude of real-world scenarios and lessons for building value and creating competitive edge. The authors clearly show that in order to compete in the online economy, you must establish an entirely new approach to product development, marketing, customer service, and distribution, and rethink your company's relationships to customers, suppliers, and competitors. And they show you how to do it.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Anyone that has ever worked with the famed McKinsey group will recognize the pattern instantly. (1) Start the conversation at the highest level necessary to divide, confuse, and conquer, (2) achieve a sense of confusion, (3) draw insight from the clients or historical case studies, and (4) present YOUR ideas back to you as something terribly insightful and/or brilliant. Basically - what you get here is probably something you've already implemented or at least considered, but only packaged in a totally undeciferable and unrealistic utopia.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Hagel is outstanding when it comes to presenting in clear, simple fashion the emerging new community and customer driven dynamics of the web market.But the oversimplification, hyperbole and overstatment are dangerously irresponsible, especially for smaller businesses and start-ups that don't have endless capital to throw to the winds. The "hypothetical" projection charts of sales and growth are indicative of the financial bubble kind of thinking that leads to... collapse of bubbles. It is critical to remember that e-retailing is still retailing and the tendency will be for margins to be squeezed as they are in all areas of retailing today. There will be no "magic box profits" that are extraordinarily higher than market averages because ... because markets tend to function competitively. Online booksellers, for example, are still booksellers. And precisely if teh web market grows as exuberantly as Hagel thinks it will (driven far too much by the easy access to capital), the squeeze on margins will come even more rapidly than it otherwise might. And very, very few firms will ever hope to achieve the kind of market share that a few amazing companies like Amazon have managed to gain and hold. Yes, the web is for real and will become one of the five most important media forms in America. But actually establishing and maintaining a profit margin will be much more difficult than Hagel implies. Caveat emptor!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Net Gain is an interesting book in many ways, particularly in its (I believe accurate) proposal that the Internet, and virtual communities in general, are already beginning to empower customers at the expense of vendors. In other ways the book is flawed. It proposes that commercially organised virtual communities are "Increasing Returns Business". This may be true, but the arguments presented lack intellectual rigour. We are presented with some quantitative predictions based on "dynamic computer models" about which we learn little, other than that they appear to be based on the multiplicative combination of a set of hypothetical virtuous circles. Elsewhere in the book it is widely assumed that members of virtual communities will be happy to supply information to community organisers in order that they (the members) may be sold to on an individual basis. My gut feeling is that many people would not be prepared to do this. It would, in effect, be a voluntary transfer of power back to the vendor. A third criticism is that the book does not clearly distinguish between bulletin boards set up by specific vendors as an aid to marketing their own products and multi-vendor communities set up by a third party which effectively pit one vendor against another. This lack of clarity makes some of the arguments difficult to assess. The book is clearly thought provoking but, in the last analysis, it does not live up to its hype.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Thought-provoking but lacking in foundation
There is no doubt in my mind that on-line communities are the way forward for many business and the authors of this book, in there over-eager American style, are keen to drive... Read more
Published on 21 Sep 1999
A fair work that has aged quickly.
This is a very dry guide as to how businesses can get into the online business.
Published in 1997, it is written in consultant speak, ie most of the prose is buzzwords that... Read more
Published on 28 Jun 1999
A must read for anyone interested in the Internet industry
I work for a leading on-line community and for me this book was required reading. The concept of virtual communities and the transfer of power from the provider to the consumer... Read more
Published on 18 May 1999
Excellent summarization of a rapidly evolving arena.
Another conceptual masterpiece from Harvard Press. The book is a speculative venture tieing together many of the rapidly evolving trends that are just now starting to emerge. Read more
Published on 26 April 1999
Building Online Relationships
Our marketing company has embraced the relationship marketing concepts of this author with great success. Read more
Published on 26 Jan 1999
new approach to corporate strategy
Hagel and Armstrong did a very good job at projecting a scenario of how changes the business community is facing are going to take effect with more and more commercial virtual... Read more
Published on 25 Jan 1999
Way too hypothetical
There are a few good concepts here upon which the authors have built a whole hypothetical model. But they do not seem to have enough data to build the model on. Read more
Published on 21 Jan 1999
Very insightful(I wish)
I don't know anything about economics, but I am convinced by what the author wrote. I just feel it is right. Read more
Published on 1 Jan 1999
Net Gain is a Net Loss.
Although this book claims to be geared to the senior executive _and_ the entrepreneur there is little info for the latter. Read more
Published on 17 Oct 1998
Show me proof!
Net Gain is a good read the first time around. However,after reading the book a second time I am still a little confused particularly with the economics of virtual communities. Read more
Published on 3 Aug 1998
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