Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want

It’s a paradox of today’s Experience Economy: the more contrived the world seems, the more we all demand what’s real. As reality is qualified, altered, and commercialized, consumers respond to what is engaging, personal, memorable – and above all, authentic. If customers don’t view your offerings as real, you’ll be branded inauthentic – fake! – and risk losing credibility, customers, and ultimately the sale.

Building on their groundbreaking bestseller The Experience Economy, Gilmore and Pine explain that availability, cost, and quality no longer suffice. Today’s consumers seek the authentic where and when they buy. Satisfy consumers’ demands for authenticity – across every kind of offering – and you’ll capture their hearts, minds, and dollars.

From Starbucks to the Geek Squad, from Venice to The Venetian, Authenticity examines how successful companies identify themselves with their customers’ self-images and desires. Foreshadowing the creation of a whole new management discipline, Authenticity provides practical management tools to help you and your business:

• Assess your perceived authenticity through new tools, including the Real/Fake Matrix


• Develop new approaches for appealing to the real


• Implement specific strategies to render authenticity

By defining how you can appeal to this emerging consumer mind-set, Authenticity provides the key to identifying your business with consumer perceptions of what’s personal, valuable – and real.

The following is an interview conducted by podcaster Brian Oates and Joe Pine, co-author of Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want.

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