| Priceless: Turning Ordinary
Products into Extraordinary Experiences
By Diana Lasalle and Terry A. Britton
Harvard Business School Press, 2002 224 pages.
Reviewed by Michael Eckersley
As business books go, Priceless is a useful one, and a pretty
good companion piece to Pine and Gilmore’s The Experience
Economy. Though not ground-breaking in itself, Priceless reinforces
key principles of consumer-centered business that need reiteration.
It also offers up a commonsense framework on which to develop integrated
consumer offerings that stand out in the marketplace and earn the
allegiance of customers.
Good business books can function as useful “pass-alongs”
to make a point or support some cause. Should your cause be to gradually
shift a corporate culture toward customer-centered values, then
Priceless is a handy Trojan horse.
Business-school grads often have a tin ear for the subtle physical,
emotional, intellectual, and spiritual factors bundled up in consumer
behavior. Because of this, the idea of consumers being “cocreators
of value” in regard to any given offering or buying experience
leaves companies feeling anxious and uncertain about how to proceed
effectively.
The authors’ adaptation on Johan Arndt’s work describes
a five-step “experience engagement process.” But most
interestingly, the book details a concept of controllable “acquisition
events,” which dovetails nicely with Charles Owen’s
action analysis approach to building a function structure as part
of the structured planning process. Where the book falls short is
its inattention to fine-grained consumer-research approaches that
can describe and actually help prescribe areas ripe for innovating
extraordinary consumer experience.
My reading of Priceless warranted some 30 annotated or highlighted
pages and four turned-down page corners. Not bad for a 160-page
popular business book.
This review originally appeared in the Fall
2003 News & Views
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