ABOUT THE BOOK
In The Metail Economy, Joel Bines illustrates the radical power shift that has occurred between businesses and their customers. Customers today are like no other customers in history. In short, they understand the old marketing game, and they’ve rewritten the rules. They’re the ones creating the stories about your products, they’re the ones setting the trends, they’re the ones deciding where to buy and how much they’re willing to pay. Success now requires developing a whole new kind of relationship with your customers and Bines shows you how to accomplish this through implementing one or more of the Metail strategies he calls the “6 C’s”: Cost, Convenience, Category Expertise, Customization, Curation, Community.
Whether you’re the CEO of a global organization or starting your own clothing boutique, you must become a Metailer―and this groundbreaking book will show you how.
The Metail Economy In The News
September 14, 2022 | TotalRetail
6 Strategies for Transforming Your Business
Let’s face it: Today’s consumers have revolted against the marketplace status quo. They’re now in charge, and retailers must recognize and embrace this fact in order to survive in the new “Metail” economy. In this important and entertaining keynote, Joel Bines, one of today’s top retail brand thought leaders and author of the bestselling book, “The Metail Economy,” will offer innovative methods for connecting with the me-centric consumer and show you how to thrive in this new consumer revolution.
Excerpt from The Metail Economy
Whether you are the CEO of a global company or the sole proprietor of a neighborhood store, this book will help you adjust your vision and achieve the clarity necessary to succeed in this Metail economy—an economy made up of highly fragmented, individualized, empowered, and fluid clusters of consumers, or Me’s, and explained in greater detail later in the book. Nothing like this consumer power shift has ever happened before. But once you see it, you cannot unsee it. You will rethink every aspect of your business strategy. You will have a greater sense of urgency about things you are not even thinking about right now, and less urgency on the issues you think are paramount. In short, I am going to give you the clarity you need to correct course before your ship runs aground.
You’ve felt something has been off for a while now. Profits are not where they should be; market share is tougher than ever to gain; investments are not paying off. You’ve been embracing digital, omnichannel, influencer marketing, customer segmentation models and every other buzzword under the sun. But you still are not making meaningful connections with your customers, and you can’t seem to put your finger on why.
Until now, company executives have thought of themselves as the anointed ones who get to decide what goods, services, and experiences to provide on what platforms and for what price. Hubris was almost a job requirement for the “merchant princes” of old. Again, I don’t blame them because that’s how it worked for millennia. But as this book will show, in this new world, the game has changed completely and forever.
So how did we get here? What caused this change? Most people would say, “It’s the internet, silly.” Yes, it is because of technology. But it’s not technology the way most people think about it. Not the technology that allows us to buy things from our phone while we’re lounging in bed. It’s not because of Amazon, or Instagram, or TikTok. It’s not because of buy online, pick up in store, or one-hour delivery, or digital stylists, or live shopping. It’s not what the technology enables us to do so much as what the technology has given to the consumer: information and access.
This book grows out of my alarm at seeing executives missing the change. My hope is that the following chapters will remove the blinders and let everyone see how companies will never again be the arbiters of choice the way they once were. They will have to adjust every preconceived notion of how they do business to this reality if they wish to succeed. Consumers are the ones setting the agenda. And they now operate outside of the carefully controlled customer experience zones where companies have felt most comfortable.
On these next pages, I will make the case for Metail. Part I provides a brief history and current examples of companies that have struggled to address the new Metail paradigm and some that are on the right path. The three chapters in Part I will show you exactly what Metail means and why it matters.
Then in Part II, I will show you what to do about it by breaking Metail down into a set of six models that can be used to cultivate and serve the consumer in the new Metail reality. Inspired by the four Cs of a diamond—cut, clarity, carat, and color—I call these models the six Cs for success: cost, convenience, category expertise, curation, customization, and community.
Part III will help you to develop self-awareness through the lens of the six Cs and give you the tools and insights to understand how your organization is viewed and valued by your customers so you can focus your investment, resources, and energies into the right areas in order to maximize your customer relationships in the Metail economy.
Excerpt from The Metail Economy: 6 Strategies for Transforming Your Business to Thrive in the Me-Centric Consumer Revolution by Joel Bines, pp. xii-xv (McGraw Hill, January 2022).
Published by McGraw Hill Education.