How Grocers Should be Using Data

Groceries are able to use loyalty cards to collect tremendous volumes of data about the behavior of their most loyal customers. They also have regular face-to-face access to their customers and could survey or interview them on any visit, with the right systems. And yet none of them are really thinking creatively about building strong ongoing relationships. Very little is happening in the way of segmentation and custom programming. I am baffled about why they are so slow to create community.

I recently got a question about configuration vs customization. In The Membership Economy, I point out that ownership is about customization, but membership is about configuration. In software, customization requires professional services to do, and can't be...

Reader Letter: The Membership Economy & Pilates

Michele Fulkerson is applying principles of The Membership Economy to the Pilates Education Institute–here’s the inspiring story of how she’s building ongoing relationships with instructors and studio owners around the world!

Keith Haring and the Membership Economy

Keith Haring had a lot to teach about principles of the Membership Economy.  Yesterday, I went to the exhbit "Keith Haring and the Political Line" at the De Young museum.  You may know that Haring created hundreds of chalk drawings on blank ad...