In their 1999 best seller `The Experience Economy' the authors, Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, described the shift in the economy from mining raw materials to the production of goods, to delivering services, to setting the scene for leisure experiences. Despite all the praise given to this book, there was nagging feeling: the American examples presented by the authors, such as Disney and Las Vegas, really did not work as authentic experiences for Europeans. This resulted in negatively equating The Experience Economy with facile, superficial and passive amusement in a fun-oriented society resembling a children's party. In their subsequent book, which recently appeared, `Authenticity - What consumers really want' it is clear that the authors have taken this criticism to heart. In their new book they claim that consumers have had enough of the common pre-set-scene products of the experience industry. Short-term stimuli and superficial must make way for experiences promising a long term and constant change. `Authenticity' is the new catchword. Anything we buy is increasingly adorned with adjectives like `real', `natural', `original' or `honest'. In fact, it is not only products that are measured to the degree to which they are authentic. `Authentic leadership' is nowadays also demanded of board members and managers. The recent American primary elections were not so much about content, but were more about perceptions of the candidates' authenticity. Hillary's tears - how real were they? And Obama's promises - will he realize them?

According to Gilmore and Pine this quest for authenticity did not appear from thin air, but came about as a result of three interwoven social developments. The first one has to do with the development of the experience economy itself. Now that the fascination for artificial events (Disney, Rainforest Cafe) has ebbed away, people ache for more authentic and meaningful experiences. In the second place the focus on authenticity has to do with the demographic influence exerted by `baby boomers' and `culturally creative persons' on society as a whole. Although these two groups are strongly divergent in age - the baby boomers are now in their third life phase, whereas most of culturally creative persons are in the prime of their life and career - they mutually connect in a common focus on questions of spiritual faith and belief systems relating to quality of life. As a third explanatory factor the authors mention the undermining of the reputation of important institutions. The public trust in political and economic institutions has been seriously hurt by lack of leadership, by fraud and self-enrichment. People long for a return to the basic reason (raison d'être) of institutions and organisations connected to these institutions. They demand not only that they really stand for something but that they also do what they say they stand for.

The challenge here is that it is often unclear what the term `authenticity' exactly means. In practice the concept is often associated with the following five aspects. Being natural (authenticity thus stands for the natural, raw and untamed), being original (authenticity thus stands for the original and innovative), being unique (authenticity thus stands for individual and exceptional achievements), being influential (authenticity thus stands for spiritual authority) and finally contextual matters (authenticity referring to well known persons, periods or events). In order to come to a simplified description, Pine and Gilmore went back to philosophers. These relate authenticity most of all with that which has developed naturally. This viewpoint was strongly advocated by the romantic thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He contrasted the natural ideal of the `noble savage' to modern civilisation, which has been corrupted through and through. It follows that authenticity refers to a mode of acting in which one rejects the rules of society in order to become one's true self. Thus anything made by machines and made for money cannot be accepted as authentic. Following this line of thinking, Pine and Gilmore cannot come to any other conclusion than to regard every economic offer as fake. For every economic offer is made by a firm acting according to the laws and rules of society. It makes use of technology and has making money as its aim. End of this little test, one would say. If anything a firm offers is fake by definition, why would you make the effort to offer `authenticity'? However, Pine and Gilmore are not in checkmate here. By entering perceptions of experience as a new element in the game, they come to the conclusion there is an `authenticity paradox': even though all firms, products and services are in fact fake, we experience a number of them as authentic. We call one product or brand fake and the other authentic. In terms of ontology, this distinction is nonsensical, but in our experience we can handle it well.

Authenticity is thus subject to the free game of subjective emotions. What is experienced by one person or target group as the apex of authenticity is perhaps taken by others as fake. Smartly, the two consultants point at the fact that Europeans are often inclined to mark American cultural events as fake. For Americans and peoples from Asia this works differently, say Pine and Gilmore. In their experiences the replica of Venice in Las Vegas is at least as authentic or perhaps even more authentic than that city itself. The experiences of what is experienced as authentic, is indeed different in varied persons and cultures. In the end the authenticity of experiences is based upon the self-image of a person or group: does one identify with the product, that service or that firm? Does it dovetail with your self-image? Does it touch you and do you feel you can relate to it? If and when firms wish to increase the authenticity of their offer, they will have to take into consideration the perception of their target groups in the market. A firm may thus make a product authentic for a specific target group. In this case, the authors use the word `rendering' in order to indicate that in fact something inherently non-authentic is perceived as authentic.

In order to move ahead of the only logical conclusion from the reasoning followed thus far, offering authenticity is nothing but an age old marketing trick in which something is created out of nothing - here the authors again change their line of reasoning in a remarkable shift. In order to be perceived as authentic, they write, it is really of the utmost importance to come across in a truthful and/or credible manner. The truthfulness of an offer has to do with the degree of correspondence with the identity of the firm. Credibility has to do with the question whether one actually does what one promises. Distinguishing the elements identity (yes/no) and whether one is involved, the criteria of `truthfulness' and `credibility' yield a matrix allowing managers to measure their products, services, stores or events in terms of the degree of authenticity. According to this matrix Disney is truthful (their identity is based on delivering family amusement), but not credible (fairy tales actually don't exist). As a reverse example the NBA Store in New York City is credible (it is indeed a store selling all kinds of basket ball articles), but it is not truthful as it forbids kids to `dunk' - which according to the authors is the core characteristic of basketball.

The contents summarized here, in short, indicate that we are dealing with a book that is really fascinating and in terms of theory very rich, but that is not readily applicable. As there are a great number of models, examples, strategies and theoretical referrals - including almost 30 pages of notes in small print (!) - this book resembles a seriously detailed work of academia rather than a lucid management book full of insights - there is often just too much stuff to tell. On the other hand this book is too sparsely grounded in the empirical sense to convince the reader. In their quest for the essence of authenticity, they lose track - and the reader as well - a number of times. On the one hand this is caused by the encyclopaedic zeal of the authors in trying to fit into one framework everything ever said or thought about authenticity. On the other hand this has to do with the limitations of the framework that strangely enough goes no further than a somewhat naïve marketing perspective. If they would have chosen a wider perspective, the authors would have been less rigid in stating that only clients decide whether a product, service or firm is authentic and they would have included in the analyses other stakeholders as well - such as employees, stock owners, pressure groups in society, and public opinion. A wider perspective would have also opened the authors' eyes to the fact that authenticity is grounded for the greater part in the relationship people feel with a certain offer or firm. Factors such as continuity, congruence and consistency play an important part: firms which have existed for a long time, that make a consistent offer and communicate the same story, time and time again, stand a much better chance of being perceived as authentic than those firms incapable of delivering those characteristics. It is at this very point that the comparison of the town of Venice and the replica in Las Vegas are completely at odds: whereas Venice has deep historic roots, delivers a continuous image and a consistent message, this is not true of Las Vegas - which is only a fleeting mix of styles and ambitions.

Finally: the fact that their last book is deficient in the areas of theoretical system and empirical depth, does not take away from the interest of the many examples, anecdotes and sweeping statements offered by the authors. Just consider the next axiom:
- If you are authentic, you don't have to say you're authentic
- If you say you're authentic, then you'd better be authentic.
- It's easier to be authentic, if you don't say you're authentic

The meaning is crystal clear. An authentic organisation is simply one where identity, image and actions are in concord with each other. Sometimes life just turns out to be so simple...

Hans van der Loo is active as an independent consultant and has a passion for creating authentic organisations.

The authors, Gilmore and Pine, present an indubitable assertion that being real in today's business world is now a necessity for continued success. The book, Authenticity, is a well-written followup to their previous work, The Experience Economy, also a must read. For those who care about serving others, it is a very understandable basis by which one can consciously formulate and conduct valuable interaction with others.

I read this book from my perspective as a consumer, rather than perhaps the perspective of the target audience of marketing professionals.

I truly enjoyed this book! The authors are witty and provide real world examples to illustrate their message. I discovered the reasons I find certain offerings attractive and others not so attractive.

The authors discuss the characteristics of "real" and "fake" offerings and provide numerous examples of each. Offerings may be true to the product and/or true to the seller. As I read this book, I reflected upon my experiences as a consumer. On a simple coaster from a local brewpub, I identified several characteristics illustrating that the brewpubs offering is "real" to me. They stress the first by telling us the year they founded. Their logo has an old look with the barley is reminiscent of designs from the 1930s. By using barley, they stress a raw material. They refer to foreign place and evoke a time by referring to old Europe. Their brewery & restaurant offering is nearly a mashup, although they stole the idea from Europe, e.g. Bavarian braü houses. Finally, they use influential authenticity by stressing that their place is one where friends and family gather to relax and celebrate.

the ideas in this book will blow your mind.

linking post-modernism to business strategy.

its only flaw was quoting a dave mathews lyric. ugh. other than that, astounding.

now i know the difference between pseudo and quasi.

I've been pimping this AWESOME book to many of my big brand clients - it is a powerful reinforcement of the idea that strategic clarity = authenticity. Iconic, American brands that are committed to "living what they believe," embrace this "Authenticity" ideology - the book illustrates it very well....the reality is that they (the great brands) are a rare breed....most do not leverage the potential authenticity that they have..instead only pay it lipservice....perhaps because they don't know the value or know how to define it let alone leverage it - after reading this book however, they will be well aware - at that point however, its a matter of caring enough to do something about it....if they don't know how, this book can fix it....if they don't care, that's a whole other matter.
Every leader should read this book - it separates the essential from the important. Loved the book!!!! I can see why its in TIME magazine.

I love the thoughts put forth in this book -- very academic. When the authors apply the thinking, it is pretty strong.

I was looking for a bit more application than theory, but did find this rather though provoking. Not an easy read, though, be prepared.

The book contains a lot of information that is repeated over and over, just by different descriptions. Other then that, the information given was pretty helpful. I work in the residential housing sector, so customers wanting something that is their own is number one for me. I picked up a few tips and ideas from the text that could be applied within my business. Overall, it is a great book for those who are caught in the cookie cutter processes of the time.

What do consumers want? According to James Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II, we want products that are genuine: that are what they appear to be and do what they say they will. Such products are increasingly rare in the modern consumer economy.
If that was the gist of Authenticity, I would agree, but Gilmore and Pine also seem to say that what consumers want are products that we perceive to be authentic, not products that actually are authentic. Perhaps we consumers have simply learned to see through advertising and marketing gimmicks, to no longer believe the lies about a product's benefits that we would have swallowed in the past. That's good, no?
To sort things out, the authors posit a two-part "Polonius test:" 1) is a business is true to itself and 2) is it true to what it says it is. Using this test, businesses can sort themselves on the continuum from Real/Real to Fake/Fake, and proceed accordingly. But shouldn't we consumers be demanding Real/Real, rather than asking that businesses pull a better quality of wool over our eyes?
For a concrete example of the authors' Polonius test at work in today's marketing world, read this book alongside Raymond A. Nadeau's Living Brands (McGraw-Hill, 2007). Nadeau, a marketing expert, advocates for, and gives many real-world examples of, Real/Real marketing. Nadeau argues that a new paradigm of collaborative branding is arising, under which consumers will increasingly insist on Real/Real products, creating them ourselves if businesses don't step up. To a large extent, Nadeau offers a solution to the problem Gilmore and Pine outline in Authenticity. Living Brands: Collaboration + Innovation = Customer Fascination

"The Experience Economy" by these same authors was such a brilliant, prescient, scholarly but accessible, important book that I was afraid to crack this one open. Almost certainly I would be dissapointed with this one, I thought.
Not the case. They have taken the next step in defining and predicting the upcoming key trend and metric for measuring and building nearly every business endeavor.
Again, scholarly but applicable and accessible, it reads almost like a page turner/textbook. This is not oxymoronic but you must read it when you are actually awake and capable of thinking.
It's hard to imagine that this book will not be quoted and used as a field manual for so many fields much as their previous work.

Having read and marked up their first book multiple times, what I've come to appreciate is the depth of thinking by Pine and Gilmore. Their view takes time to absorb and apply and is much richer than the typical business text. This one's a far cry from books like "Who Moved My Cheese?"

Written much like a textbook, "Authenticity" is full of insights and pearls that will take us a long time to unpack. The journey picks up right where EE left off and takes us down the path of understanding how consumers make decisions in the Experience Economy. I've already dog-eared and marked up many pages and am finding that the footnotes themselves are like a book within a book.

The authors aren't afraid to cite other experts in their effort to bring a new language to the discussion on authenticity. In my own attempts to explain this concept to others, I have found truly helpful the concept of "I like that. I'm like that," which they attribute to Virginia Postrel (pp. 93-94 and chapter 5 footnotes 65-66).

Like its predecessor, this new text is one to savor and think about. It's value to those of you engaged in the Experience Economy will only increase over time.

I predict that in ten years we will wonder how in blazes we ever managed to do business or operate institutionally without the essential ideas that fill this volume. Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine, whose previous breakthough of a book was reviewed by Tom Peters in two words--"simply brilliant"--have managed to write another one that is every bit as insightful and important. It constitutes nothing less than a graduate course in institutional self-knowledge, self-expression and self-integrity in 300 information-packed pages. Gilmore and Pine prove indisputably that there is no future for "faking it" in any enterprise, and they provide an extraordinarily comprehensive repertoire of incisive techniques to achieve operational authenticity by developing an in-depth consciousness of our past, present and future corporate identities. Anyone who is interested in healthy and productive organizational survival should read this book and apply its lessons...as soon as possible!

This truly is a tour de force that deserves the potent descriptors of "groundbreaking" and "defining a management discipline."

This may be a challenging read, not due to the writing per se, but because of the newness and depth of the subject. Gilmore and Pine's take on authenticity is novel enough that the reader may not have the mental hooks in their management theory framework to immediately hang the new ideas. But this is exactly what I would expect from the definition of a new management discipline.

The book builds the case for authenticity as a dominate consumer sensibility. From there, the construct framing the realness and fakeness of economic offerings forms the foundation for all that follows. Rendering authenticity takes authenticity out of the realm of ambiguity and into the realm of explicit definition. This process addresses the essence of business-organization identity and the underpinnings of the value of its offerings. The author's approach to rendering authenticity is a uniquely substantive approach to 1) exploring and defining your identity, what it is "you will be true to", 2) defining your total offering "to be what it says it is," and 3) the possibility of joining these two together for greater synergy, forming a more powerful authentic offering.

The book culminates with an approach to acting into the future. This approach employs the authenticity framework and the juxtaposition process used to understand and render authenticity, but extends it to explore an unlimited number of dimensions to spur the creation of novel value.

This book is a `must read' for those responsible for strategy and creating unique value in businesses of all types.

This new book (Joe Pine's and Jim Gilmore's latest thinking-on-paper) is really interesting -- a tour de force, actually -- original, sophisticated, nuanced, well-researched, with every conscious, subconscious and even unconscious element of authenticity brought into awareness and analyzed. Everyone in business should absorb this information and think about it, because, as Joe and Jim demonstrate, "authenticity" is a many-faceted thing -- a challenge to understand, and more challenging to achieve today, with consumer tuning forks so highly sensitive. Read it. Your smart competitors will.

Approaching this book was for me like waking up on Christmas morning and rushing to the tree in search of the gift you've asked for since last December 26th. It reminded me of an excerpt from the well-known children's story "The Velveteen Rabbit", by Margery Williams: "What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

As a devotee of Pine and Gilmore's "The Experience Economy" - I have enjoyed repeated readings of the book, listened to the book on CD, read dozens of articles and books inspired by this breakthrough work...and, as a result, found myself eagerly awaiting the release of this highly-touted follow up book. My diligence was rewarded with a cogent, thoughtful apologetic for the Pine and Gilmore (or, in this case, the Gilmore and Pine)view of what consumers are looking for--and more importantly--why...

If you have the courage to suspend your preconceived ideas about "How Customers Think", and be willing to set aside your current ideas of how you should be "Managing the Customer Experience"--there is much to draw upon and learn from the carefully and thoroughly researched and documented perspectives in this book.

I heartily encourage bold business thinkers to join the growing ranks of individuals who have found insight and inspiration in this work!

If you're reading this review, ever posted a review, or purchased (or didn't) an item on Amazon because of a review -- that's authenticity. And maybe that's why Amazon has survived technology ups and downs.

Pine and Gilmore write "If consumer create themselves, then they will consider it real." Sounds simple. But like their earlier book THE EXPERIENCE ECONOMY, Pine and Gilmore explain the complex art and science of what's emerging in our economy.

Read this book and post your own review. That's authenticity!

I started the book with a "hmmm, interesting" and ended it with a "wow, fascinating." This book helped identify my business as Fake / Real (and proud of it) and helped me ensure that the maximum number of customers perceive the experiential offerings we design and create as authentic. This book will help any business embrace what they are, and perhaps more importanly, identify what they are not.

As economic life incorporates more technology and its organization becomes more complex, customers and consumers are infusing their expectations of value from suppliers with growing interest in the authenticity of prospective suppliers' behaviour. How real or fake is the offering? Authors James Gilmore and Joseph Pine explore this question from the point of view of consumer marketing consultants advising the owners of enterprises and the leaders of institutions.

We know, but often forget, that every action of a supplier either adds to or detracts from its authenticity in ways personal to each actual or might-be consumer or customer. And we know also, but forget also, that these often lightening-fast assessments trigger similar inferences for the value to be expected from the same supplier across the entire spectrum of traditional purchasing criteria such as reliability, availability, accessibility, and price. Our organization's authenticity is not to be trifled with.

But what, practically, can leaders do about an organization's authenticity? Gilmore and Pine have distilled a huge variety of mainly, but not entirely, consumer marketing experience into insights into how to earn the elusive epithet of "Really real!" in the minds of increasingly skeptical consumers. The book may not be easy to assimilate, but this management consultant/coach nevertheless found their approach remarkably well organized for such an immensely significant but still mysterious subject.

Advisors to the more determinedly honest of enterprise owners and senior executives will benefit from reading it carefully, although mastery will no doubt take time for the concepts are quite novel outside philosophical readings. Academics will also be pleased for the book gives referenceable credit to the authors of numerous professional and/or expert comments from many fields of organizational and philosophical life. In sum, "Authenticity" offers a conceptually rich and systematic approach to thinking about the issues of managing prospective and actual purchaser's perceptions of the authenticity of one's enterprise.

For the most part, the voice of this book retains the professional's pedestal, so would it be more authentic if the authors had used the words "we" or "I" a little more often? Well, it is not without humour and they do make a point -- one saliently valuable for the many of us who are worried that the level of inauthenticity to be expected in our futures might only be increasingly toxic: There is no substitute for honesty in the pursuit of business authenticity, for, even if one's enterprise is in the business of fakery, one earns authenticity points from amongst one's prospects by showing that one at least knows as much. So no, there's not much fakery in this book quite profound book. The authors are to be commended for making use of business vernacular not primarily to persuade, boast, or entertain, but instead to educate us wittily in a conceptually very subtle subject -- one that is critical to the quality of our increasingly commercialized civilization.

As a former chief marketing officer for businesses at Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab, I found Pine and Gilmore's book "The Experience Economy" to be a valuable tool that helped me consider how to improve our clients' experience. Their latest book, "Authenticity," is yet another valuable tool that should be added to every marketing professional's tool box.

I like Pine and Gilmore's work because they focus on issues that are important to revenue growth and the knowledge they impart is timely. Authenticity is both relevant and timely to marketers. Companies that understand the importance of authenticity and are zealous about protecting the authenticity of their product or service offerings will be the winners in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

This is the latest in a series of several books (notably The Experience Economy: Work is Theater and Every Business a Stage and Markets of One: Creating Customer-Unique Value through Mass Customization) in which James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine focus on what Peter Drucker once identified as one of the greatest challenges any business faces: How to get and then keep profitable customers? Their thesis in this latest volume is that marketers need to address the problem of managing "the perceptions of real or fake held by the consumer's of [an] enterprise's output - because people increasingly make purchase decisions based on how real or fake they perceive offerings. These perceptions flow directly from how well any particular offering conforms to a customer's self-image."

In this volume, Gilmore and Pine examine "the authenticity of economic offerings, not the authenticity of individuals in personal relationships, something people also greatly desire but the subject of many other tomes." They cite two exemplars in particular - Disney and Starbucks - because no company "has more affected our collective view of what is real and what is not" than has Disney. As for Starbucks, no other company "more explicitly manages its perception of authenticity, making direct appeals to authenticity in every way" Gilmore and Pine define this new discipline.

Here are some of the specific issues they address with rigor and eloquence:

1. The appeal of "real"
2. The drivers of the new consumer sensibility
3. Three axioms of authenticity
4. Five genres of authenticity
5. Two "time-honored standards" of authenticity
6. Ten elements of authenticity
7. How to be what you say you are
8. How to continue to be "true to self"
9. The nature, extent, and interaction of five key "real/fake polarities"
10. How to sustain the authenticity of what is offered

Decision-makers in any organization (regardless of its size or nature) are provided a comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective program by which to address and resolve these and other issues. Of course, even if Gilmore and Pine were in residence, actively involved in the design and implementation of such a program, assistance, it cannot succeed unless the given offering is and remains inherently authentic, That is, it fully meets (if not exceeds) the given consumer's perceptions of the benefits claimed for it.

"When we say a thing or an event is real," wrote Pulitzer-winning novelist Carol Shields, "we honor it. But when a thing is made up - regardless of how true and just it seems - we turn up our noses." In an increasingly manufactured world, though, how can you give customers the genuine article? That's the question James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II answer in this comprehensive, polished and entertaining analysis of authenticity. Wandering through such diverse fields as existential philosophy, architectural criticism and even relativistic physics, the authors carefully gather the ingredients of authenticity. The diverse brew they concoct, though in places turbid, is eminently drinkable. We recommend this clever and provocative exploration of authenticity that will continue to ferment in your mind and affect your strategy long after its crisp finish.