Businesses collect lots of customer data to inform marketing, product and operations. Data from apps, engagement channels and products themselves. And so they should. It’s helpful to improve the business. But look again, and you’ll see this is all from a customer exhaust pipe.
The source paragraph in Cluetrain says, "So the customers who once looked you in the eye while hefting your wares in the market were transformed into consumers. In the words of industry analyst Jerry Michalski, a consumer was no more than "a gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash." Power swung so decisively to the supply side that "market" became a verb: something you do to customers."
The source paragraph in Cluetrain says, "So the customers who once looked you in the eye while hefting your wares in the market were transformed into consumers. In the words of industry analyst Jerry Michalski, a consumer was no more than "a gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash." Power swung so decisively to the supply side that "market" became a verb: something you do to customers."
After the book was published, Jerry told me I had heard him wrong, and corrected the quote to "gullets with wallets and eyeballs." I've since sourced that one-liner in a number of posts, for example here: https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2022/09/18/attention-is-not-a-commodity/
By the way, we are in extreme alignment on all the stuff you've been writing about customer agency. Let's talk soon. :-)