Google Rule

Industry Examples

New Retailer Rule

New Relationship

Your worst customer is your friend; you best customer is your partner

Newegg.com lets manufacturers respond
to customer comments that are critical of the product, and their EggXpert site lets customers help other customers.

Listen to what your customers are saying about you.  Convert the critics to fans and the fans to
influencers.

New Architecture

Join a network; be a platform

Tesco and BestBuy
released APIs for their product catalogs so third-parties could create new
applications.

Become a destination for information.

New Publicness

Life is public, so is business

Zappos and WholeFoods
founders are prolific tweeters/bloggers, sharing their opinions and
connecting to customers.  It's not
always pretty, but it's genuine.

Be transparent.  Share both your successes and failures with
your customers.

New Society

Elegant organization

Wet Seal helps their customers
assemble outfits and show them off to each other.  Barnes & Noble
has a community site that includes a bookclub.

Communities of your customers already exist, so help them organize better.

New Economy

Mass market is dead; long live the mass of niches

lululemon found a niche for yoga
inspired athletic wear.  Threadless uses crowd-sourcing to design short-runs
of T-shirts.

Serve small markets with niche products.

New Business Reality

Decide what business you're in

When Lowes realized catering to women
brought the men along, their sales increased.

Customers want experiences to go with the products they buy.

New Attitude

Trust the people and listen

In 2008 Starbucks launched
MyStartbucksIdea to solicit ideas from their customers.

Use social networks as additional data points for making better
merchandising decisions.

New Ethic

Be honest and transparent; don't be evil

Target is giving away reusable
shopping bags for Earth Day.  Kohl's has outfitted 67 stores with solar arrays.

Being green
earns customers'
respect and lowers costs too.

New Speed

Life is live

H&M and
Zara keep up with fashion trends.

Be prepared
to pounce on you customers' fickle interests.

New Imperatives

Encourage, enable and protect innovation

1-800-Flowers was the first do sales
in Facebook and an early adopter of mobile commerce.  The Sears
Personal Shopper mobile app finds products based on a photo.

Give your staff permission to fail so innovation won't be
stifled.