Net worth: shaping markets when customers make the rules

From the Publisher: Sellers, beware. Buyers are losing their patience, and you're losing their trust. It's only a matter of time before they start hiring agents to represent them in many of their commercial transactions. This startling proposition lies at the heart of Net Worth, the new book from John Hagel. Here Hagel teams with Marc Singer to identify a powerful source of sustainable revenue through the internet, one with potential to upend the relationship between businesses and their customers and challenge our fundamental beliefs about marketing, brands, and value. In Net Worth, Hagel and Singer argue that consumers are mastering new technologies to capture their own information and deny access to others without their consent. Net Worth describes this convergence of commerce, technology, and consumer frustration as the incubator for a new kind of business - an information intermediary or infomediary - that seeks to protect customers' privacy while maximizing the value of their information assets. So that companies can get a jump on navigating this still-unfamiliar terrain, Net Worth lays out the underlying economic and competitive dynamics that will foster the emerging business of the infomediary.