Book Review: Capture the New Consumer

4. Make your product original, especially in design and manufacturing creativity. Example: Swatch’s colorful fashion watches.

Next, Lewis and Bridger suggest you “get fascinating.” We take it for granted that quality matters. We have quality-control teams and quality measures. But are we aiming high enough? Do we have quality that fascinates? To help explain what attracts this New Consumer, the authors compare the Leica camera to the Nikon: Both Nikon and Leica produce excellent, top-of-the-range cameras used by both professional and serious amateur photographers around the world. Yet while Nikons are generally regarded as a commodity, the Leica has achieved an aura of authenticity that allows it to appreciate in value over time. In part, the perceived ‘authenticity’ of the Leica in relation to other models may lie in the fact that it is used by internationally celebrated photographers. ... Mainly however, it resides in the camera’s exceptionally high engineering and quality of construction.