ridin' the wave on "the expectation economy"

from trendwatching.com comes a new phrase and a new trend called the expectation economy - cited on trendwatching's website as "an economy inhabited by experienced, well-informed consumers from Canada to South Korea who have a long list of high expectations that they apply to each and every good, service and experience on offer."

they cite the difference now from say the olden times (like 10 years ago) is that word of mouth can travel so quickly so that something new that happens across the globe can be picked up and talked about here so much faster.

trendwatching says that consumers' higher expectations will go unmet as companies are slow to keep up. some of their bullet points are

• your competition could be anyone - who's going to fill my need to read what i want when i want it (go to dailylit if yr interested in seeing a rather nifty concept in action);
• expectations are often set outside your industry (isn't google's "i like what i find well enough" a good example of this?
• just copying competitors is a race to the bottom - wow! we should be asking, says this article, who are our other competitors? what experiences could our product or serve be traded in for? and what can we learn from other industries setting consumer expectations across the board?

lots of food for thought here.........