Customer involvement

This concept is adopted from the present brand behind the scenes marketing. 

Exclusivity losing exclusiveness 

How many VIP cards do you have?
(Wikimedia.org, n.d.)

As trendwatching.com (2012) stated, bringing customers exclusivity is a trend for consumers. Consumers like it because it gain them status, give them convenience and they feel empathy. However, there is still a clear line between the relationship between companies and customers. Not mentioning the using exclusivity as a tool to maintain relationship with customers now become so common and abused. For example, airlines loyalty programme was a popular method to treat important customers and there was strict requirement to join such as people has to accumulate certain points in order to register. But nowadays it become so accessible - simply fill in a form then you can become one. All people need to do is to accumulate mileages afterwards to level up their privileges. Most of the airlines have loyalty programme. Exclusivity closely relate to scarce, uniqueness, limitation, restriction (Oxforddictionaries.com, n.d.). When these exclusivity means became widely adapted, exclusivity lose its exclusiveness. So what else can companies do to further stretch the exclusivity to build up a closer relationship with their customers?

The epic exclusivity?

Beyond the trend behind the scene marketing, some business further stretch (or blur) the relationship with customers: they let customers to take part in their business. So customers are no longer customers, but investors or even part of the production. Star Wreck, a movie that its production funding was by crowd funding is a good example. It started with a group of 5 students and unemployed people produced a short movie aimed at Star Trek fans and posted it online. It was so well received that people want them to make it into a full length movie. Financially they could not make it themselves. The fans were so enthusiastic, they sponsored the production to make it feasible (StarWreck.com, n.d.). Another example is a music event that I went to in March. It was a recording session of Metropole Orkest and Snarky Puppy's music DVD. By paying a certain amount of fee, I was not only an audience that could listen to their performance during the shooting, but also have chance to be inside the videos of the DVD. For some crowd funding movies, sponsors can take part in the production, be an actor or marketer too.

Concept's significance to company and customer 

Kolter P. & Armstrong G. (2013) said "Marketing is managing profitable customer relationships". This definition may not be entirely correct anymore. Other than purely a customer, what other possible relationships that a company can build up with a person that is interested in it? Can this person has more characters and more profit to the company other than money? Could a customer be more into and willing to spend on experience what a business does other than the end-product it provides? These all are directions that should be further investigated and explored.