Part of this mission is to become the legitimate and authoritative champion and ‘voice of the consumer’. vlume is founded on the belief that consumers acting collectively can develop the power to influence markets and thus gain real value for the money they spend. Individual consumers, on the other hand, have little power, only the ‘freedom’ to act within the constraints set by the market.

vlume ’s mission is not to wield this collective power merely to achieve free goods and services. vlume is about delivering value for money and that may take many forms, from cheaper or more expensive goods and services to vlume -approved service level agreements that deliver value over time.

vlume is not a price comparison website. Nor is it a buyer’s club. It is a service that brokers the collective power of its members in the interests of delivering value for money – for its members and the companies that regard long-term customers as the key to their futures.

vlume and the technology it employs, is built and structured as an on-going conversation with its users and corporate service providers, to provide value for money to consumers and sustainable service businesses for the future.

Short-termism and customer value

We live in an increasingly risk-averse society where short-term expediency has gained ascendancy over the idea of the long-term future. Presentism invades all aspects of contemporary culture. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in business where a preoccupation with predictability and short-term results has replaced old notions of long term planning, investment or research for innovation; jobs for life and, indeed, customers for life. This quick-return low-risk culture has entrenched a culture of banal expediency. Increasingly customers are being flattered that they are the most important asset in business, but are, in reality, merely the vehicles of short-term commercial expediency.

This expediency has very negative consequences. In the first place, it presents lowered horizons and limited choice as the best and only choices available to the consumer. Limited choices force consumers to restrict their behaviours and aspirations. This appears to confirm the pragmatism of the enterprise and reinforces their self-flattery, which falsely suggests they are actually providing ‘what customers need’. The net result is a dumbed-down commercial culture that feeds on and nurtures an ever-decreasing pool of innovation – a scenario in which everyone loses.

Second, there is now an institutionalised bifurcation between value and price. Customer needs and experiences are increasingly measured in crude prices. The logic of such a spiral only increases the pressure to become even more pragmatic. As value increasingly equates with lowered prices, consumer choice is even more severely strained while the enterprise can see no alternative but to continue in the same way.

Third and perhaps most importantly, the potential of new innovation is squandered at a time when new digital technologies are opening up enormous opportunities for the future. New areas of value – particularly the richness of personal data and meta-data – which have the potential to transform the world, as we know it, will not be realised. Instead, such potential will only feed the existing culture of short-termism and at best, benefit only a few already wealthy corporations.

vlume will change all that.