03/14/2018

How to Avoid the “Dark Side” of Membership

Value and benefits come with the membership experience - until they don't

I tend to think of membership as a win-win. After all, people pay dues and join an organization because value and benefits come with the experience.

In her book The Membership Economy, Robbie Kellman Baxter, president of Peninsula Strategies, also focuses on the many positives of membership. She even predicts that it will become “the future of all business models.”

While we are certainly seeing the "consumerization" of membership—think Amazon, Netflix, Spotify or Blue Apron—not all member experiences have rosy outcomes. In fact, Baxter notes that membership has a “dark side.” She first heard about it from a friend who at the time was running a news-sharing site built around a wide base of online members.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.