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competitors in your marketplace gives customers the ability to 'talk with their feet' when they don't feel as though you are meeting their increasingly intangible and constantly changing desires.
Bottom-up accountability. A grassroots movement (be it word of mouth or mouse) can have a big impact on your reputation because of a positive or negative experience people have had with your brand.
    Let me give you an example of these three elements playing together. A bottom-up movement has led to a growing awareness of issues related to climate change and the impact business has on the environment. This growing awareness creates an opportunity for a company to differentiate itself (or on the flip side for a consumer to discriminate against a company) based on its level of 'green-ness'. Take Westpac's 'every generation should live better than the last' campaign. In 2003 it was the first Australian bank to join other leading banks around the world in signing the 'Equator Principles', promising not to finance projects that endanger local communities or the environment. A consumer may now keep competitors of Westpac accountable by not doing business with them, because they have not been as transparent and 'green' in their behaviour.
    Or consider that these days even the world's largest companies might find themselves at the mercy of two teenage girls armed with a high-school chemistry set. Ribena, for a long time a staple drink of pre-teens and young kids the world over, was advertised by manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline as containing four times the vitamin C of oranges.When two 14-year-old science students from New Zealand, Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo from Pakuranga College, Auckland, conducted an experiment to measure Ribena's vitamin C content, it came up terribly short.
    The girls' concerns were originally disregarded by the company, but a local TV program picked up the story, and it eventually ended up online. Not long after, the New Zealand Commerce Commission brought fifteen charges of false and misleading advertising against the company in the New Zealand District Court.
    So bad was the PR from the fallout that across the Tasman Ocean, in Australia, the company made a massive 'voluntar?' change to their packaging, and the managing director of GSK went on national television in a series of ads, making an apology.
    GlaxoSmithKline are the world's second largest pharmaceutical company, with global profits over £7.8 billion, and they have basically been held to account by two 14-year-olds with a bunsen burner and conical flask!
    This is just one example of how new technologies are empowering ordinary individuals and increasing bottomup accountability.
    4. INCREASING EXPECTATIONS
    The fourth force of change results from the other three and in turn feeds back into them: increasing expectations for faster, better, cheaper products, for more varied options and for greater transparency and flexibility in response to customer needs and wants. Let's consider the following product timeline.
    Twenty years ago it was standard to have two or three keys for your car – one to open the door and start the ignition, one to open the boot and perhaps another for your fuel cap. This evolved into just one key for both door and ignition and a button inside the car for access to the fuel cap.
    In an attempt to further improve the user experience, luxury car manufacturers decided to save drivers the immense effort required to stick a key in a lock and offered remote keyless entry, allowing the driver to press a button to unlock the door. Then they would need to put that remote key into either a traditional ignition and turn the car on or more recently hit the start button.
    Now even this is too much and you don't even have to take the key out of your pocket. The car automatically senses the key in proximity and when you place your hands on the door handle the car unlocks instantly. Then, leaving the key in your purse or pocket you hit the start button