Consumer Behavior Books: A Core Collection: Home

By any measure, the affluent sector is growing exponentially, and is far more diverse (in terms of ethnicity, education, location, and professional background) than at any time in the past. In 2004, there were 8.2 million households in the United States with net worth over $1 million, excluding primary residence. Meanwhile, between 1995 and 2001, the number of families filing tax returns for income exceeding $200,000 doubled. This market represents lucrative opportunities for companies that understand how these consumers think, act, and make purchasing decisions. Applying primary research, including demographic and economic data Ronald Michman and Edward Mazze present a comprehensive approach to analyzing affluent consumers--and creating, promoting, and selling innovative products and services to them. Illustrating their principles through dozens of examples the authors deconstruct how a complex market segment works. Dispelling popular myths and misconceptions about the composition and behavior of this segment, they provide not only a practical guide for marketers and students of marketing, but a fascinating glimpse into a culture driven by materialism, status, and aspirations to luxury.

The unqualified victory of consumerism in America was not a foregone conclusion. The United States has traditionally been the home of the most aggressive and often thoughtful criticism of consumption, including Puritanism, Prohibition, the simplicity movement, the '60s hippies, and the consumer rights movement. But at the dawn of the twenty-first century, not only has American consumerism triumphed, there isn't even an "ism" left to challenge it. An All-Consuming Century is a rich history of how market goods came to dominate American life over that remarkable hundred years between 1900 and 2000 and why for the first time in history there are no practical limits to consumerism. The consumerism of today, thriving and largely unchecked, no longer brings families and communities together; instead, it increasingly divides and isolates Americans. Consumer culture has provided affluent societies with peaceful alternatives to tribalism and class war, Cross writes, and it has fueled extraordinary economic growth. The challenge for the future is to find ways to revive the still valid portion of the culture of constraint and control the overpowering success of the all-consuming twentieth century.

You don't care who can access your data because you have nothing to hide. But what if corporations were using that data to control your decisions? As millions of consumers carry on unaware, powerful corporations race to collect more and more data about our behaviors, needs, and desires. This massive trove of data represents one of the most valuable assets on the planet. In All You Can Pay, Anna Bernasek and D. T. Mongan show how companies use what they know about you to determine how much you are willing to pay for everything you buy. From college tuition to plane tickets to groceries to medicine, companies already set varying prices based on intimate knowledge of individual wants and purchasing power. As the consumer age fades into history, rapidly changing prices and complex offers tailored to each individual are spreading like a fog over the free market. Data giants know everything about us before we enter stores or open our browsers. We may think that the Internet lets us find the best deals, but the extensive information companies have about us means that the price we see tends toward the maximum they know we can pay. In a momentous shift, the economics of information will turn our economy on its head. Fair bargaining is over.

From Tim Wu, author of the award-winning The Master Switch ( a New Yorker and Fortune Book of the Year) and who coined the term "net neutrality"--a revelatory, ambitious and urgent account of how the capture and re-sale of human attention became the defining industry of our time.   Feeling attention challenged? Even assaulted? American business depends on it. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of messaging, advertising enticements, branding, sponsored social media, and other efforts to harvest our attention. Few moments or spaces of our day remain uncultivated by the "attention merchants," contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. From the pre-Madison Avenue birth of advertising to the explosion of the mobile web; from AOL and the invention of email to the attention monopolies of Google and Facebook; from Ed Sullivan to celebrity power brands like Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump, the basic business model of "attention merchants" has never changed: free diversion in exchange for a moment of your consideration, sold in turn to the highest-bidding advertiser. Wu describes the revolts that have risen against the relentless siege of our awareness, from the remote control to the creation of public broadcasting to Apple's ad-blocking OS. But he makes clear that attention merchants are always growing new heads, even as their means of getting inside our heads are changing our very nature--cognitive, social, political and otherwise--in ways unimaginable even a generation ago.   "A startling and sweeping examination of the increasingly ubiquitous commercial effort to capture and commodify our attention...We've become the consumers, the producers, and the content. We are selling ourselves to ourselves." --Tom Vanderbilt, The New Republic   "An erudite, energizing, outraging, funny and thorough history...A devastating critique of ad tech as it stands today, transforming "don't be evil" into the surveillance business model in just a few short years. It connects the dots between the sale of advertising inventory in schools to the bizarre ecosystem of trackers, analyzers and machine-learning models that allow the things you look at on the web to look back at you...This stuff is my daily beat, and I learned a lot from Attention Merchants." --Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing  "Illuminating." --Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review of Books 

In Authenticity, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that, to trounce rivals, companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, non-profit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers' perception of authenticity. The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers' intensifying demand for the real deal.

In the tradition of Why We Buy, this is a marketer's guidebook to what motivates grocery store consumers to choose or pass over certain products. Written by a widely-respected and passionate supermarket analyst, this book explores the buyer's choice. Lempert reveals the secrets to catching even the most fickle consumer's attention and how to establish lasting brand loyalty through powerful marketing strategies. This is a must-read for marketers, brand managers, and retailers everywhere-not just for grocery stores-that dissects each and every aspect of the shopping experience, showing how to appeal to today's discriminating consumer.

Friedman narrates how salesmanship became integral to American capitalism. He argues that salesmanship, which in 2000 involved 16 million Americans in various sales positions, has contributed to the systematization and standardization of production, distribution, and consumption of goods. He focuses on those most responsible for "devis[ing] innovative and effective sales strategies," including academics such as Walter Dill Scott and corporate managers such as John Patterson at National Cash Register. Friedman shows how sellers evolved in the 19th and early 20th centuries from peddlers, hawkers, and drummers to modern salesmen with their emphasis on order, control, efficiency, professionalism, improved customer relations, industrial psychology, mass consumerism, and scientific salesmanship. He also considers gender issues, e.g., how men dominated sales, shunting women to less prestigious positions such as door-to-door sales agents. A worthy purchase for academic and public libraries with business collections.

The total number of affluent ethnic households in the United States in now estimated at over 1.3 million, the buying power of affluent African Americans (referred to as AAA’s in this book) is currently $87.3 billion. It would be foolish in the extreme not to tap into this rich buying segment, yet that is exactly what the marketing arms of companies do all too frequently. Sometimes this is because the executives in a particular marketing department are unaware of the potential that exists within this segment, sometimes it’s because they are baffled about how to reach out to this segment and sometimes it’s because they think they lack the money or resources to make a credible effort at adding a whole new segment. And sometimes, unfortunately, it’s because they have reached out in the past but their efforts were unappealing to the AAA audience. Black is the New Green will show you how to attract this lucrative market and create brand loyalty and product bonding among affluent African Americans in an affordable and measurable way.

The historian/host of the History Channel's History Center, Gillion chronicles post-WWII America through the lives of six boomers who represent different strands of baby boom culture which Gillon asserts has become synonymous with American culture. Four of his subjects have achieved national prominence: Bobby Muller, who founded Vietnam Veterans of America; lawyer and cancer survivor Fran Visco, who became president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition; Marshall Herskovitz, developer of the seminal television series Thirtysomething; and architect Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, who created the avant-garde Florida community of Seaside. Together with Donny Deutsch, a self-made advertising mogul, and AlbertaWilson, who overcame substance abuse and poverty to become a Christian educator, they provide the focus for a look at the Vietnam War, the women's movement and the attraction of some boomers to fundamentalist religion. What Gillon uniquely accomplishes is to illuminate how pervasive boomer influence continues to be in the 21st century.

Customers use mental short cuts when making product and brand choices. Learning about the automatic thoughts that your brand evokes in the minds of customers provides valuable information. Brand Choice provides tools for revealing customers' automatic thoughts and how such thoughts can be used to accurately forecast brand choice. This book advocates finding out what attributes-benefits are evoked by your brand and your brand's competing brands, rather than asking 'What does your brand evoke?'." Strategic thinking by customers includes their focusing attention on how, when, where, and why they buy and use brands and products. This book advocates the long interview method and never using mail survey questionnaires to reveal customers' strategic thinking. The book gives nuance, details, and case examples on how to accurately reveal what customers really think and do.

Reprints 54 articles published between the middle 1950s to the middle 1990s by Levy (marketing, U. of Arizona), whose work has influenced executives since the late 1940s. They cover a life in the marketplace, marketing, products and brands, the symbolic nature of marketing, consumer analysis and observations, and qualitative methods of marketing study. Rook (clinical marketing, U. of Southern California) selected the articles and provides a substantial introduction. The collection is a useful reference for professionals, teachers, and students.

Marketing visionary Martin Lindstrom has been on the front lines of the branding wars for over twenty years. Here, he turns the spotli Fght on his own industry, drawing on all he has witnessed behind closed doors, exposing for the first time the full extent of the psychological tricks and traps that companies devise to win our hard-earned dollars. This searing expose introduces a new class of tricks, techniques, and seductions – the Hidden Persuaders of the 21st century- and shows why they are more insidious and pervasive than ever.

Marketing experts Robert Witeck and Wesley Combs distill breaking research trends with their partner Harris Interactive and apply more than a decade’s client experience into the core insights of Business Inside Out. While other books have focused on specific dimensions of the gay market—political concerns, social issues, and identity—this is the first-ever resource to provide a complete, real-world approach to targeting this valuable segment. From building a strong business case and developing winning strategies, to designing the right media mix and measuring results, Business Inside Out gives business professionals the knowledge they need to capture the loyalty and wallets of customers in this powerful and still emerging niche market.

Over the past decade, a variety of national corporations, including Subaru, Tanqueray, Abercrombie & Fitch, and American Express, have pitched their products at a new consumer niche: the gay market. In this hard-hitting book that refutes conventional wisdom, Katherine Sender argues that marketing has been integral in the constitution of a GLBT community and identity since the 1970s and has had significant impact on the visibility of gays and lesbians in the broader society." "Advocates and critics have looked at the boom in the gay market with both excitement and trepidation. For some, gay and lesbian themes in advertising represent mainstream validation of their existence, while others are concerned that marketers have misrepresented the gay community by depicting it as white, male, and wealthy. Critics also suggest that the phenomenon of gay consumerism runs counter to progressive gay activism. Sender expands on these concerns, arguing that what is at stake is not only acceptance and civil rights but also the very meaning of GLBT sexual identification. The book analyzes and gives an insider's account of how marketers conceive of gay and lesbian consumers and articulate the "gayness" of certain products.

Named one of Fortune Magazine's "5 Best Business Books" in 2015 See your offering through the buyer's eyes for more effective marketing Buyer Personas is the marketer's actionable guide to learning what your buyer wants and how they make decisions. Written by the world's leading authority on buyer personas, this book provides comprehensive coverage of a compelling new way to conduct buyer studies, plus practical advice on adopting the buyer persona approach to measurably improve marketing outcomes. Readers will learn how to segment their customer base, investigate each customer type, and apply a radically more relevant process of message selection, content creation, and distribution through the channels that earn the buyers' trust. Rather than relying on generic data or guesswork to determine what the buyer wants, the buyer persona approach allows companies to ask the buyer directly and obtain more precise and actionable guidance. Buyer personas are composite pictures of the people who buy solutions, services or products, crafted through a unique type of interview with the people the marketer wants to influence. This book provides step-by-step guidance toward implementing the buyer persona approach, with the advice of an internationally-respected expert. Learn who buys what, and why Understand your buyer's goals and how you can address them Tailor your marketing activities to your buyer's expectations See the purchase through the customer's eyes A recent services industry survey reports that 52 percent of their marketers have buyer personas, and another 28 percent expect to add them within the next two years - but only 14.6 percent know how to use them. To avoid letting such a valuable tool go to waste, access the expert perspective in Buyer Personas, and craft a more relevant marketing strategy.

Far from ephemeral consumer trends, buying green and avoiding sweatshop-made clothing represent the most recent points on a centuries-long continuum of American consumer activism. A sweeping and definitive history of this political tradition, Buying Power traces its lineage back to our nation’s founding, revealing that Americans used purchasing power to support causes and punish enemies long before the word boycott even entered our lexicon. A powerful corrective to the notion that a consumer society degrades and diminishes its citizenry, Buying Power provides a new lens through which to view the history of the United States.

How much do we know about why we buy? What truly influences our decisions in today's message-cluttered world? An eye-grabbing advertisement, a catchy slogan, an infectious jingle? Or do our buying decisions take place below the surface, so deep within our subconscious minds, we're barely aware of them? In BUYOLOGY, Lindstrom, who was voted one of Time Magazine's most influential people of 2009, presents the astonishing findings from his groundbreaking, three-year, seven-million-dollar neuromarketing study, a cutting-edge experiment that peered inside the brains of 2,000 volunteers from all around the world as they encountered various ads, logos, commercials, brands, and products. His startling results shatter much of what we have long believed about what seduces our interest and drives us to buy.

Paco Underhill, the Margaret Mead of shopping and author of the huge international bestseller Why We Buy, now takes us to the mall, a place every American has experienced and has an opinion about. The result is a bright, ironic, funny, and shrewd portrait of the mall — America's gift to personal consumption, its most powerful icon of global commercial muscle, the once new and now aging national town square, the place where we convene in our leisure time. It's about the shopping mall as an exemplar of our commercial and social culture, the place where our young people have their first taste of social freedom and where the rest of us compare notes. Call of the Mall examines how we use the mall, what it means, why it works when it does, and why it sometimes doesn't.

Children have been studied and considered as a potential consumer market since the mid-1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, the research on children focused heavily on television and its effects. In the last two decades, as the economic significance of children as consumers has grown, manufacturers and retailers alike have reexamined their attention to children. During this same time period, the research on children in the consumer role has dramatically expanded in volume and variety. Research studies covered in this volume were selected from a wide range of sources, including professional journals, books, and trade papers. They provide a description of both the factors affecting the consumer behavior of youth and their actual consumption behavior and preferences. Approximately 220 different journals and proceedings are represented in the 836 summaries included in the bibliography.

Children - Consumption, Advertising and Media is a comprehensive collection of the newest international research on children and advertising.The book aims to present recent studies by researchers working in the field of consumption, advertising and media in relation to children. The purpose is to shed light on the relationship between consumer behavior, advertising and communication in general with a special focus on children and adolescents.
The book is suitable for undergraduate as well as graduate studies. It is also relevant to any person who has an interest in the development of children as consumers, their consumption and not least their relationship to advertising and media.

Sometime in the 1970s and 1980s, the use of credit cards, which had begun as a convenience, began to grow into an addiction. Collateral Damaged: The Marketing of Consumer Debt to America explains how a nation of savers became a nation of consumers and how Wall Street used consumers' addiction to spending to create the "toxic securities" that threaten to bring about the collapse of the global economy. Geisst looks at the policy implications of the credit crisis and describes how the United States can get its fiscal house in order.

Pink ribbons, red dresses, and greenwashing--American corporations are scrambling to tug at consumer heartstrings through cause-related marketing, corporate social responsibility, and ethical branding, tactics that can increase sales by as much as 74%. Harmless? Marketing insider Mara Einstein demonstrates in this penetrating analysis why the answer is a resounding "No!" In Compassion, Inc. she outlines how cause-related marketing desensitizes the public by putting a pleasant face on complex problems. She takes us through the unseen ways in which large sums of consumer dollars go into corporate coffers rather than helping the less fortunate. She also discusses companies that truly do make the world a better place, and those that just pretend to.

A compelling investigation into the minds, motives, and methods of con artists--and the people who fall for their cons over and over again. While cheats and swindlers may be a dime a dozen, true conmen--the Bernie Madoffs, the Jim Bakkers, the Lance Armstrongs--are elegant, outsized personalities, artists of persuasion and exploiters of trust. How do they do it? Why are they successful? And what keeps us falling for it, over and over again? These are the questions that journalist and psychologist Maria Konnikova tackles in her mesmerizing new book.   From multimillion-dollar Ponzi schemes to small-time frauds, Konnikova pulls together a selection of fascinating stories to demonstrate what all cons share in common, drawing on scientific, dramatic, and psychological perspectives. Insightful and gripping, the book brings readers into the world of the con, examining the relationship between artist and victim. The Confidence Game asks not only why we believe con artists, but also examines the very act of believing and how our sense of truth can be manipulated by those around us.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. For many of us, modern memory is shaped less by a longing for the social customs and practices of the past or for family heirlooms handed down over generations and more by childhood encounters with ephemeral commercial goods and fleeting media moments in our age of fast capitalism. This phenomenon has given rise to communities of nostalgia whose members remain loyal to the toys, television, and music of their youth. They return to the theme parks and pastimes of their upbringing, hoping to reclaim that feeling of childhood wonder or teenage freedom. Consumed nostalgia took definite shape in the 1970s, spurred by an increase in the turnover of consumer goods, the commercialization of childhood, and the skillful marketing of nostalgia. Gary Cross immerses readers in this fascinating and often delightful history, unpacking the cultural dynamics that turn pop tunes into oldies and childhood toys into valuable commodities. He compares the limited appeal of heritage sites such as Colonial Williamsburg to the perpetually attractive power of a Disney theme park and reveals how consumed nostalgia shapes how we cope with accelerating change. Today nostalgia can be owned, collected, and easily accessed, making it less elusive and often more fun than in the past, but its commercialization has sometimes limited memory and complicated the positive goals of recollection. By unmasking the fascinating, idiosyncratic character of modern nostalgia, Cross helps us better understand the rituals of recall in an age of fast capitalism.

Consumer Behaviour is the first truly European consumer behaviour textbook, placing the subject clearly within its economic, psychological, sociological and historical context. The authors provide greater insight for readers by examining both the determinants and the consequences of consumer decision making. Antonides and Van Raaij include numerous examples, cases and sociodemographic data and provide complete coverage of core topics together with important new ones.The authors explore the full consumption cycle, not only the first stages of orientation and procurement, but also the usage and disposal of products. Consumer Behaviour is ideal for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. It will also benefit non-European students who need to gain a wider understanding of consumer behaviour. Marketers, market researchers, public relations officers and government officials dealing with consumer policy will also find it extremely useful.

Consumer behavior is not converging across countries, argues this textbook, placing the question of cultural difference at the center of examinations of purchasing behavior. It bases its discussion of culture and consumer behavior on a model of national culture that distinguishes five dimensions for understanding culture: power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation.

Solomon goes beyond the discussion of why people buy things and explores how products, services, and consumption activities contribute to shape people’s social experiences. Social networking, sensory marketing, illusion of truth effect, interactive mobile marketing, cross-cultural value differences, impression management, doppelganger brand image, red campaign, CSR, low literate consumer, crowdsourcing, and multigenerational marketing. For marketing professionals to understand the latest trends in consumer behavior.

Asia currently accounts for a quarter of the world economy and half of the world's population. Few international companies can afford to ignore a market of such size and importance. Yet despite the centrality of Asia as a market, there exists a remarkable dearth of marketing theory specific to Asia. Cultural differences strongly influence consumer behavior. In the West, an effective brand name will be short, distinctive, memorable, and indicative of the product's functions. In Asia, however, a strong belief in luck and fate means that additional qualities, such as whether the characters which make up a product name are "lucky" ones, has a significant effect on brand attitude. Successful sales and marketing strategies in Asia must be rooted in an understanding of the cultural differences which affect Asian consumers' buying patterns. Consumer Behavior in Asia provides an invaluable guide to Western companies seeking to maximize their marketing success in Asia. Drawing on illustrations from a variety of Asian markets, the volume outlines the differences between Asian and Western cultures along cultural dimensions such as religion, tradition, and philosophy, explaining the effect such differences have on communication styles, brand loyalty, perceptions of products offered, and effective advertising methods.

Despite the increasing occurrence of consumer boycotts, little has been written about this form of social and economic protest. This timely volume fills the knowledge gap by examining boycotts both historically and currently. Drawing on both published and unpublished material as well as personal interviews with boycott groups and their targets, Monroe Friedman discusses different types of boycotts-from their historical focus on labor and economic concerns to the more recent inclusion of issues such as minority rights, animal welfare, and environmental protection. He also documents the shift in strategic emphasis from the marketplace (cutting consumer sales) to the media (securing news coverage to air criticism of a targeted firm). In turn, these changes in boycott substance and style offer insights into larger upheavals in the social and economic fabric of 20th century America.

Problems and crises. Analyses and answers. Contemporary World Issues explores--topic by topic--the critical challenges facing America and the world in the 21st century. 24-hour cable news. Millions of Internet sites. Information overload. How can we sort through the information? Assess the analyses? Trust the sources? Contemporary World Issues provides a simple solution -- informed and readable authors offering concise yet thorough discussions of today's most talked-about topics as they affect America and the world. Exploring such diverse subjects as tobacco and terrorism, rainforests and religion, affirmative action and urban sprawl, Contemporary World Issues provides the historical background, the contemporary context, and the resources for further research. Exhaustive, concise, accessible, accurate, and up-to-date.

Consumer Panels is the definitive work on the topic. By integrating cutting-edge academic research with global best practices, Consumer Panels provides data-driven tips on reducing reactivity and burnout, improving recruitment and retention, and cutting costs while increasing data quality. In addition, the book provides research-based guidance on reducing biases in electronic panels and on anticipating future developments in panel research. For expert market researchers, it provides new tips, ideas, and state-of-the-art innovations for leveraging both online and offline panels. For brand managers, it provides clear guidance on how to better understand consumers with less cost, time, and effort. For academics, it provides advice on how to develop and use convenience panels to answer difficult questions about purchase trends and consumption patterns.

Consumption has often been called America's true national pastime. From the earliest European explorers trading with Native Americans to today's Internet shoppers, consumerism has driven American society. Until recent years, however, consumerism has received little serious attention from historians and other scholars. This welcome volume offers the most comprehensive and incisive exploration of American consumer history to date. The first book on this topic to span the four centuries from the colonial era to the present, and the first to propose theoretical frameworks, the volume brings consumer society to the center of American history. Indeed, its authors demonstrate the many ways their research enhances knowledge of a broad range of historical topics, such as politics, labor ideology, immigrant life, and race, gender, and class relations. By including types of consumer studies which are seldom linked, this volume offers both a basis for historical synthesis and a springboard for further inquiry.

Consumer Tribes are all the rage. Across the landscape of global business and throughout the Internet, the impassioned power of Consumer Tribes is being recognized and channeled into new forms of promotion and new businesses. Whether you are a consumer researcher, a sociologist, a marketer, a cultural trend spotter, or just an interested observer, you will benefit from understanding the intricacies of today's communal consumer culture. A powerful resource, Consumer Tribes presents cutting edge research that informs while it inspires. You hold in your hands the first book to carefully examine this global phenomenon.

In this highly informative and entertaining book, Dr. Gad Saad, the founder of the vibrant new field of evolutionary consumption, illuminates the relevance of our biological heritage to our daily lives as consumers. While culture is important, Dr. Saad shows that innate evolutionary forces deeply influence the foods we eat, the gifts we offer, the cosmetics and clothing styles we choose to make ourselves more attractive to potential mates, and even the cultural products that stimulate our imaginations (such as art, music, and religion). The Consuming Instinct demonstrates that most acts of consumption can be mapped onto four key Darwinian drives—namely, survival (we prefer foods high in calories); reproduction (we use products as sexual signals); kin selection (we naturally exchange gifts with family members); and reciprocal altruism (we enjoy offering gifts to close friends). For anyone interested in the biological basis of human behavior or simply in what makes consumers tick—marketing professionals, advertisers, psychology mavens, and consumers themselves—The Consuming Instinct is a fascinating read.

If you have ever wondered why SUVs replaced minivans, how one rap song turned the cognac industry upside down, or what gives Levi's jeans their iconic allure, look no further-in Cool, Steven Quartz and Anette Asp finally explain the fascinating science behind unexpected trends and enduring successes. We live in a world of conspicuous consumption, where the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, and the food we eat lead double lives: they don't merely satisfy our needs; they also communicate our values, identities, and aspirations. In Beverly Hills, tourists flock to the famous Rodeo Drive-not to shop, but simply to take photographs of themselves in front of luxury stores. And for one week in August, hundreds of thousands of HarleyDavidson fans from all over the world descend on the remote town of Sturgis, South Dakota, and engulf the otherwise sleepy hamlet in the deafening roar of motorcycle engines. Why do brands inspire such devotion? Quartz and Asp bring together groundbreaking findings in neuroscience, economics, and evolutionary biology to present a new understanding of why we consume and how our concepts of what is "cool"-be it designer jeans, smartphones, or craft beer-help drive the global economy. The authors highlight the underlying neurological and cultural processes that contribute to our often unconscious decision making, explaining how we're able to navigate the supermarket on autopilot for certain items and yet arrive at the checkout counter with a basket full of products picked up on the spur of the moment. And they explore the opposite side of the consumer equation-the "choice architects" who design store interiors and the "coolhunters" who scour Berlin and Tokyo on the lookout for the latest trends. Through a novel combination of cultural and economic history and in-depth studies of the brain, Cool puts forth a provocative theory of consumerism that reveals the crucial missing links in an understanding of our spending habits: our brain's status-seeking "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel that fuels our dislike of being subordinated by others. Quartz and Asp show how these ancient motivations make us natural-born consumers and how they sparked the emergence of "cool consumption"in the middle of the twentieth century, creating new lifestyle choices and routes to happiness. Examining how cool was reshaped in the 1990s by a changing society and the Internet, they unpack the social motivations behind today's hip, ethical consumption, arguing that we should embrace, rather than deny, the power of consumerism. Taking us from Norman Mailer to normcore, Cool is surprising at every turn, and will forever change the way you think about money, status, desire, happiness, and choice.

Filled with solid, actionable information and advice, this unique handbook focuses on how knowledge of the principles of consumer psychology can be used to improve managerial decision making and organizational performance. The contributing authors offer a set of managerial rules for action that have been distilled from reviews of a wide range of expert research. The book contains systematic, prescriptive managerial advice based on state-of-the-art knowledge regarding how consumers think and choose. The chapters cover fundamental topics, such as new product management, marketing mix strategy, marketing communications and advertising, social media, and experiential marketing.

A follow-up to Grant McCracken's groundbreaking Culture and Consumption, this new book trades the usual platitudes about the consumer society for a more detailed, exacting anthropological treatment. Each section of the book pairs a brief essay with an academic article. The essay is designed for a quick, provocative glimpse of the topic; the article provides a deeper anthropological treatment. The book opens with a broadside against the now thoroughly conventionalized attack on the consumer culture. Essays follow on homes, cars, people, and social mobility; celebrities, consumerism, and self-invention; museums and the power of objects; the anthropology of advertising; and marketing, meaning management, and value. Like McCracken's previous volume, this new book is an engaging, informative, and eye-opening foray into modern consumer culture.

This provocative book takes a refreshing new view of the culture of consumption. Mc
Cracken examines the interplay of culture and consumer behavior from the anthropologist's point of view and provides new insights into the way we view ourselves and our society.

The Internet is often hyped as a means to enhanced consumer power: a hypercustomized media world where individuals exercise unprecedented control over what they see and do. That is the scenario media guru Nicholas Negroponte predicted in the 1990s, with his hypothetical online newspaper The Daily Me—and it is one we experience now in daily ways. But, as media expert Joseph Turow shows, the customized media environment we inhabit today reflects diminished consumer power. Not only ads and discounts but even news and entertainment are being customized by newly powerful media agencies on the basis of data we don’t know they are collecting and individualized profiles we don’t know we have. Little is known about this new industry: how is this data being collected and analyzed? And how are our profiles created and used? Drawing on groundbreaking research, including interviews with industry insiders, this important book shows how advertisers have come to wield such power over individuals and media outlets—and what can be done to stop it.

Your cell phone provider tracks your location and knows who's with you. Your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, and reveal if you're unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts expose your intimate and casual friends. Google knows what you're thinking because it saves your private searches. Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it. The powers that surveil us do more than simply store this information. Corporations use surveillance to manipulate not only the news articles and advertisements we each see, but also the prices we're offered. Governments use surveillance to discriminate, censor, chill free speech, and put people in danger worldwide. And both sides share this information with each other or, even worse, lose it to cybercriminals in huge data breaches. Much of this is voluntary: we cooperate with corporate surveillance because it promises us convenience, and we submit to government surveillance because it promises us protection. The result is a mass surveillance society of our own making. But have we given up more than we've gained? In Data and Goliath, security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, one that values both security and privacy. He shows us exactly what we can do to reform our government surveillance programs and shake up surveillance-based business models, while also providing tips for you to protect your privacy every day. You'll never look at your phone, your computer, your credit cards, or even your car in the same way again.

Once luxury was available only to the rarefied and aristocratic world of old money and royalty. It offered a history of tradition, superior quality, and a pampered buying experience. Today, however, luxury is simply a product packaged and sold by multibillion-dollar global corporations focused on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and, above all, profits. Award-winning journalist Dana Thomas digs deep into the dark side of the luxury industry to uncover all the secrets that Prada, Gucci, and Burberry don't want us to know. Deluxe is an uncompromising look behind the glossy façade that will enthrall anyone interested in fashion, finance, or culture.

In Demand, Adrian Slywotzky provides a radically new way to think about demand, with a big idea and a host of practical applications—not just for people in business but also for social activists, government leaders, non-profit managers, and other would-be innovators. To succeed in their various missions, all these groups need to master such ground-breaking concepts as the hassle map (and the secrets of fixing it); the curse of the incomplete product (and how to avoid it); why “very good” does not equal “magnetic”; how what you don’t see can make or break a product; the art of transforming fence sitters into customers; why there’s no such thing as an average customer; and why real demand comes from a 45-degree angle of improvement (rather than the five degrees most organizations manage).

Capitalism and slavery stand as the two economic phenomena that have most clearly defined the United States. Yet, despite African Americans' nearly $500 billion annual spending power, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the ways U.S. businesses have courted black dollars in post-slavery America. Robert E. Weems, Jr., presents the first fully integrated history of black consumerism over the course of the last century. Desegregating the Dollar takes us through the "blaxploitation" film industry, the vast market for black personal care products, and the insidious exploitation of black urban misery by liquor and cigaretteadvertisers. Robert E. Weems, Jr., has given us the definitive account of the complicated relationship between African Americans, capitalism, and consumerism.

An Oregon marketer and a Vermont writer on the women's market dispel stereotypes about women's buying habits, in examining how to develop reality-based strategies for reaching this key market. Rather than resorting to pink packaging that women in focus groups nixed, marketers are advised on how to tailor "brand experiences" to meet the needs of women in specific demographic niches. Several recommended readings and Web resources are listed.

This major new reference book provides an authoritative analysis and survey of consumer research and economic psychology. It provides an international, in-depth overview of the present state of knowledge and theory which will be indispensable to students, researchers and practitioners. The companion presents over 100 specially commissioned entries on important topics in consumer research and economic psychology from behaviourism and brand loyalty to trust and the psychology of tourism. Leading scholars in the fields provide stimulating insights into the area as well as summarizing existing knowledge. The book will ably meet the needs of undergraduate and graduate students in business administration, economics, marketing and psychology, as well as informing researchers and practitioners in those disciplines.

Arjun Chaudhuri offers a thorough review of the important role of emotions in his book entitled Emotion and Reason in Consumer Behavior. The text describes the complex interface between emotion, reason, and subsequent consumer behavior, including the relationship of emotion and reason with other important concepts like involvement, learning, perceived risk, and trust. The Chaudhuri text also offers a complete review of the theoretical underpinnings of emotion, as well as insights regarding measurement. As such, the text provides considerable guidance for academics teaching consumer behavior and/or interested in research areas in which emotional effects are prevalent.

Decision-making can be difficult and often results in necessary trade-offs, e.g., safety versus price in the purchasing of an automobile. This work provides a model of trade-off difficulty, focusing on its antecedents and consequences. The authors advance a new framework for the integration of the emotional and cognitive aspects of decision-making and argue that consumers perceive and appraise their choices in light of their goals and potential coping strategies.

"Emotions, Advertising and Consumer Choice" focuses on recent neurological and psychological insights - originating from brain scanning or neurological experiments - on basic emotional processes in the brain and their role in controlling human behaviour. These insights are translated by the authors to cover the behaviour of ordinary individuals in everyday life.The book looks at these developments in the light of traditional cognitive theories of consumer choice and it discusses the implications for advertising and other communication testing. The book offers a first time thorough review of contemporary thinking in the field of consumer behaviour and an exhaustive amount of empirical evidence to support the authors' notion of an emerging paradigm of emotionally based consumer choice where mental brand equity becomes a central phenomenon. The empirical evidence is to a large extent developed on a questionnaire-based measurement method, pioneered by the authors and by researchers at the Center for Marketing Communication at the Copenhagen Business School.

What we consume has become a central—perhaps the central—feature of modern life. Our economies live or die by spending, we increasingly define ourselves by our possessions, and this ever-richer lifestyle has had an extraordinary impact on our planet. How have we come to live with so much stuff, and how has this changed the course of history? In Empire of Things, Frank Trentmann unfolds the extraordinary story of our modern material world, from Renaissance Italy and late Ming China to today’s global economy. While consumption is often portrayed as a recent American export, this monumental and richly detailed account shows that it is in fact a truly international phenomenon with a much longer and more diverse history. Trentmann traces the influence of trade and empire on tastes, as formerly exotic goods like coffee, tobacco, Indian cotton and Chinese porcelain conquered the world, and explores the growing demand for home furnishings, fashionable clothes and convenience that transformed private and public life. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought department stores, credit cards and advertising, but also the rise of the ethical shopper, new generational identities and, eventually, the resurgence of the Asian consumer. With an eye to the present and future, Frank Trentmann provides a long view on the global challenges of our relentless pursuit of more—from waste and debt to stress and inequality. A masterpiece of research and storytelling many years in the making, Empire of Things recounts the epic history of the goods that have seduced, enriched and unsettled our lives over the past six hundred years.

Ethnography, with its focus on observed everyday behavior, is quickly becoming the method of choice to identify unmet needs, stimulate novel insights, create strategies and develop new ideas. Hy Mariampolski, author of Qualitative Market Research: A Comprehensive Guide (Sage, 2001) again takes readers on a voyage of discovery in Ethnography for Marketers. These two companion works are essential guides for marketers seeking rich insights into their customers' thoughts and behaviors.

This unique collection of the most well-known and influential consumer behaviour papers from the last 20 years represents the richness, originality and variety of studies of consumer behaviour on the European continent.

In the Evolutionary Bases of Consumption by Gad Saad applies Darwinian principles in understanding our consumption patterns and the products of popular culture that most appeal to individuals. The first and only scholarly work to do so, this is a captivating study of the adaptive reasons behind our behaviors, cognitions, emotions, and perceptions. This lens of analysis suggests how we come to make selections such as choosing a mate, the foods we eat, the gifts that we offer, and more. The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption will appeal to evolutionists who desire to explore new areas wherein evolutionary theory can be applied; consumer and marketing scholars who wish to learn about the ways in which biological-and evolutionary-based theorizing can be infused into the consumer behavior/marketing/advertising disciplines; as well as other interdisciplinary scholars interested in gaining knowledge about the power of evolutionary theory in explaining a wide range of behavioral phenomena.

While fads such as hula hoops or streaking are usually dismissed as silly enthusiasms, trends in institutions such as education, business, medicine, science, and criminal justice are often taken seriously, even though their popularity and usefulness is sometimes short-lived. Institutional fads such as open classrooms, quality circles, and multiple personality disorder are constantly making the rounds, promising astonishing new developments--novel ways of teaching reading or arithmetic, better methods of managing businesses, or improved treatments for disease. Some of these trends prove to be lasting innovations, but others--after absorbing extraordinary amounts of time and money--are abandoned and forgotten, soon to be replaced by other new schemes. In this pithy, intriguing, and often humorous book, Joel Best--author of the acclaimed Damned Lies and Statistics--explores the range of institutional fads, analyzes the features of our culture that foster them, and identifies the major stages of the fad cycle--emerging, surging, and purging. Deconstructing the ways that this system plays into our notions of reinvention, progress, and perfectibility, Flavors of the Month examines the causes and consequences of fads and suggests ways of fad-proofing our institutions.

What do consumers really want? In the mid-twentieth century, many marketing executives sought to answer this question by looking to the theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers. By the 1950s, Freudian psychology had become the adman's most powerful new tool, promising to plumb the depths of shoppers' subconscious minds to access the irrational desires beneath their buying decisions. That the unconscious was the key to consumer behavior was a new idea in the field of advertising, and its impact was felt beyond the commercial realm. Centered on the fascinating lives of the brilliant men and women who brought psychoanalytic theories and practices from Europe to Madison Avenue and, ultimately, to Main Street, Freud on Madison Avenue tells the story of how midcentury advertisers changed American culture. Paul Lazarsfeld, Herta Herzog, James Vicary, Alfred Politz, Pierre Martineau, and the father of motivation research, Viennese-trained psychologist Ernest Dichter, adapted techniques from sociology, anthropology, and psychology to help their clients market consumer goods. Many of these researchers had fled the Nazis in the 1930s, and their decidedly Continental and intellectual perspectives on secret desires and inner urges sent shockwaves through WASP-dominated postwar American culture and commerce.

The history of consumption is a prism through which many aspects of social and political life may be viewed. The essays in this collection represent a variety of approaches and raise such themes as consumption and democracy, the development of a global economy, the role of the state, the centrality of consumption to Cold War politics, the importance of the Second World War as a historical divide, the language of consumption, the contexts of locality, race, ethnicity, gender, and class, and the environmental consequences of twentieth-century consumer society. They explore the role of the historian as social, political, and moral critic. Unlike other studies of twentieth-century consumption, this book provides international comparisons.

For international businesses seeking to communicate their message in various cultural contexts, this text offers information on cultural differences and similarities, as well as a structure for applying this knowledge to the management of branding and marketing. Mooij, a consultant based in the Netherlands, has studied the issues closely and discusses both theoretical and practical approaches, including the value paradox and marketing theory, global branding, cultural manifestations such as language and symbols, cross cultural value research, values and advertising, and values and strategy. This second edition contains new topics on the Internet, the media, and brand positioning, while redundant chapters have been omitted. As well, consumer behavior is discussed in more detail. Appended are Hofstede scores citing economic statistics for some 60 countries, and discussion and identification of various kinds of data sources.

Ann Satterthwaite traces the history of shopping and considers its meaning and significance. According to Satterthwaite, shopping has become part of the American dream. To choose and to buy constitute not only a basic economic liberty but also the capacity to improve and transform ourselves. How we shop also reflects our culture, as disposable incomes have grown, women's roles have changed, and new styles of shopping and advertising have made their impact on an old adventure. But there is a downside. Shopping used to be a friendly business: shoppers and clerks knew each other, and the country crossroads stores and downtown markets were social as much as economic hubs. Shopping meshed with all aspects of civic life -- post offices, town halls, courts, and churches. In place of this almost vanished scene have come superstores and the franchises of international companies staffed by pressured clerks in featureless commercial wastelands. Shopping and community have been savagely divorced. However, shopping as a social plus need not be lost, says Satterthwaite. Examining trends in the United States and abroad, where new approaches to an old activity are strengthening its social and civic role, she states that shopping is more than ever a public concern with profound public impacts.

In Habit, Dr. Neale Martin presents powerful new research that reveals how the mind actually works and explains in practical detail the implications of this new science for marketers and product developers. You'll learn why 50 years of marketing theory is deeply flawed, how your customers' unconscious minds thwart your marketing campaigns, and how to identify what customers really want when they don't even know. Martin explains how customer behavior actually changes the mind's neural connections and how companies can leverage this fact by refocusing on behavior, not on attitudes and beliefs. He offers a complete process for working with customers' unconscious and conscious minds together, to become your customer's habit, not just their choice. You'll even learn how to revamp organizational structures that undermine the promotion of customer habits. Using Martin's techniques, you can not only avoid marketing and product failures: you can finally achieve the twin holy grails of marketing: higher customer retention, and greater long-term profitability.

This new handbook, sponsored by the Society for Consumer Psychology, contains a series of original contributions in which top researchers in each area provide a succinct review of theory and research studies in consumer psychology and marketing, advertising and consumer behavior. Top scholars who have contributed to this handbook outline what they see as the major challenges and future research that is needed in their fields.This Handbook will be an excellent interface among many disciplines (e.g. Marketing, Psychology, Advertising, and Consumer Behavior) and will help students and researchers understand the psychological processes underlying consumer behavior.

Marketing scholars and marketing research practitioners will find this book useful. It offers an excellent sourcebook for a variety of scales, and the reviews of the scales are thoughtful and well crafted. The book includes many of the most widely used scales in the field. Its relatively modest price will also make it particularly attractive. This Second Edition of the highly successful Handbook of Marketing Scales is an essential, time-saving resource for all marketing professionals, researchers, and graduate students. After an exhaustive search of the field's major publications, they have included only those measures of most use to researchers.

If you think money can't buy happiness, you're not spending it right. Two rising stars in behavioral science explain how money can buy happiness. "Happy Money "explains why you can get more happiness for your money by following five principles, from choosing experiences over stuff to spending money on others. And the five principles can be used not only by individuals but by companies seeking to create happier employees and provide "happier products" to their customers. Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton show how companies from Google to Pepsi to Crate & Barrel have put these ideas into action. Along the way, the authors describe new research that reveals that luxury cars often provide no more pleasure than economy models, that commercials can actually enhance the enjoyment of watching television, and that residents of many cities frequently miss out on inexpensive pleasures in their hometowns. By the end of this book, readers will ask themselves one simple question whenever they reach for their wallets: Am I getting the biggest happiness bang for my buck?

This book is a must read for not just those engaged in ethnic marketing but for all marketing professionals. Hispanic Marketing provides true insight into the Hispanic market and compelling rationale for addressing Hispanic consumers as part of any organized approach to marketing in the U.S. overall.The Korzennys provide us with salient information, and more importantly, tools and an approach, to unlock the full potential of the Hispanic consumer. Truly a breakthrough in enabling a comprehensive and meaningful understanding of this market.

Juan Faura, the author of PMP's bestselling The Whole Enchilada: Hispanic Marketing 101, presents a message that will be a wake-up call to all Hispanic-focused marketing and advertising agencies. Based on insights gathered from interviews with Hispanics from many different walks of life, in cities large and small, Hispanic Marketing Grows Up:-Explores 30 perceptions and realities that affect how you market to Hispanics.-Explains when and when not to use Spanglish in advertising.-Identifies 10 future trends that will affect the Hispanic consumer market.Faura's conversational style makes this a quick read--one loaded with insights, taken straight from Hispanic consumers' mouths to you.

"This book picks up where The Tipping Point left off." -- Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of ORIGINALS and GIVE AND TAKE Nothing "goes viral." If you think a popular movie, song, or app came out of nowhere to become a word-of-mouth success in today's crowded media environment, you're missing the real story. Each blockbuster has a secret history--of power, influence, dark broadcasters, and passionate cults that turn some new products into cultural phenomena. Even the most brilliant ideas wither in obscurity if they fail to connect with the right network, and the consumers that matter most aren't the early adopters, but rather their friends, followers, and imitators -- the audience of your audience. In his groundbreaking investigation, Atlantic senior editor Derek Thompson uncovers the hidden psychology of why we like what we like and reveals the economics of cultural markets that invisibly shape our lives. Shattering the sentimental myths of hit-making that dominate pop culture and business, Thompson shows quality is insufficient for success, nobody has "good taste," and some of the most popular products in history were one bad break away from utter failure. It may be a new world, but there are some enduring truths to what audiences and consumers want. People love a familiar surprise: a product that is bold, yet sneakily recognizable. Every business, every artist, every person looking to promote themselves and their work wants to know what makes some works so successful while others disappear. Hit Makers is a magical mystery tour through the last century of pop culture blockbusters and the most valuable currency of the twenty-first century--people's attention. From the dawn of impressionist art to the future of Facebook, from small Etsy designers to the origin of Star Wars, Derek Thompson leaves no pet rock unturned to tell the fascinating story of how culture happens and why things become popular.   In Hit Makers, Derek Thompson investigates: #65533;       The secret link between ESPN's sticky programming and the The Weeknd's catchy choruses #65533;       Why Facebook is the world's most important modern newspaper #65533;       How advertising critics predicted Donald Trump #65533;       The 5th grader who accidentally launched "Rock Around the Clock," the biggest hit in rock and roll history #65533;       How Barack Obama and his speechwriters think of themselves as songwriters #65533;       How Disney conquered the world--but the future of hits belongs to savvy amateurs and individuals #65533;       The French collector who accidentally created the Impressionist canon #65533;       Quantitative evidence that the biggest music hits aren't always the best #65533;       Why almost all Hollywood blockbusters are sequels, reboots, and adaptations #65533;       Why one year--1991--is responsible for the way pop music sounds today #65533;       Why another year --1932--created the business model of film #65533;       How data scientists proved that "going viral" is a myth #65533;       How 19th century immigration patterns explain the most heard song in the Western Hemisphere

Zaltman (business administration, Harvard Business School) draws upon such diverse disciplines as business theory, literary analysis, cognitive science, and sociology to explain how customers make buying decisions. Aimed at marketing professionals, the text describes ways to develop research questions that speak to the unconscious brain, accurately measure consumer reactions to marketing stimuli, and instill meaningful metaphoric images in brand communications.

Economists have long been interested in the analysis of how people decide to spend their time. Up until recently, however, studies of this nature were limited by a lack of high-quality time-use data. In 2003, after years of study and preparation, BLS initiated the annual American Time Use Survey. This book offers contributions from a number of noted economists who exploit this new source of data to reveal findings that have numerous implications for the U.S. labor market.

Why we choose companies and brands in the same way that weunconsciously perceive, judge, and behave toward one another People everywhere describe their relationships with brands in adeeply personal way-we hate our banks, love our smartphones,and think the cable company is out to get us. What's actually goingon in our brains when we make these judgments? Through originalresearch, customer loyalty expert Chris Malone and top socialpsychologist Susan Fiske discovered that our perceptions arise fromspontaneous judgments on warmth and competence, the same twofactors that also determine our impressions of people. We seecompanies and brands the same way we automatically perceive, judge,and behave toward one another. As a result, to achieve sustainedsuccess, companies must forge genuine relationships with customers.And as customers, we have a right to expect relationalaccountability from the companies and brands we support. Applies the social psychology concepts of "warmth" (whatintentions others have toward us) and "competence" (how capablethey are of carrying out those intentions) to the way we perceiveand relate to companies and brands Features in-depth analyses of companies such as Hershey's,Domino's, Lululemon, Zappos, Amazon, Chobani, Sprint, and more Draws from original research, evaluating over 45 companies overthe course of 10 separate studies The Human Brand is essential reading for understandinghow and why we make the choices we do, as well as what it takes forcompanies and brands to earn and keep our loyalty in the digitalage.

Choosing and using objects is a primal human activity, and I Want That! is nothing less than a portrait of humanity as the species that shops. It explores the history of acquisition -- finding, choosing, spending -- from our amber-coveting Neolithic forebears to Renaissance nobles who outfitted themselves for power to twenty-first-century bargain hunters looking for a good buy on eBay. I Want That! explores the minds of shoppers in the quest to nourish and feed fantasies, to define individuality, to provide for family, and to satisfy the needs for celebration, power, and choice -- all of which lead us to malls, boutiques, websites, and superstores.

What factors cause someone to say yes? And which techniques most effectively use these factors to bring about such compliance? In his best-selling book, Robert Cialdini, former salesperson, fund-raiser, and advertiser, and current professor of social psychology, examines the science and practice of persuasion and compliance. Praised for its enjoyable writing, practical suggestions, and scientifically documented content, prior editions have been widely read by business professionals, fund-raisers, and those interested in psychology.

One American in ten tells the other nine how to vote, where to eat, and what to buy. They are The Influentials Who are they? The most influential Americans -- the ones who tell their neighbors what to buy, which politicians to support, and where to vacation -- are not necessarily the people you'd expect. They are the 10 percent of Americans most engaged in their local communities...and they wield a huge amount of influence within those communities. They're the campaigners for open-space initiatives. They're church vestrymen and friends of the local public library. They're the Influentials...and whether or not they are familiar to you, they're very well known to the researchers at RoperASW. For decades, these researchers have been on a quest for marketing's holy grail: that elusive but supremely powerful channel known as word of mouth. What they've learned is that even more important than the ""word"" -- what is said -- is the ""mouth"" -- who says it. They've identified, studied, and analyzed influence in America since the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (now Exxon) hired Elmo Roper himself to develop a model for identifying opinion leaders, and in The Influentials, they are finally ready to share their results.

America's economic revolution isn't just driven by technology. It's about markets. The past twenty-five years have witnessed a remarkable shift in how we get the stuff we want. If you’ve ever owned a business, rented an apartment, or shopped online, you've had a front-row seat for this revolution-in-progress. Breakthrough companies like Amazon and Uber have disrupted the old ways and made the economy work better--all thanks to technology. At least that's how the story of the modern economy is usually told. But in this lucid, wry book, Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan show that the revolution is bigger than tech: it is really a story about the transformation of markets. From the auction theories that power Google's ad sales algorithms to the models that online retailers use to prevent internet fraud, even the most high-tech modern businesses are empowered by theory first envisioned by economists. And we're all participants in this revolution. Every time you book a room on Airbnb, hire a car on Lyft, or click on an ad, you too are reshaping our social institutions and our lives.The Inner Lives of Markets is necessary reading for the modern world: it reveals the blueprint for how we work, live, and shop, and offers wisdom for how to do it better.

What do we know about consumer motives, goals, and desires? Why do we choose to buy and consume certain products and services from the many available in the marketplace? Following the pioneering and successful volume,The Why of Consumption(2000), the same editors have brought together an all-new cast of leading scholars to address modern-day issues in consumer motivation. Representing diverse viewpoints and drawing on relevant theories and frameworks grounded in fields such as cognitive, clinical, and social psychology, behavioral decision theory, sociology, semiotics, cultural anthropology, and culture studies the chapters in this volume address a variety of topics. Topics include: * The interplay between the heart and the mind in what consumers desire * Hedonic, utilitarian, and variety-seeking motives * Implications of a promotion versus prevention focus in consumer decision-making * Motives for engaging in socially undesirable consumer behaviors * Howindividual consumers, communities and cultures come to value brands, fashion goods, and objects of art * Inter-generational as well as information age influences on the motives underlying consumers' identities, both present and future This provocative and important book provides insights for students, scholars and practitioners who seek to understand the vital relationship between motivation and consumption.

In Inside the Mind of the Shopper, world-renowned retail consultant Dr. Herb Sorensen, Ph.D. uncovers the truth about the retail shopper and rips away the myths and mistakes that lead retailers to miss their greatest opportunities. Drawing on Sorensen's breakthrough second-by-second analysis of millions of shopping trips, this book reveals how consumers actually behave, move, and make buying decisions as they move through supermarkets and other retail stores. Sorensen presents powerful, tested strategies for designing more effective stores, improving merchandising, and driving double-digit sales increases. He identifies simple interventions that can have dramatic sales effects, and shows why many common strategies simply don't work. You'll learn how to appeal to the "quick trip" shopper; make the most of all three "moments of truth"; understand consumers' powerful in-store migration patterns; learn the lessons of Stew Leonard's and other innovators; and much more. Then, in Part II, Sorensen presents revealing interviews with several leading in-store retail experts, including crucial insights on using technology and retailing to multicultural communities.

Not international consumers really, but consumers in the various cultures that are being penetrated by primarily western companies looking for international markets. Argues that the differences rather than similarities between cultures must be emphasized to determine factors that influence buyer behavior, such as social class, hierarchy of needs, formal and informal group membership, learning patterns, and the conception and experience of the individual. For marketing scholars or practitioners.

Researching the consumer has progressed far beyond the research for managerial implications and has become a major focus for the social sciences. In the field of marketing research, interpretive approaches to studying consumer behavior are playing an increasing role. This book presents the wide range of conceptual and empirical approaches that are required in studies of the consumer and consumption. As such, it is essential reading for students and researchers working in the fields of consumer behaviour and marketing, cultural and media studies, and sociology.

The New York Times bestselling author of Contagious explores the subtle, secret influences that affect the decisions we make—from what we buy, to the careers we choose, to what we eat—in this fascinating and groundbreaking work. If you’re like most people, you think that your choices and behaviors are driven by your individual, personal tastes, and opinions. You wear a certain jacket because you liked the way it looked. You picked a particular career because you found it interesting. The notion that our choices are driven by our own personal thoughts and opinions is patently obvious. Right? Wrong. Without our realizing it, other people’s behavior has a huge influence on everything we do at every moment of our lives, from the mundane to the momentous occasion. Even strangers have a startling impact on our judgments and decisions: our attitudes toward a welfare policy shift if we’re told it is supported by Democrats versus Republicans (even though the policy is the same in both cases). But social influence doesn’t just lead us to do the same things as others. In some cases we conform, or imitate others around us. But in other cases we diverge, or avoid particular choices or behaviors because other people are doing them. We stop listening to a band because they go mainstream. We skip buying the minivan because we don’t want to look like a soccer mom. In his surprising and compelling Invisible Influence, Jonah Berger integrates research and thinking from business, psychology, and social science to focus on the subtle, invisible influences behind our choices as individuals. By understanding how social influence works, we can decide when to resist and when to embrace it—and how we can use this knowledge to make better-informed decisions and exercise more control over our own behavior.

Just Ask a Woman is a powerful book about how to tap into female consumers' needs. Mary Quinlan, the founder of the premiere consultancy dedicated to marketing to women, has personally interviewed 3,000 women in the course of her research for Just Ask a Woman. Women are the decision-makers in an estimated eighty-five percent of household buying decisions, and yet far too often, products marketed specifically to them fail to connect with their needs. Here, Quinlan explores topics such as how women judge brands and advertising, the effects of stress on their consumer behavior, and their increasing demands for service and communication. Quinlan rejects the traditional focus group approach in favor of highly energized and intimate talk sessions where women reveal their deeper feelings about products and services. In Just Ask a Woman marketers, brand managers, and advertisers will find a revelatory resource filled with ideas and action steps for building your brand with women-from a woman who has walked in a marketer's shoes.

Kidfluence details the latest research on the demographic and socio-cultural trends of young adults born after 1980—Generation Y. This "what works and what doesn't" book provides marketers and advertisers with sometimes-surprising findings on what information and products these kids really want, and how to reach them most effectively without turning them off completely.

In addition to tracing Kimberly-Clark's fascinating history of technology development and product diversification, Heinrich and Batchelor explore momentous changes in consumer behavior and marketing. When Kotex first arrived on the scene in the 1920s, menstrual hygiene was burdened with cultural taboos that made it impossible for many women to ask the (inevitably male) pharmacist for a sanitary napkin. To solve such vexing marketing problems, Kimberly-Clark invented the artificial word "Kotex" and inserted it into consumer vocabulary through massive advertising campaigns. Making it easier for women to shop for the new product, Kimberly-Clark also recommended that stores place boxes of Kotex on the counter where women could help themselves without embarrassing conversation, thus pioneering the concept of self-service.

The influence of Latin culture is gaining momentum in American society as a whole. Yet the increasing visibility of Latinos in mainstream culture has not been accompanied by a similar level of economic parity or political enfranchisement. In this important, original, and entertaining book, Arlene Dávila provides a critical examination of the Hispanic marketing industry and of its role in the making and marketing of U.S. Latinos. Dávila finds that Latinos' increased popularity in the marketplace is simultaneously accompanied by their growing exotification and invisibility. She scrutinizes the complex interests that are involved in the public representation of Latinos as a generic and culturally distinct people and questions the homogeneity of the different Latino subnationalities that supposedly comprise the same people and group of consumers. In a fascinating discussion of how populations have become reconfigured as market segments, she shows that the market and marketing discourse become important terrains where Latinos debate their social identities and public standing.

How do customers decide what products and brands to buy? In this much-anticipated major work, Eric Marder reveals how universal patterns in survey responses lead not only to general principles in marketing but to empirically verifiable laws of human nature itself. Drawing on forty years of applying his pioneering experimental design techniques to marketing research surveys, Marder presents a global theory of choice behavior, supported by original data reported here for the first time from thousands of massive real-life experiments based on millions of interviews. His dramatic findings about pricing, optimal marketing tactics, product evaluation, the relative role of product and image, and advertising effectiveness will make this book required reading for the entire marketing community.

Lifestyle Market Segmentation gives author and marketing expert Dennis Cahill the chance to put his nearly 30 years of marketing and teaching experience to practical use—to clearly explain the process of market segmentation and its applications. This text goes beyond the obvious demographic and/or geographic categories to get at the “whys” of customer behaviors, carefully reviewing every facet, from theory to the exploration of applications. Step by step, this easy-to-understand book, written by the author of How Consumers Pick a Hotel: Strategic Segmentation and Target Marketing and other classic marketing books, walks readers through the process, giving real-life examples as illustration as it provides the tools to effectively market by lifestyle segment in today’s competitive marketplace. Market segmentation research examines a broad range of demographic and psychographic information that can provide strategies to target both current and potential markets. This helpful guide comprehensively reveals how to gather and effectively use this crucial type of research.

In today's competitive economic environment, knowing your customer has never been more important. Research shows that most companies do not segment their market by lifestyle. Instead, they rely solely on demographic factors to define their customers. This book helps marketers understand how to reach customers from children to tweens and singles to seniors. It demonstrates how such trends as cross-shopping and the blurring of gender roles can be accounted for by one's overall marketing strategy. This book helps marketers understand how to reach customers from children to tweens and singles to seniors. Yet another consumer group evaluated here is the emerging affluent market. This book is a prerequisite to relationship marketing. It tells the reader how to reach carefully defined and described market segments. Because buyers' behaviors are so important to lifestyle market segmentation strategies, this book demonstrates how such trends as cross-shopping and the blurring of gender roles can be accounted for by one's overall marketing strategy.

As the author of works on advertising, materialism and modern culture, University of Florida professor Twitchell should have been the most immune to acquisitive desire while doing research in posh Rodeo Drive and Madison Avenue stores. That he was momentarily struck with passion by a Ralph Lauren tie not only demonstrates his humanity, but also underlines one of his theses: no one is above a bit of luxury lust. The reason for this, he says, is, "We understand each other not by sharing religion, politics, or ideas. We share branded things. We speak the Esperanto of advertising, luxe populi." These are sentiments voiced by many who study consumer culture, but Twitchell addresses conspicuous consumption in a new way, free of the superior tone often adopted by his academic peers. He embarks on a course of fieldwork that is both absurdist and charming, as he chats up Fendi salespeople and stands slack-jawed in the lobby of the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. With the research done, but the tie unbought, he comes away with insights about the American quest for luxury products and provides a history of such yearning: "The balderdash of cloistered academics aside, human beings did not suddenly become materialistic. We have always been desirous of things." Many of those things, in the recent past and definitely in the present, have been imbued with an aura of opulence and indulgence, Twitchell posits, leading to a kind of emotional satisfaction through shopping, especially for items outside one's budget. With its intelligence and wit, Twitchell's exploration of consumerism belongs in every shopping bag.

The lesson for marketers is clear: Traditional marketing techniques and single marketing campaigns will not effectively reach consumers who express distinctive ethnic, age-related, or lifestyle values by what they buy and how they buy it. Using a variety of real-world examples and a rich set of data sources, Marketing and Consumer Identity in Multicultural America introduces students to the phenomenon of multiculturalism in America and examines its impact on consumer identity, consumer behavior, and marketing. In a straightforward, engaging style, Marye C. Tharp presents both the theoretical foundation and the practical tools necessary for marketers to thrive in a multicultural world.

Why do advertising campaigns and new products often fail? Why do consumers feel that companies don't understand their needs? Because marketers themselves don't think deeply about consumers' innermost thoughts and feelings. Marketing Metaphoria is a groundbreaking book that reveals how to overcome this "depth deficit" and find the universal drivers of human behavior so vital to a firm's success. Marketing Metaphoria reveals the powerful unconscious viewing lenses--called "deep metaphors"-- that shape what people think, hear, say, and do. Drawing on thousands of one-on-one interviews in more than thirty countries, Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman describe how some of the world's most successful companies as well as small firms, not-for-profits, and social enterprises have successfully leveraged deep metaphors to solve a wide variety of marketing problems. Marketing Metaphoria should convince you that everything consumers think and do is influenced at unconscious levels--and it will give you access to those deeper levels of thinking.

Emotion is one of the defining forces in our lives. It lies at the very heart of many of our most important experiences and memories. Not surprisingly, the worlds of business and marketing have long drawn on the power of emotion to influence consumer impulses and brand loyalty. Yet beyond the obvious emotions evoked by an inspirational Nike ad or an affecting Hallmark commercial lies an emotional universe that is less conspicuous, even transparent, yet no less influential. In this definitive work, two marketing experts provide a highly original, entertaining and anecdote-rich account of the marketing power of emotion. The primordial force behind motivation and persuasion, emotions enter into all decisions involving tradeoffs and are thus especially relevant to consumer decision-making. The Marketing Power of Emotion traces the manner in which companies rely on emotion to connect with consumers, develop new products, improve their strategic position, and increase brand recognition. Essential reading for executives and middle management alike, as well as all students and scholars of consumer behavior, The Marketing Power of Emotion is the most authoritative statement yet on this critically important aspect of business strategy.

In contrast to earlier volumes, this new volume compiling marketing measurement scales splits consumer behavior from organizational behavior (the latter to be the focus of a separate volume), but otherwise takes up where Volume III left off in collecting scales originally published in seven major marketing and advertising journals between 1998 and 2001. Bruner (marketing, Southern Illinois U. at Carbondale), Hensel (marketing, U. of New Orleans), and James (marketing, Louisiana State U.) present 511 scales for studying consumer behavior topics and 143 related to advertising or promotion. Each scale is named and described, its origins are given, reliability and validity are considered, references are provided, and scale questionnaire items are presented.

Millions of consumers can now afford to pay more for everything from cleaning products to cars. Yet these "moneyed masses" are not spending all they could. Nunes, a researcher in business, and Johnson, a research analyst at an investment research and management firm, explore the impact of this explosion of consumer affluence on marketing strategy and practice, and outline seven new rules of mass marketing aimed at the "almost rich."

Do consumers really care where products come from and how they are made? Is there such a thing as an 'ethical consumer'? Corporations and policy makers are bombarded with international surveys purporting to show that most consumers want ethical products. Yet when companies offer such products they are often met with indifference and limited uptake. It seems that survey radicals turn into economic conservatives at the checkout. This book reveals not only why the search for the 'ethical consumer' is futile but also why the social aspects of consumption cannot be ignored. Consumers are revealed to be much more deliberative and sophisticated in how they do or do not incorporate social factors into their decision making. Using first-hand findings and extensive research, The Myth of the Ethical Consumer provides academics, students and leaders in corporations and NGOs with an enlightening picture of the interface between social causes and consumption.

"It might be difficult to see the connection between a rich woman swanning around in her Manolo Blahniks and some underpaid clipboard-wielding biologist slogging through the bush in battered Tevas," Conniff writes, but readers of this unusual and delightful exploration of the richest members of the human species will understand that connection and a whole lot more. Journalist and essayist Conniff compares the super-rich to the animal kingdom in providing a frame of reference for their behaviors and actions. Butterflies and moths, which camouflage their true colors when not with their own kind, provide a context for discussing concealment, display and the "inconspicuous consumption" of those born to money: the signs of wealth are displayed subtly to be recognized by those in the know. Conniff finds an animal model for philanthropy in a bird called the Arabian babbler, which, after forcing a gift of food on a companion, "lift[s] his beak in a special trill... like a socialite posing for an event photographer at the Breast Cancer Awareness barbecue." Conniff who has written about the natural world for National Geographic and about the rich for Architectural Digest neither patronizes nor demeans his subjects (after all, he notes, we all hope to be rich some day). He merely uses them and the natural world to illuminate a class of people and range of behaviors that few among us will ever have the opportunity to observe firsthand.

Over the last 10 years advances in the new field of neuromarketing have yielded a host of findings which defy common stereotypes about consumer behavior. Reason and emotions do not necessarily appear as opposing forces. Rather, they complement one another. Hence, it reveals that consumers utilize mental accounting processes different from those assumed in marketers' logical inferences when it comes to time, problems with rating and choosing, and in post-purchase evaluation. People are often guided by illusions not only when they perceive the outside world but also when planning their actions - and consumer behavior is no exception. Strengthening the control over their own desires and the ability to navigate the maze of data are crucial skills consumers can gain to benefit themselves, marketers and the public. Understanding the mind of the consumer is the hardest task faced by business researchers. This book presents the first analytical perspective on the brain - and biometric studies which open a new frontier in market research.

Charles Coolidge Parlin was considered by many to be the founder of market research. Working for the dominant Curtis Publishing Company, he revolutionized the industry by providing added value to advertisers through information about the racial, ethnic, and regional biases of readers and consumers. By maintaining contact with both businesses and customers, Parlin and Curtis publications were able to turn consumer wants into corporate profits. In A New Brand of Business, Douglas Ward provides an intriguing business history that explains how and why Curtis developed its market research division. He reveals the evolution and impact of Parlin’s work, which understood how readers and advertisers in the emerging consumer economy looked at magazines and advertisements. Ward also examines the cultural and social reasons for the development and use of market research—particularly in regard to Curtis' readership of upper-income elites. The result weaves the stories of Parlin and Curtis into the changes taking place in American business and advertising in the early twentieth century.

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself. Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful “choice architecture” can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take—from neither the left nor the right—on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative books to come along in many years.

The Observational Research Handbook explores the burgeoning qualitative marketing research technique of ethnography or "descriptive anthropology," the observation and analysis of how consumers respond to a product within their own environments based upon their cultural values and relationships. The most comprehensive professional reference available on the subject, The Observational Research Handbook acquaints marketing and advertising professionals, market researchers, and manufacturers of consumer products with what observational research is, what it can add to a consumer marketing effort, and how an ethnographic marketing study is conducted. The book includes insights on setting study objectives, selecting the appropriate research method, defining the parameters of a study, creating interview scripts, applying specific practices and tips to the actual observations, and then compiling and analyzing the results. A complete case study—featuring a real proposal for an observational research study as well as an actual script and analysis of the results—is included in the appendix.

A revealing examination of shopping, consumerism, and mall design in America.Loved and hated, visited and avoided, seemingly everywhere yet endlessly the same, malls occupy a special place in American life. What, then, is this invention that evokes such strong and contradictory emotions in Americans? In many ways malls represent the apotheosis of American consumerism, and this synthetic and wide-ranging investigation is an eye-popping tour of American culture's values and beliefs. Like your favorite mall, One Nation under Goods is a browser's paradise; and in order to understand America's culture of consumption you need to make a trip to the mall with Farrell. This lively, fast-paced history of the hidden secrets of the shopping mall explains how retail designers make shopping and goods "irresistible." From food courts and fountains to Santa and security, Farrell explains how malls control their patrons and convince us that shopping is always an enjoyable activity. And most importantly, One Nation under Goods shows why the mall's ultimate promise of happiness through consumption is largely an illusion.

The papers in this volume were originally presented at the 2001 Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference sponsored by the Society for Consumer Psychology. They address topics such as customization, site design, word-of-mouth processes and the study of consumer decision making while online. Some of the contributors present research methods for gaining insight into consumers' thought processes. Others discuss the concept of Internet communities and online advertising. The theories and research methods help provide greater insight into the processes underlying consumer behavior in online environments.

The payment card business has evolved from its inception in the 1950s as a way to handle payment for expense-account lunches (the Diners Club card) into today's complex, sprawling industry that drives trillions of dollars in transaction volume each year. Paying with Plastic is the definitive source on an industry that has revolutionized the way we borrow and spend. More than a history book, Paying with Plastic delivers an entertaining discussion of the impact of an industry that epitomizes the notion of two-sided markets: those in which two or more customer groups receive value only if all sides are actively engaged. New to this second edition, the two-sided market discussion provides useful insight into the implications of these market dynamics for cardholder rewards, merchant interchange fees, and card acceptance. The authors, also examine the implications of the recent antitrust cases on the industry as well as other business and technological changes—including the massive consolidation brought about by bank mergers, the rise of the debit card, and the emergence of e-commerce—that could alter the payment card industry dramatically in the years to come.

This volume synthesizes and advances existing knowledge of consumer response to visuals. Representing an interdisciplinary perspective, contributors include scholars from the disciplines of communication, psychology, and marketing. The book begins with an overview section intended to situate the reader in the discourse. The overview describes the state of knowledge in both academic research and actual practice, and provides concrete sources for scholars to pursue. Having traveled a path that has gone from the precise working of the brain in processing visual stimuli all the way to the history of classical architecture, readers of this volume will have a new respect for the complexity of human visual response and the research that is trying to explain it. It will be of interest to those involved in consumer behavior, consumer psychology,advertising, marketing, and visual communication.

This valuable and nonacademic guide reveals the extent to which we are surrounded by persuasion, and how we can resist. Levine (A Geography of Time), a professor of psychology at Cal State Fresno, opens by demonstrating that all of us (including himself) can be persuaded under the right circumstances. He goes on to study financial manipulation and the use of the sense of obligation and then proceeds to a nuts-and-bolts analysis of salesmanship by describing what he learned and did (and had done to him) as an automobile salesman. He offers an admirably concise and unemotional analysis of the famous Milgram experiment, involving the (claimed) administration of ever-stronger electric shocks to test the impulse to obedience. Inevitably, he moves to cults, the Moonies and the ultimate persuasion horror story, Jonestown. He avoids hysteria and demonization, even of Jim Jones, and points out that brute force is required at the extreme end of the persuasion spectrum. Levine's final chapter offers ways of dealing with unwelcome persuasion while remaining part of a society in which some persuasion is part of almost any social interaction.

This sly and lucid book is not about your grandfather's dismal science. Ariely's trade is behavioral economics, which is the study, by experiments, of what people actually do when they buy, sell, change jobs, marry and make other real-life decisions…[Ariely] is good-tempered company—if he mentions you in this book, you are going to be called "brilliant," "fantastic" or "delightful"—and crystal clear about all he describes. But Predictably Irrational is a far more revolutionary book than its unthreatening manner lets on. It's a concise summary of why today's social science increasingly treats the markets-know-best model as a fairy tale.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered. What separates effective communicators from truly successful persuaders? Using the same combination of rigorous scientific research and accessibility that made his Influence an iconic bestseller, Robert Cialdini explains how to capitalize on the essential window of time before you deliver an important message. This “privileged moment for change” prepares people to be receptive to a message before they experience it. Optimal persuasion is achieved only through optimal pre-suasion. In other words, to change “minds” a pre-suader must also change “states of mind.” His first solo work in over thirty years, Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion draws on his extensive experience as the most cited social psychologist of our time and explains the techniques a person should implement to become a master persuader. Altering a listener’s attitudes, beliefs, or experiences isn’t necessary, says Cialdini—all that’s required is for a communicator to redirect the audience’s focus of attention before a relevant action. From studies on advertising imagery to treating opiate addiction, from the annual letters of Berkshire Hathaway to the annals of history, Cialdini draws on an array of studies and narratives to outline the specific techniques you can use on online marketing campaigns and even effective wartime propaganda. He illustrates how the artful diversion of attention leads to successful pre-suasion and gets your targeted audience primed and ready to say, “Yes.”

Many of the prices we pay seem to make little sense. We shell out $2.29 for coffee at Starbucks when a nearly identical brew can be had at the corner deli for less than a dollar. We may be less willing to give blood for $25 than to donate it for free. And we pay someone to cart away trash that would be a valuable commodity in poorer parts of the world. The Price of Everything starts with a simple premise: there is a price behind each choice, whether we're deciding to have a baby, drive a car, or buy a book. We often fail to appreciate just how critical prices are as motivating forces. But their power becomes clear when distorted prices steer our decisions the wrong way. Eduardo Porter uncovers the true story behind the prices we pay and reveals what those prices are actually telling us.

In Priceless, the bestselling author William Poundstone reveals the hidden psychology of value. In psychological experiments, people are unable to estimate “fair” prices accurately and are strongly influenced by the unconscious, irrational, and politically incorrect. It hasn’t taken long for marketers to apply these findings. “Price consultants” advise retailers on how to convince consumers to pay more for less, and negotiation coaches offer similar advice for businesspeople cutting deals. The new psychology of price dictates the design of price tags, menus, rebates, “sale” ads, cell phone plans, supermarket aisles, real estate offers, wage packages, tort demands, and corporate buyouts. Prices are the most pervasive hidden persuaders of all. Rooted in the emerging field of behavioral decision theory, Priceless should prove indispensable to anyone who negotiates.

The book brings together research that investigates how people experience products: durable, non-durable, or virtual. In contrast to other books, the present book takes a very broad, possibly all-inclusive perspective, on how people experience products. It thereby bridges gaps between several areas within psychology (e.g. perception, cognition, emotion) and links these areas to more applied areas of science, such as product design, human-computer interaction and marketing. The field of product experience research will include some of the research from four areas: Arts, Ergonomics, Technology, and Marketing. Traditionally, each of these four fields seems to have a natural emphasis on the human (ergonomics and marketing), the product (technology) or the experience (arts). However, to fully understand human product experience, we need to use different approaches and we need to build bridges between these various fields of expertise *Most comprehensive collection of psychological research behind product design and usability *Consistently addresses the 3 components of human-product experience: the human, the product, and the experience *International contributions from experts in the field.

In this book Greg Elmer brings the perspectives of cultural and media studies to the subject of consumer profiling and feedback technology in the digital economy. He examines the multiplicity of processes that monitor consumers and automatically collect, store, and cross-reference personal information. When we buy a book at Amazon.com or a kayak from L.L. Bean, our transactions are recorded, stored, and deployed to forecast our future behavior—thus we may receive solicitations to buy another book by the same author or the latest in kayaking gear. Elmer charts this process, explaining the technologies that make it possible and examining the social and political implications. Elmer begins by establishing a theoretical framework for his discussion, proposing a "diagrammatic approach" that draws on but questions Foucault's theory of surveillance. In the second part of the book, he presents the historical background of the technology of consumer profiling, including such pre-electronic tools as the census and the warranty card, and describes the software and technology in use today for demographic mapping. In the third part, he looks at two case studies—a marketing event sponsored by Molson that was held in the Canadian Arctic (contrasting the attendees and the indigenous inhabitants) and the use of "cookies" to collect personal information on the World Wide Web, which (along with other similar technologies) automate the process of information collection and cross-referencing. Elmer concludes by considering the politics of profiling, arguing that we must begin to question our everyday electronic routines.

In a volume dedicated to Erich Fromm, "who pointed the way toward an understanding of psychology and consumer culture," psychologists Kasser (Knox College, Galesburg, IL) and Kanner (Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, CA) introduce 13 chapters that aim to overcome the field's relative neglect of how consumption-related issues affect personal development, society, and ecology. US contributors discuss theoretical and clinical issues, and call for further research on compulsive buying, the effects of advertising, and mindfulness as an antidote to its effects.

An unusually understandable survey of the forces or perception and feeling that determine the purchases we make; the roles played by fashion, fads, and status; and the psychological needs that they fulfill. The book discusses how children become consumers and how they change as they age. Research based throughout, it shows how ads use classical conditioning, harnessing psychological motivation to create image and sell products.

All key topics are covered including the differences between quantitative and qualitative research, steps to take prior to conducting research, data collection techniques and tools, decoding and understanding collected data, and explaining research findings to someone else. Borrowing techniques from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and communication, the book presents specific examples to illustrate how these techniques are adapted for marketplace research. Studies conducted by renowned scholars and practitioners guide readers through all the nuances of qualitative methods needed to develop, execute and analyze state-of-the-art marketplace studies.

In the present electronic torrent of MTV and teen flicks, Nintendo and Air Jordan advertisements, consumer culture is an unmistakably important -- and controversial -- dimension of modern childhood. Historians and social commentators have typically assumed that the child consumer became significant during the postwar television age. But the child consumer was already an important phenomenon in the early twentieth century. The family, traditionally the primary institution of child socialization, began to face an array of new competitors who sought to put their own imprint on children's acculturation to consumer capitalism. Advertisers, children's magazine publishers, public schools, child experts, and children's peer groups alternately collaborated with, and competed against, the family in their quest to define children's identities. At stake in these conflicts and collaborations was no less than the direction of American consumer society -- would children's consumer training rein in hedonistic excesses or contribute to the spread of hollow, commercial values? Not simply a new player in the economy, the child consumer became a lightning rod for broader concerns about the sanctity of the family and the authority of the market in modern capitalist culture. Lisa Jacobson reveals how changing conceptions of masculinity and femininity shaped the ways Americans understood the virtues and vices of boy and girl consumers -- and why boys in particular emerged as the heroes of the new consumer age. "Raising Consumers" is a provocative examination of the social, economic, and cultural forces that produced and ultimately legitimized a distinctive children's consumer culture in the early twentieth century.

The rich have always been different from you and me, but this revealing and funny journey through “Richistan” entertainingly shows that they are more different than ever. Richistanis have 400-foot-yachts, 30,000-square-foot homes, house staffs of more than 100, and their own “arborists.” They’re also different from Old Money, and have torn down blue-blood institutions to build their own shining empire. Richistan is like the best travel writing, full of colorful and interesting stories providing insights into exotic locales. Robert Frank has been loitering on the docks of yacht marinas, pestering his way into charity balls, and schmoozing with real estate agents selling mega-houses to capture the story of the twenty-first century’s nouveau riche

Not only are Hispanics the largest minority group in the United States, but Mexico is fast becoming our major trading partner, surpassing even Japan. In fact, the U.S. now has the fourth largest Spanish-speaking population in the world, after Mexico, Spain, and Argentina. How has this demographic group transformed the U.S. into a bi-lingual nation within the span of a generation? Why do Hispanics resist assimilation and insist on speaking Spanish in public life? And how can businesses effectively reach the emerging Hispanic consumer market with its estimated puchasing power of USD1 trillion by 2010? These questions constitute the single-most important marketing challenge for corporate America in the twenty-first century. This book challenges the viewpoint that American culture will soon dominate its NAFTA trading partners, looks carefully at the market for Hispanic goods in the U.S. and the market for our goods throughout the Spanish-speaking world, and shows how marketeers are now reaching the Hispanic community domestically.

Designed for MBA and doctoral programs that have a quality/satisfaction sequence,this new text about the meaning,causes,and consequences of customer satisfaction derives from the author's twenty years of research on the topic. The book covers every psychological aspect of satisfaction formation and is applicable to all consumables,product or service. After defining satisfaction,reviewing current research,and describing what the best practitioners in the field of satisfaction measurement are doing today,the author broadens the determinants of satisfaction to include needs,excellence (quality),fairness,and regret ("what might have been"). Chapters on satisfaction processes including dissonance,attribution of responsibility,consumption affect,and consumption processing culminate in a "consumption processing model. " The book concludes with chapters that consider such postpurchase consequences as complaining behavior and customer loyalty and it discusses why an understanding of satisfaction psychology is vitally important to management.

The American Dream was founded on the belief that anyone dedicated to thrift and hard work could create opportunities and achieve a better life. Now that dream has been reduced to a hyperquantified desire for fancier clothes, sleeker cars, and larger homes. We’ve lost our way, but James Roberts argues that it’s not too late to find it again. In Shiny Objects, he offers us an opportunity to examine our day-to-day habits, and once again strive for lives of quality over quantity. What he and other researchers in his field have found is that no matter what our income level, Americans believe that we need more to live a good life. But as our standard of living has climbed over the past forty years, our self-reported “happiness levels” have flatlined. Roberts isn’t merely concerned with the GDP or big-ticket purchases—damaging spending habits play out countless times a day, in ways big and small: he demonstrates that even the amount we spend at our favorite fast-food joint increases anywhere from 60 to 100 percent when we use a credit card instead of cash. Every time we watch TV or turn on a radio we’re exposed to marketing messages (experts estimate up to 3,000 of them daily). Consumption is king, and its toll is not just a financial one: relationships are suffering, too. Roberts empowers readers to make smart changes, improve self-control, and curtail spending. The American Dream is still ours for the taking, and Shiny Objects is ultimately a hopeful statement about the power we each hold to redefine the pursuit of happiness.

Are Americans obsessed with shopping? Shop til You Drop is a lively look at our consumer culture and its role in our everyday lives and society. Arthur Asa Berger considers the sacred roots of consumer culture, the demographics of consumption, theories about competing cultures, and the semiotics of shopping. Accessibly written and entertaining, this book is ideal for courses in cultural studies, advertising, and American studies, as well as for anyone curious about our nations drive to consume.

"Shopping as an Entertainment Experience" explores the ways in which shopping has become a significant entertainment feature in our daily lives. Dr. Mark H. Moss examines the mall, the e-store, and the department store to demonstrate how shopping is often the most common leisure experience that people indulge in to occupy themselves.

In America today, you can connect to your ethnic heritage in dozens of ways, or adopt an identity just for an evening. Our society is not a melting pot but a salad bar--a bazaar in which the purveyors of goods and services spend close to $2 billion a year marketing the foods, clothing, objects, vacations, and events that help people express their (and others') ethnic identities. This is a huge business, whose target groups are the "hyphenated Americans"--in other words, all of us. As immigrant groups gain economic security, they tend to reinforce--not relinquish--their ethnic identification. Marilyn Halter demonstrates that, to a great extent, they do it by shopping. And their purchasing power is enormous. How has the marketplace responded to this hunger? Instantly and wholeheartedly: tweaking old products and inventing new ones; launching new brands in supermarkets, new music groups, vacation itineraries, language courses, toys, greeting cards, et cetera. This nexus of business and ethnicity is already seen as the hottest consumer development of this decade, and Halter is uniquely qualified to describe its origins, the exponential growth of products and advertising, and the phenomenal sales of items from salsa to Chieftains CDs.

Martin Lindstrom, a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, harnesses the power of small data in his quest to discover the next big thing Hired by the world's leading brands to find out what makes their customers tick, Martin Lindstrom spends 300 nights a year in strangers homes, carefully observing every detail in order to uncover their hidden desires, and, ultimately, the clues to a multi-million dollar product. Lindstrom connects the dots in this globetrotting narrative that will enthrall enterprising marketers, as well as anyone with a curiosity about the endless variations of human behavior. You'll learn

A leading behavioral economist reveals the tools that will improve our decision making on screens Office workers spend the majority of their waking hours staring at screens. Unfortunately, few of us are aware of the visual biases and behavioral patterns that influence our thinking when we're on our laptops, iPads, smartphones, or smartwatches. The sheer volume of information and choices available online, combined with the ease of tapping "buy," often make for poor decision making on screens. In The Smarter Screen, behavioral economist Shlomo Benartzi reveals a tool kit of interventions for the digital age. Using engaging reader exercises and provocative case studies, Benartzi shows how digital designs can influence our decision making on screens in all sorts of surprising ways. For example:  * You're more likely to add bacon to your pizza if you order online.  * If you read this book on a screen, you're less likely to remember its content.  * You might buy an item just because it's located in a screen hot spot, even if better options are available.  * If you shop using a touch screen, you'll probably overvalue the product you're considering.  * You're more likely to remember a factoid like this one if it's displayed in an ugly, difficult-to-read font.  Drawing on the latest research on digital nudging, Benartzi reveals how we can create an online world that helps us think better, not worse.

Joseph Epstein's highly entertaining new book takes up the subject of snobbery in America after the fall of the prominence of the old Wasp culture of prep schools, Ivy League colleges, cotillions, debutante balls, the Social Register, and the rest of it. With ample humor and insight, Epstein uncovers the new outlets upon which the old snobbery has fastened: food and wine, fashion, high-achieving children, schools, politics, health, being with-it, name-dropping, and much else, including the roles of Jews and homosexuals in the development of snobbery. He also raises the question of whether snobbery might, alas, be a part of human nature. Snobbery: The American Versionis the first book in English devoted exclusively to the subject since Thackeray's THE BOOK OF SNOBS.

The aim of this volume is two-fold. On the one hand, the application of social psychology to consumer behavior is meant to broaden the horizon of social psychologists. On the other hand, students and researchers of consumer behavior will be offered an advanced account of relevant theories tailored to their interests. While the range of topics is rather broad - including the construal of judgments and decisions, affective and cognitive feelings, social and media influences, and goals and self-regulation - each chapter is focused on one specific theoretical or methodological perspective and thereby gives a comprehensive and penetrative account of the relevant issues and the respective research." "The volume provides an invaluable resource to students, researchers, and instructors in social psychology, consumer psychology, consumer behavior, and marketing

How do consumers process information? How do they make choices and decisions? How are decisions translated into actions of consumption? The Social Psychology of Consumer Behaviour illuminates an area of intense academic and wider interest, bringing together research and practical insights into how theories in social psychology can be applied to consumer behavior. Core themes include information processing and social cognition, communication processes, attitude models, emotion, social identity theory, and action theory. Within each of the major areas of social psychology, a historical perspective is provided, current knowledge reviewed, theories and findings critiqued, and directions for future research appraised. It provides a deeper perspective than standard texts, which tend to be atheoretical, overly encyclopedic, or outdated. It considers why consumers buy what they do, and how they go about making individual and group decisions concerning consumption. The result is essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners in psychology and marketing, as well as for those in related fields such as public policy, public health, health psychology, political science and sociology.

At the turn of the twentieth century, an emerging consumer culture in the United States promoted constant spending to meet material needs and develop social identity and self-cultivation. McGovern examines the key players active in shaping this cultural evolution: advertisers and consumer advocates. The result, says McGovern, was a redefinition of the citizen as consumer. The articulation of an "American Way of Life" in the Depression and World War II ratified consumer abundance as the basis of a distinct American culture and history.

A leading evolutionary psychologist probes the hidden instincts behind our working, shopping, and spending. Evolutionary psychology-the compelling science of human nature-has clarified the prehistoric origins of human behavior and influenced many fields ranging from economics to personal relationships. In Spent Geoffrey Miller applies this revolutionary science's principles to a new domain: the sensual wonderland of marketing and status seeking that we call American consumer culture. Starting with the basic notion that the goods and services we buy unconsciously advertise our biological potential as mates and friends, Miller examines the hidden factors that dictate our choices in everything from lipstick to cars, from the magazines we read to the music we listen to. With humor and insight, Miller analyzes an array of product choices and deciphers what our decisions say about ourselves, giving us access to a new way of understanding-and improving-our behaviors. Spent is a bold and revelatory book that illuminates the unseen logic behind the chaos of consumerism and suggests new ways we can become happier consumers and more responsible citizens.

How the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite, and how their consumer habits affect us all In today's world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption--like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children's growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society "the aspirational class" and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide. Exploring the rise of the aspirational class, Currid-Halkett considers how much has changed since the 1899 publication of Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. In that inflammatory classic, which coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption," Veblen described upper-class frivolities: men who used walking sticks for show, and women who bought silver flatware despite the effectiveness of cheaper aluminum utensils. Now, Currid-Halkett argues, the power of material goods as symbols of social position has diminished due to their accessibility. As a result, the aspirational class has altered its consumer habits away from overt materialism to more subtle expenditures that reveal status and knowledge. And these transformations influence how we all make choices. With a rich narrative and extensive interviews and research, The Sum of Small Things illustrates how cultural capital leads to lifestyle shifts and what this forecasts, not just for the aspirational class but for everyone.

Far from the catchy television spots and sleek magazine spreads are the comparatively modest ads that pop up on websites and in Internet searches. But don't befooled - online advertising is exploding. Growing at a compound annual rate near 20%, it is now the second-largest advertising channel in the United States. Part history, part guidebook, part prediction for the future, Targeted tells the story of the companies, individuals, and innovations driving this revolution. It takes readers behind the scenes - examining the growth of digital advertising, its enormous potential, and the technologies that are changing the game forever. Leading the way is real-time bidding, which offers advertisers unprecedented precision in targeting ads and measuring their effectiveness. From keyword micro-markets and ad serving systems to aggregated virtual audiences and new business models, Targeted is sweeping in scope and stripped of technical complexity. It is an essential resource for anyone interested in finding and connecting with customers in the vast and shifting Internet universe.

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

Trading up isn't just for the wealthy anymore. These days no one is shocked when an administrative assistant buys silk pajamas at Victoria's Secret. Or a young professional buys only Kendall-Jackson premium wines. Or a construction worker splurges on a $3,000 set of Callaway golf clubs. In dozens of categories, these "new luxury" brands now sell at huge premiums over conventional goods, and in much larger volumes than traditional "old luxury" goods. Trading Up has become the definitive book about this growing trend.

A BMW in a Costco parking lot? A working class family with a 50 inch plasma TV? A 27-year-old Japanese administrative assistant with a collection of Coach purses? What's going on in the mind of the new consumer? Today's consumers can seem impossible to understand, and even harder to please. For instance, the average mall shopper will spend her $100, then leave when she hits that limit. She'll probably buy shoes rather than clothing, because she doesn't want to think about her dress size. And the store most likely to get her money isn't the one with the nicest display or the deepest discounts... it's the one closest to her parking spot. In his research with dozens of leading companies, Michael J. Silverstein has interviewed thousands of customers, extracting fascinating patterns about what really drives their purchase decisions. His first book, the acclaimed bestseller Trading Up, has taught a generation of marketers about the "new luxury" phenomenon, and why consumers will happily pay a steep premium for goods and services that are emotionally satisfying, from golf clubs to bathroom hardware to beauty products.

A scholarly yet personal study, Twenty Million New Customers!: Understanding Gay Men's Consumer Behavior is a mixed shopping bag, taking you on a day-in-the-life tour of the buying patterns of 44 gay men. As an up-to-date catalog of scholarly data, it helps you see how "mainstream" businesses can tailor their marketing methods to this expanding demand in a competent, professional, and ethical manner. As a commentary on lifestyle, it transports you to unexplored consumer behavior territory that most people still consider "deviant."

For too long marketers have been asking the wrong question. If consumers make decisions unconsciously, why do we persist in asking them directly through traditional marketing research why they do what they do? They simply can't tell us because they don't really know. Before marketers develop strategies, they need to recognize that consumers have strategies too . . .human strategies, not consumer strategies. We need to go beyond asking why, and begin to ask how,behavior change occurs. Here, author DouglasVan Praet takes the most brilliant and revolutionary concepts from cognitive science and applies them to how we market, advertise, and consume in the modern digital age. Van Praet simplifies the most complex object in the known universe - the human brain - into seven codified actionable steps to behavior change. These steps are illustrated using real world examples from advertising, marketing, media and business to consciously unravel what brilliant marketers and ad practitioners have long done intuitively, deconstructing the real story behind some of the greatest marketing and business successes in recent history, such as Nike's "Just Do It" campaign; "Got Milk?"; Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" ;and the infamous Volkswagen "Punch Buggy" launch as well as their beloved "The Force" (Mini Darth Vader) Super Bowl commercial.

The goal of this book is to help business managers and academic researchers understand the means-end perspective and the methods by which it is used, and to demonstrate how to use the means-end approach to develop better marketing and advertising strategy. The authors discuss methodological issues regarding interviewing and coding, present applications of the means-end approach to marketing and advertising problems, and describe the conceptual foundations of the means-end approach. This book is of interest to academic researchers in marketing and related fields, graduate students in business, marketing research professionals, and business managers. It is intended as a reference book containing ideas about the means-end approach and its applications.

A key characteristic of the twenty-first century economy is 'the image'. Brand development is based on image, products advertised via images, and corporate image is critical for economic success. This book draws from art history, photography and visual studies to develop an interdisciplinary, image-based approach to understanding consumer behavior.

A social media expert with global experience with many of the world’s biggest brands —including Nike, Toyota and Motorola—Simon Mainwaring offers a visionary new practice in which brands leverage social media to earn consumer goodwill, loyalty and profit, while creating a third pillar of sustainable social change through conscious contributions from customer purchases. These innovative private sector partnerships answer perhaps the most pressing issue facing business and thought leaders today: how to practice capitalism in a way that satisfies the need for both profit and a healthy, sustainable planet. Mainwaring provides case studies from companies such as P&G, Walmart, Starbucks, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Nike, Whole Foods, Patagonia, and Nestlé as well as a bold plan for how corporations need to rethink their strategies.

Today, most Americans take for granted that China will be the next global superpower. But despite the nation's growing influence, the average Chinese person is still a mystery—or, at best, a baffling set of seeming contradictions—to Westerners who expect the rising Chinese consumer to resemble themselves. Here, Tom Doctoroff, the guiding force of advertising giant J. Walter Thompson's (JWT) China operations, marshals his 20 years of experience navigating this fascinating intersection of commerce and culture to explain the mysteries of China. He explores the many cultural, political, and economic forces shaping the twenty-first-century Chinese and their implications for businesspeople, marketers, and entrepreneurs—or anyone else who wants to know what makes the Chinese tick. Dismantling common misconceptions, Doctoroff provides the context Westerners need to understand the distinctive worldview that drives Chinese businesses and consumers. Change is coming fast and furious in China, challenging not only how the Western world sees the Chinese but how they see themselves. From the new generation's embrace of Christmas to the middle-class fixation with luxury brands; from the exploding senior demographic to what the Internet means for the government's hold on power, Doctoroff pulls back the curtain to reveal a complex and nuanced picture of a facinating people whose lives are becoming ever more entwined with our own.

At last--in-depth, qualitative insights paint an eye-opening picture of Black culture and the Black lifestyle and how to connect your products and services with Black consumers.What's Black About It? presents historical, psychological, and cultural influences that delve far deeper into the Black experience than the demographics that are at the heart of other ethnic marketing books and market research reports. Now you will be able to break through stereotypes to better understand and relate to African-American consumers.Other ethnic marketing books may include a general chapter or two on Black consumers. What's Black About It? focuses on African-American consumers and engages you with bold graphics, pop-culture sidebars, insights from focus groups, and examples from current advertising and marketing campaigns.

In today's rapidly shifting marketplace, brand loyalty has subsided and the consumer-of-the-moment rules. To successfully compete for customers' wallet share, you must connect with them, understand their buying habits, and anticipate their every move. In Why Customers Do What They Do, Marshal Cohen, the chief industry analyst for The NPD Group and one of the foremost authorities on consumer behavior, gives managers responsible for branding, marketing, and sales strategies the ability to anticipate the needs, wants, and desires of today's consumer. Drawing on years of market research from The NPD Group, Cohen uncovers the major trends that drive consumer behavior, revealing why and how consumers' daily habits affect their purchasing behavior--and how this behavior will affect your business.

Why do American children sleep alone instead of with their parents? Why do middle-aged Western women yearn for their youth, while young wives in India look forward to being middle-aged? In these provocative essays, one of the most brilliant advocates of cultural psychology reminds us that cultural differences in mental life lie at the heart of any understanding of the human condition. Drawing on ethnographic studies of the distinctive modes of psychological functioning in communities around the world, Richard Shweder explores ethnic and cultural differences in ideals of gender, in the life of the emotions, in conceptions of mature adulthood and the stages of life, and in moral judgments about right and wrong. Shweder, a cultural pluralist, dares readers to broaden their own conceptions of what is good, true, beautiful, and efficient and to take a closer look at specific cultural practices--parent/child cosleeping, arranged marriage, male and female genital modifications--that we may initially find alien or disturbing. He invites us to reject both radical relativism (the view that whatever is, is okay) and imperial visions of universal progressive cultural development (for example, the idea that "the West is Best") and to engage in more deeply informed cultural critique.

This book brings together an international collection of authors from a variety of disciplines who offer new and critical perspectives, summarize key findings and provide important theoretical frameworks to guide the reader through the 'why?' of consumption. Unique in focus and with multifaceted approach which anyone interested in consumption and consumer research will find fascinating, this topical book provides an excellent overview of current research, and imparts key insights to illuminate the subject for both academics and practitioners alike.

Why People Buy provides an original approach to studying and understanding consumers, showing how to identify their goals, wants, dbeliefs, and choices. Discussing these and many other issues from the point of view of the marketing manager seeking to attract new customers, retain old ones, increase business, or convert customers from rivals, O'Shaughnessy explains all the major criteria that enter into consumer choices. Original and provocative, Why People Buy is "must" reading for anyone involved in selling or buying.

People like to spend. Consumers, and their spending on the things they want but do not need, make a tremendous contribution to the U.S. economy. Of the $10 trillion gross national product, 30 percent, or $3 trillion, is made up of consumer discretionary spending. Pamela Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, explores the motivations behind consumer discretionary spending to find out why people are spending their money on things other than necessities, such as food, homes, medical care and gasoline. After performing extensive research into her subject and conducting numerous focus groups, Danziger concludes that understanding why consumers behave the way they do will help marketers understand and predict future consumer spending behavior. While revealing the information she has uncovered, she develops insight into how predictable changes in consumer demographics will shape their behavior. She then aims to help marketers develop strategies that are grounded in consumer intelligence rather than impersonal data. Taking a new look at the consumer, she offers a better perspective on the future habits of these fickle, emotional, yet predictable consumers.

In Why People Don't Buy Things, Washburn and Wallace break through the clutter and offer a deceptively simple, but revolutionary, approach to successful selling that turns the process on its head. Drawing from their extensive experience in sales research, marketing research, consulting, and training, as well as from the fields of psychology, neurology, and cognitive science, the authors present a field-tested sequence of steps - what they call the Dream path (Do-Repeat-Evaluate-Access-Money) - that breaks down the buying decision from the customer's point of view. At the heart of this process is the art of learning to "read" your customers - through their language, gestures, and personal environment - to identify buying profiles and tailor your messages for maximum impact. The authors identify the three dominant profiles as Commanders, Thinkers, and Visualizers, and present a wide range of strategies and specific approaches for successfully recognizing, and selling to, these profiles the way they intuitively prefer to buy.

Women are the engine of the global economy, driving 80 percent of consumer spending in the United States alone. They hold the purse strings, and when they’ve got a tight grip on them as they do now, companies must be shrewder than ever to win them over. Just when executives have mastered becoming technology literate, they find there’s another skill they need: becoming female literate. This isn’t always easy. Gender is the most powerful determinant of how a person views the world and everything in it. It’s stronger than age, income, or race. While there are mountains of research done every year segmenting consumers and analyzing why they buy, more often than not it doesn’t factor in the one piece of information that trumps them all: the sex of the buyer. It’s stunning how many companies overlook the psychology of gender when we all know that men and women look at the world so differently. Bridget Brennan’s Why She Buys shows decision makers how to bridge this divide and capture the business of the world’s most powerful consumers just when they need it most.

Is there a method to our madness when it comes to shopping? Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "a Sherlock Holmes for retailers," author and research company CEO Paco Underhill answers with a definitive "yes" in this witty, eye-opening report on our ever-evolving consumer culture. Why We Buy is based on hard data gleaned from thousands of hours of field research–in shopping malls, department stores, and supermarkets across America. With his team of sleuths tracking our every move, Paco Underhill lays bare the struggle among merchants, marketers, and increasingly knowledgeable consumers for control.

Shopping is one of the most challenging and rewarding human activities. Pooler offers a captivating exploration of the emotional and psychological dimensions of shopping. What drives shoppers in various situations? Why do we shop the way we do? Why do people go to malls, boutiques, and Web sites with their credit cards in hand, despite not knowing what it is they're looking for? This book answers such questions, taking an incisive look at how shopping and shoppers have changed in recent years. For those in retailing and marketing, this guide to the fickle consumer's mindset offers concrete and practical advice on modern shopping behavior, along with important insights into the shopping psyche. Pooler probes to the heart of today's complex shopper, providing valuable insights for retailers, advertisers, marketers, and consumers.

Why do we get so embarrassed when a colleague wears the same shirt? Why do we eat the same thing for breakfast every day, but seek out novelty at lunch and dinner? How has streaming changed the way Netflix makes recommendations? Why do people think the music of their youth is the best? How can you spot a fake review on Yelp? Our preferences and opinions are constantly being shaped by countless forces - especially in the digital age with its nonstop procession of "thumbs up" and "likes" and "stars." Tom Vanderbilt, bestselling author of Traffic, explains why we like the things we like, why we hate the things we hate, and what all this tell us about ourselves.   With a voracious curiosity, Vanderbilt stalks the elusive beast of taste, probing research in psychology, marketing, and neuroscience to answer myriad complex and fascinating questions. If you've ever wondered how Netflix recommends movies or why books often see a sudden decline in Amazon ratings after they win a major prize, Tom Vanderbilt has answers to these questions and many more that you've probably never thought to ask.