Consumer Behavior

We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global industries are controlled by just a few giant firms - big banks, big pharma, and big tech, just to name a few. But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the "curse of bigness" can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself.

Ahhh, the modern workplace: a cauldron of stress and anxiety. From the moment we accept a new role, we’re thrown into a world of competing personalities, shifting protocols, and an endless stream of emails, Slack messages, and Zoom calls, all of which serve to distract us from the things we truly want to be doing, like eating Thai food and sleeping until noon. I Hope This Email Finds You Never puts aside the motivational screeds, productivity hacks, and pop-science, and focuses instead on those things in the workplace that truly cause us grief.

The best companies in the world discover what their customers desire - and then deliver it in memorable and deeply human experiences. How well do you know your customers? What Customers Crave examines how the hyper-connected economy is radically changing consumer expectations, and reveals what companies need to do to stay on top. The solution rests on two simple questions: What do your customers love? What do they hate? Find the answers, and you're well on your way to success

While today’s business world is dominated by technology and data analysis, award-winning financial journalist and anthropology PhD Gillian Tett advocates thinking like an anthropologist to better understand consumer behavior, markets, and organizations to address some of society’s most urgent challenges.

After spotting Netflix and the deep-pocketed Amazon Prime Video a decade’s head start, rivals from the tech and start-up realm (Apple, Quibi) and traditional media (Disney, WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal) all decided to move mountains to enter the streaming game. At a cost of billions, each went after their own piece of the market, launching five new services in a seven-month span. And just as the derby was heating up, the coronavirus pandemic arrived, a black-swan event bringing short-term benefits but also stiff challenges.

Digital technology has profoundly altered the competitive landscape for retailers. Although the shutdown of 2020 didn’t cause this trend, it has dramatically accelerated it, collapsing retailers’ transformation timeline into a matter of months, not years. In Remarkable Retail, industry thought leader Steve Dennis argues that it’s no longer enough merely to offer convenience, decent prices, or an okay shopping experience. Even very good is no longer good enough. To win and keep customers today, retailers must be nothing short of remarkable.

Competition is tougher than ever these days and competing on price or product just doesn’t work as well anymore. So how can companies stand out in a crowded marketplace that is constantly evolving? The answer is customer experience, and the best part about customer experience is that it's delivered by human beings who are unique to a company. The Experience Maker helps managers and executives focus on customers who are already spending money with their company rather than spending more money on marketing new customers.

Wallet Activism challenges you to rethink your financial power so can feel confident spending, earning, and saving money in ways that align with your values.

If you want to succeed in life or career; regardless of your industry, profession (not just marketing or sales profession), location, age, gender, or any other aspect, you need to become more persuasive, you need to influence people. You cannot do it all on your own - you need people to leverage your efforts and get results faster. Persuasion is not merely for marketing and sales people - it’s the basic life skill that every human being needs to sell their view point, ideas, and get people along - everyone is into salesmanship.

What Retirees Want presents the culmination of 30 years of research by world-famous "Age Wave" expert Ken Dychtwald, PhD, and author and consultant Robert Morison. This entertaining, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging book explains how individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and governments can best prepare for a new era - where the needs and demands of the "Third Age" will set the lifestyle, health, social, marketplace, and political priorities of generations to come.

Strategy consultant Robbie Kellman Baxter has been helping companies excel in this business environment for more than a decade. Now, in The Forever Transaction, she reveals all her secrets. Whatever industry you're in, Baxter provides the inspiration, tools, and insight you need to build and execute a business model that will leave your competition in the dust.

Demographics not only define who we are, where we live, and how our numbers change. For those who can read beyond the raw figures, they open up hidden business opportunities that lie ahead. What will happen when retiring Boomers free up jobs? How will Generation Y alter supermarkets? Which states will have the most dynamic workforces? Will American manufacturing rebound as Asia's population declines? Upside puts this powerful yet little-understood science to work finding answers.

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 are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes can make us poor and unhealthy. We often make bad decisions about education, personal finance, health care, family, and the environment.

Founder of the phenomenon social media account PreachersNSneakers tackles how faith, capitalism, consumerism, and (wannabe) celebrity have collided and asks both believers and nonbelievers alike: How much is too much?

Succeeding as a sales professional is like being a professional athlete. Whether you're already the top salesperson at your company, or you're simply working hard to reach the next level of success, in order to keep up in a fast-paced, increasingly crowded marketplace - one in which meaningful product differentiation has all but disappeared - you must constantly push yourself to improve, open more doors, and break through the noise to attract and retain the attention of busy and distracted customers.

Our food system is undergoing a total transformation that impacts how we produce, get, and consume our food. Market researcher and bestselling author Paco Underhill—hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a Sherlock Holmes for retailers”—reveals where our eating and drinking lives are heading in his “delectable” (Michael Gross, New York Times bestselling author of 740 Park) book, How We Eat.

Once you learn how to use them, controlling people's minds will be that easy. Do you struggle to get people to listen to you, to have them comply with instructions and requests? Do you always use the same common words that everyone else is using? Are you paying any attention to the words that you choose? Imagine yourself flowing with powerful words: you just can't help it, it's almost automatic.

As Lawrence Ingrassia shows in this timely and eye-opening audiobook, a growing number of digital entrepreneurs have found new and creative ways to crack the code on the bonanza of physical goods that move through our lives every day. They have discovered that manufacturing, marketing, logistics, and customer service have all been flattened - where there were once walls that protected big brands like Gillette, Sealy, Victoria’s Secret, or Lenscrafters, savvy and hungry innovators now can compete on price, value, quality, speed, convenience, and service.

Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments - also known as randomized controlled trials - designed to test the impact of different online experiences. In this book, Michael Luca and Max Bazerman explain the importance of experiments for decision making in a data-driven world.

In the old days, when we made physical products, setting project goals wasn’t that hard. But in today’s service - and software-driven world, “done” is less obvious. When is Amazon done? When is Google done? Or Facebook? In reality, services powered by digital systems are never done. So then how do we give teams a goal that they can work on? Mostly, we simply ask teams to build features - but features are the wrong way to go. We often build features that create no value. Instead, we need to give teams an outcome to achieve.