Consumer Behavior

Companies spend millions of dollars every year trying to court consumers. They invest in flashy advertising, celebrity endorsements, loyalty programs, websites ... you name it. And they spend millions more trying to build their businesses through elaborate "relationship management" software. The result? Most marketers still aren't emotionally connecting with consumers. Married to the Brand tells the story of what makes profitable brand relationships work - through the eyes of the consumer, not the marketer.

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 all needs.

How do we stay safe? Should we? What if our attempts are exposing us even more to the very risks we are avoiding? Would acceptance of danger make us more secure? Is there such a thing as foolproof? In Foolproof, Greg Ip presents a macro theory of human nature and disaster that explains how we can keep ourselves safe in our increasingly dangerous world.

Drawing on insights from across the social, behavioral, and natural sciences, Michelle Baddeley explores contexts in which behavior is driven by the herd. She analyzes the rational vs nonrational and cognitive vs emotional forces involved, and she investigates why herding only sometimes works out well. With new perspectives on followers, leaders, and the pros and cons of herd behavior, Baddeley shines vivid light on human behavior in the context of our ever-more-connected world.

Bitter fighting over deficits, taxes, and spending bedevils Washington, D.C., even as partisan gridlock has brought the government to the brink of default. Yet the more politicians on both sides of the aisle rant and the citizenry fumes, the more things seem to remain the same. White House Burning looks squarely at the burgeoning national debt and proposes to defuse its threat to our well-being without forcing struggling middle-class families and the elderly into poverty.

The postmodern revolution requires marketers to revisit the walls they have erected over many years. That's not an easy thing to do. Conventional marketing strategies are built upon predictability, stability, and the comfort in knowing that we can understand our customer yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We love to put people into categories, and often into super-neat dichotomies, and call it a day. Those walls used to be solid, and marketers relied upon them to build a structure that formed the basis of their traditional strategic worldview.

Persuasion is a seductive and elusive skill to master, and one that comes with tremendous power. Who wouldn't want to be able to talk anyone into doing anything they want? Well, there's good news about that: Persuasion is something you can learn with the help of this book! The tips, tricks, and techniques in this guide will serve as the perfect introduction to persuasion and then you can start influencing everyone around you and exerting your new powers.