Consumer Research

The Age of Persuasion is for those who say "advertising doesn't work on me" as well as those who want to understand how this industry has become inseparable from modern culture. Using their popular CBC Radio series as a starting point, Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant tell the fascinating story of how modern marketing came of age - from the early players to the Mad Men of the 1960s and beyond.

Are you making it difficult for your potential customers to buy from you? Today's buyers are overloaded - overwhelmed by too much information and suffering from decision fatigue. Across industries, customers are delaying purchasing decisions or even choosing to stick with the status quo so they can avoid the dreaded "sales process". In response, many sales professionals are overcompensating with behaviors that are either too accommodating or that create high pressure - and alienating potential buyers in the process.

A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re so lousy at predicting what will make us happy–and what we can do about it. Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes.

This audiobook provides evidence-based answers to the key questions asked by marketers every day. Tackling issues such as how brands grow, how advertising really works, what price promotions really do and how loyalty programs really affect loyalty, How Brands Grow presents decades of research in a style that is written for marketing professionals to grow their brands.

Hi, I’m Wes Bush, founder of the Product-Led Institute. And in Product-Led Growth, I show you how you can cut your acquisition costs and scale further than you ever thought possible...by making your product the tool that helps you acquire, convert, and retain customers. But what does it mean to be "product-led"? How do you know if a product-led growth strategy makes sense for your business? And most importantly, how do you execute it? You’ll find answers to all of these questions inside this audiobook.

Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there’s a psychological force just as powerful - yet almost nobody has heard of it. It’s responsible for bringing groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fueling cycles of anxiety and conflict. In Wanting, Luke Burgis draws on the work of French polymath René Girard to bring this hidden force to light and reveals how it shapes our lives and societies.

Happy Money offers a tour of new research on the science of spending. Most people recognize that they need professional advice on how to earn, save, and invest their money. When it comes to spending that money, most people just follow their intuitions. But scientific research shows that those intuitions are often wrong.

Spread through the public in the form of popular stories, ideas can go viral and move markets - whether it's the belief that tech stocks can only go up or that housing prices never fall. Whether true or false, stories like these - transmitted by word of mouth, by the news media, and increasingly by social media - drive the economy by driving our decisions about how and where to invest, how much to spend and save, and more. But despite the obvious importance of such stories, most economists have paid little attention to them. Narrative Economics sets out to change that.

Exploring a wide range of everyday topics - from credit card debt and household budgeting to holiday sales - Ariely and Kreisler demonstrate how our ideas about dollars and cents are often wrong and cost us more than we know. Mixing case studies and anecdotes with tangible advice and lessons, they cut through the unconscious fears and desires driving our worst financial instincts and teach us how to improve our money habits.

In this thought-provoking and entertaining book, Tom Asacker, author of Sandbox Wisdom and A Clear Eye for Branding, pulls back the curtain on the workings of the mind and reveals the hidden logic to motivating behavior, both in ourselves and in others.

When CEOs think about the supply chain, it's usually to cut costs. But the smartest leaders see supply chain and sourcing for what they can be: hidden tools for outperforming the competition. Steve Jobs, upon returning to Apple in 1997, focused on transforming the supply chain. He hired Tim Cook - and the company sped up the development of new products, getting them into consumers' hands faster. The rest is history.

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services customers not only want to buy but are willing to pay premium prices for. How do companies know how to grow? How can they create products that they are sure customers want to buy? Can innovation be more than a game of hit and miss? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has the answer.

As a small-business owner, entrepreneur, or marketer, are you absolutely certain that you know what your customer wants? And even if you know what your customer wants, are you sure that you are able to clearly communicate that you offer the exact thing that they are seeking? In this best-selling book, Ryan Levesque lays out his proven, repeatable, yet slightly counterintuitive, methodology for understanding the core wants and motivations of your customer.

Keeping skin healthy is a booming industry, and yet it seems like almost no one agrees on what actually works. What one person says is vital another says is toxic. We have not cured acne or eczema, allergies keep getting worse, and autoimmune conditions are becoming increasingly common. In Clean, doctor and journalist James Hamblin explores how we got here, examining the science and culture of how we care for our skin today.

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 like the way it looks. 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.

Did you know that nearly half of salespeople fail to meet their quotas every year? Or that many of the most common sales behaviors drive down sales performance? In today's fiercely competitive marketplace, you can't afford to lose sales that should be yours. But with so much conflicting advice from self-proclaimed "gurus", how do you know which sales strategies actually work? Leading sales trainer, researcher, and CEO of Hoffeld Group David Hoffeld has the answer.

What is it that made Starbucks an overnight sensation and separated it from other coffee house companies? Why do many products with great product innovation, perfect locations, terrific customer experiences, even breakthrough advertising, fail to get the same visceral traction in the marketplace as brands like Apple and Nike?

Coleman offers a system designed to dramatically increase customer retention and as a result, the bottom line. He identifies eight distinct emotional needs customers undergo during the 100 days following a purchase, whether it's as small as a new drink at Starbucks or as big as a house. If you can understand and anticipate these phases, you can use a myriad of techniques - in-person, email, mail, and video - to cement a long and valuable partnership.

An accessible and practical toolkit that teams and companies in all industries can use to increase their customer base and market share, this book walks listeners through the process of creating and executing their own custom-made growth hacking strategy. It is a must listen for any marketer, entrepreneur, innovator or manager looking to replace wasteful big bets and "spaghetti-on-the-wall" approaches with more consistent, replicable, cost-effective, and data-driven results.

The lifeblood of your business is repeat customers. But customers can be fickle, markets shift, and competitors are ruthless. So how do you ensure a steady flow of repeat business? The secret--no matter what industry you're in--is finding and keeping automatic customers. These days virtually anything you need can be purchased through a subscription, with more convenience than ever before.