Market Research

If you've ever used ZipCar, Amazon Prime, Spotify, NetFlix, Groupon, Weight Watchers, SurveyMonkey, United Mileage Plus, Pinterest, or Twitter, you are part of The Membership Economy, an increasingly popular model that author Robbie Kellman Baxter sees as the inevitable result of technological advancements, social trends, and a generation in transition. The Membership Economy argues that we are now moving away from ownership, but we still want the benefits that come with access.

Inspired by the number one bestseller Good to Great, market intelligence expert Jared Schrieber has gone a step further to explore the factors that distinguish breakout brands from those that lag behind. He studied twenty-five thousand brands over five years by tracking the day-to-day purchasing decisions of more than one million consumers, analyzing the advertising that influenced them, and creating a practical guide for growing brands, no matter their industry or size.

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.

Booze, Babe, and the Little Black Dress retells the epic stories of the decade that addicted all of us to the shopping experience. Is that a good thing? A bad thing? Or something in between? Listen and choose for yourself.

All of us want to live a life of financial freedom. But getting rich overnight isn’t going to happen. If you want to get rich, the best way is to do the things that made rich people rich. This book gives you a proven plan to make more money and to get rich over time. If you are looking for a way to do nothing, change nothing, and still get rich, this book isn’t for you. But if you want to learn the real secrets of the wealthy and are willing to work hard and make changes to your outlook and your life, anyone can get rich slowly.

Ponzinomics by Robert L. FitzPatrick, author of False Profits, is the first comprehensive account of how "multi-level marketing" was created in America, escaped criminal and civil prosecution, and spread all over the world. It is the first book to fully explain how the legitimate business of "direct selling" was turned into pyramid recruiting. Ponzinomics reveals how multi-level marketing helped to lay a foundation on Main Street of pervasive deception, financial self-destruction, authoritarian leader-worship, and economic make-believe.

Persuasion is a technique that you use on a daily basis, but how persuasive are you? Are you getting what you are seeking when attempting to persuade others? If not, it is time to start working on your ability to persuade. It is often thought that persuasion, and the techniques that fall under it, is only used for selfish reasons, but this is not true. In fact, being good at persuasion is needed to get ahead at work, form friendships, and even when interacting with strangers.

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.

Trend forecaster James Wallman reveals the world's growing sense of stuffocation – and how we can move away from it. We have more stuff than we could ever need - clothes we don't wear, kit we don't use, and toys we don't play with. But having everything we thought we wanted isn't making us happier. It's bad for the planet. It's cluttering up our homes. It's making us feel 'stuffocated' and stressed - and it might even be killing us.

In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google's change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years: the rise of personalization.

The members of a massive and growing customer group are highly engaged with one subject: changing their own behavior to be healthier, wealthier, and wiser. Unlike the average consumer, these people are eager and excited to connect with businesses - if they'll help them make these very difficult changes. Nelson calls these people "transformational consumers".

Lifescale is a journey of self-discovery and growth. It's about getting back into balance and remastering our destinies. Author Brian Solis knows firsthand. He struggled with distraction and all of its ill effects. To get his life back, he developed a set of techniques, exercises, and thought experiments designed to tame the chaos, and positively and productively navigate our day-to-day lives. Instead of falling victim to the never-ending cycle of newsfeeds, Likes, addictive apps, and boredom scrolling, we can learn to manage our time and inspire our own lives.

Paco Underhill, the author of the hugely successful Why We Buy and Call of the Mall, reports on the growing importance of women in everybody’s marketplace - what makes a package, product, space, or service “female friendly”. Underhill offers a tour of the world’s marketplace - with shrewd observations and practical applications to help everybody adapt to the new realities.

No one in America has done more observing of more people than Dr. Frank I. Luntz. From Bill O'Reilly to Bill Maher, America's leading pundits, prognosticators, and CEOs turn to Luntz to explain the present and to predict the future. With all the upheavals of recent events, the plans and priorities of the American people have undergone a seismic shift.

Our world is being transformed by the Internet and the near limitless choice that it provides to consumers; tomorrow's markets belong to those who can take advantage of this. The Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance, an entirely new model for business that is just starting to show its power as unlimited selection reveals new truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it.

Ever since Adam Smith, the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us with material well-being, as if by an invisible hand. In Phishing for Phools, Nobel Prize-winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller deliver a fundamental challenge to this insight, arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception.

Marketing executives and consumer advocates alike predict a future of brand-proof consumers, armed with technology and a sophisticated understanding of marketing techniques, who can effectively tune out ad campaigns. But as Rob Walker demonstrates, this widely accepted misconception has eclipsed the real changes in the way modern consumers relate to their brands of choice. Combine this with marketers' new ability to blur the line between advertising, entertainment, and public space, and you have dramatically altered the relationship between consumer and consumed.

Why do three out of four professional football players go bankrupt? How can illiterate jungle dwellers pass a test that tricks Harvard philosophers? And why do billionaires work so hard - only to give their hard-earned money away? When it comes to making decisions, the classic view is that humans are eminently rational. But growing evidence suggests instead that our choices are often irrational, biased, and occasionally even moronic. Which view is right - or is there another possibility?

In order to be successful both today and in the future, you need to separate yourself from the competition by practicing the breakthrough principle of adaptive innovation. How? By delivering an experience that the competition either cannot or will not attempt to copy. This is literally impossible if you stick to what is already familiar to you because whatever is familiar to you and your customers is likely to be familiar to your competition. You must create a new experience that is unique to you and that fosters a powerful emotional attachment with your target customer.

America’s Romance with the English Garden is the story of tastemakers and homemakers, of savvy businessmen and a growing American middle class eager to buy their products. It’s also the story of the beginnings of the modern garden industry, which seduced the masses with its images and fixed the English garden in the mind of the American consumer. Seed and nursery catalogs delivered aspirational images to front doorsteps from California to Maine, and the English garden became the look of America.