Business Research

You’ve written the best book ever, and now, everyone will be racing to read it. That was the plan anyway. As a first-time author, you walk a fine line between planning for and marketing your book for success and the crushing reality of low sales. Book Marketing for the First-Time Author breaks down the most important elements that you need to market your book. Master the fundamentals covered here to set your book up for success.

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?

Customers everywhere describe their interactions with companies in a deeply personal way: We hate our banks, love our smartphones, and think the cable company is out to get us. What is actually going through our brains when we make these judgments? Customer loyalty expert Chris Malone and top social psychologist Susan Fiske have discovered that our perceptions arise from spontaneous judgments on warmth and competence, the same two factors that also determine our impressions of people.

Every business making sales online is engaged in a battle to get customers to click. More clicks equals more sales equals a more successful business. How do you write copy that will encourage more people to buy from you? How do you persuade customers over the line to make that final buying decision? What is the art of the click? The answer lies in the power of direct-response copywriting.

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 multimillion-dollar product.

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.

What is the secret process for turning your food product idea into a shelf-stable manufactured item? Having a business plan is one thing, but the magic happens in the food science laboratory! The technical part of the food industry has always been a mystery because most food scientists work directly for food companies and are not allowed to share proprietary methods or know-how.

Interest in applying analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to sales and marketing has grown dramatically, with no signs of slowing down. This book provides essential guidance to apply advanced analytics and data mining techniques to real-world business applications.

Without words, apps would be an unusable jumble of shapes and icons, while voice interfaces and chatbots wouldn't even exist. Words make software human-centered, and require just as much thought as the branding and code.

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.

This book gives you the specific scripts to improve even the most difficult personalities!

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.

To reach today’s customers and influence their purchases, marketers and market researchers need to understand and harness the power of applied behavior psychology and behavior economics to break through these nonconscious filters and drive purchase behaviors - a process called behavior design. In Marketing to Mindstates, Will Leach, founder of TriggerPoint Design, a leading behavior research and design consultancy, demystifies this nonconscious filter and explains how to bypass it, introducing listeners to temporary moments of influence called mindstates.

With an easy-to-understand approach, Cost Estimation: Methods and Tools provides comprehensive coverage of the quantitative techniques needed by professional cost estimators and for those wanting to learn about this vibrant career field. Featuring the underlying mathematical and analytical principles of cost estimation, the book focuses on the tools and methods used to predict the research and development, production, and operating and support costs for successful cost estimation in industrial, business, and manufacturing processes.

Presenting a clear, accessible guide to solving important leadership challenges through human resources-focused and other data analytics, this engaging audiobook tells you how to transform the HR function and overall organizational effectiveness by using data to make decisions grounded in facts vs opinions, identify root causes behind your company's thorniest problems, and move toward a winning, future-focused business strategy.

Change is coming: Nearly everywhere in the world, people over sixty will become the dominant population. Longevity presents an opportunity for which companies need to develop a strategy. Estimates put the global market for this demographic at $21 trillion across every industry you can think of. Stage (Not Age) is the concise guide to helping companies understand and serve this burgeoning market by focusing on life stage, not age, and identifying the deep diversity of needs within the demographic.

The New Frugality amounts to a paradigm shift in the way we spend and save. The good news is that a frugal lifestyle is one of less waste, lower environmental impact, greater peace of mind, and, over the long run, deeper satisfaction.

How do people actually behave when confronted with economic choices? And remember, almost every choice we make is economic. While our desires are boundless, our resources are limited and tradeoffs confront us at every turn.

As much as 95% of our decisions are made by the subconscious mind. As a result, the world's largest and most sophisticated companies are applying the latest advances in neuroscience to create brands, products, package designs, marketing campaigns, store environments, and much more, that are designed to appeal directly and powerfully to our brains.

Green Giants examines nine companies that are merging social responsibility with wild profitability - and reveals the six factors responsible for their success, including: iconoclastic leadership fueled by deep conviction and a rebellious streak; disruptive innovation that uses sustain ability to spur the development of radically better products and services; a higher purpose that ignites the company - when the mission leads, profits follow.