Consumer Research

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.

Bestselling author and futurist Mark Schaefer explains why community is a vastly overlooked marketing opportunity for most organizations. He explains how three major trends are colliding in a way that makes brand communities the future of marketing strategy.

Slow Down, Sell Faster! does this by introducing a simple yet powerful method for buyer-focused selling that is practical, repeatable, and easily customizable. This buyer-focused approach extends to proposals and presentations, loyalty and retention, and, of course, cultivating more business. Each step in the book corresponds to a role you should adopt to meet customers’ needs at each stage of the buying process. Increasing sales is not just about learning more sales techniques; it’s about understanding the buying process - from your customer’s point of view.

People buy for emotional reasons. Yet "emotional selling" is missing from most marketing. That's why so many pros are now using BRAIN GLUE™ to boost the performance of their ads, emails, social media posts, and one-on-one presentations. Based on sold-out workshops at the US Small Business Administration, here’s how top marketers turn ordinary products into blockbusters (with little or no cost)!

Few management ideas have spread so far and so wide as the Net Promoter System (NPS). Created by author and loyalty guru Fred Reichheld, companies across the spectrum have adopted it - from industrial giants such as Mercedes-Benz and Cummins Engine to Silicon Valley sweethearts such as Apple and Google to digital innovators like Warby Parker and Peloton.

If you understand why people buy, you are already one step ahead in reaching out to them effectively with your products and services. Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy offers a groundbreaking exploration into the science of purchasing. The book specifically demonstrates why decision science has proven invaluable to the field of marketing by helping to explain purchasing behaviors.

Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.

An introduction for everyone. Rather than a "how to" for hands-on techies, this book - now in its revised and updated edition - serves lay listeners and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques. In this rich, fascinating, and surprisingly accessible introduction, leading expert Eric Siegel reveals how predictive analytics works and how it affects everyone every day.

Designers and managers hope their products become essential for users-integrated into their lives like Instagram, Lyft, and others have become. Such deep integration isn't accidental: it's a process of careful design and iterative learning, especially for technology companies. This guide shows you how to apply behavioral science—research that supports many products—to help your users achieve their goals using your product.

Cool isn't just a state of mind, a celebrity fad, or an American obsession, it's a business. In boardrooms across America, product managers are examining vodka bottles and candy bars, tissue boxes and hamburgers, wondering, "How do we make this thing cool? How do we make this gadget into the iPod of our industry? How do we do what Nike did? How do we get what Target got? How do we infuse this product with that very desirable, nearly unattainable it factor?"

Create data stories that lead to smarter, more informed decisions. Raw data doesn’t change minds. But a well-crafted story? That’s what drives action. Whether you’re presenting to executives, persuading clients, or influencing your local community, this book will help you transform numbers into narratives that make an impact. Turn raw numbers into insights people actually understand and care about. Present data with clarity, accuracy, and impact.

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.

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.

Social scientists have adopted the practices of more traditional scientists in the past few decades - using randomized trials to design policies aimed at improving educational levels, lowering crime rates, elevating employment rates, and improving living standards among the poor. Andrew Leigh and P.J. Ochlan bring the lives of these radical researchers to life as their experiments to overturn conventional wisdom lead to breakthroughs like finding the cure for scurvy and discovering what policies really improve literacy rates.

The Robert Collier Letter Book is by far the top book on writing sales letters. But it goes beyond that. As every great copywriter knows, these techniques are directly transferable to the Internet, whether through web copy or email or whatever. This book earned Robert Collier the distinction of being one of the greatest marketing minds in history. Robert Collier's sales letters were successful because he wrote to his audience's needs.

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.

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?

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.

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.

For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimize our own “utility”. Then, in the 1970s, psychologists demonstrated that the reality is a lot messier. We don’t really know what our utility is, and we care about people other than ourselves. We are susceptible to external nudges. And far from being perfectly rational, we are prone to “cognitive biases” with complex effects on decision-making, such as forgetting to prepare for retirement.