Consumer Research

Featuring instructional case studies from companies including Panasonic, Hilton, Merck, and Honeywell, this evidence-based book provides listeners with a proven methodology for driving success before, during, and after every sale. Embracing the entire customer life cycle, Beyond the Sales Process reveals twelve essential strategies including: Study your customer. Give them compelling reasons to engage. Build a vision for them of their own success....

In this far-reaching examination of contemporary American culture, John Zogby, one of the nation's foremost pollsters, explores who today's Americans are, identifying patterns in our social makeup that hint at the way we'll be. Companies from multinational corporations down to family-owned small businesses can benefit from this detailed information about where we are and where we're going.

While millions of consumers carry on unaware, powerful companies are racing to gain more knowledge and data than anyone, including any government, has ever had. The goal is to understand consumer behavior and desires, from mundane matters to our most private and intimate affairs. This massive trove of data represents an immense prize for these companies. In economic terms it is one of the most valuable assets on the planet.

The recent changes in our economic landscape have only exposed and intensified a phenomenon: an explosion in sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping. From enormous marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist to emerging sectors such as peer-to-peer lending (Zopa), "swap trading" (Swaptree), and car sharing (Zipcar), Collaborative Consumption is disrupting outdated modes of business and reinventing not only what we consume but how we consume.

In Honest to Greatness, serial Inc. 5000 entrepreneur Peter Kozodoy shows how today’s greatest business leaders use honesty - not as a touchy-feely core value, but as a business strategy that produces game-changing, industry-dominating success.

Since the Enlightenment, there has been a very simple but widely held assumption that we are a species of thinking individuals and that human behavior is best understood by examining the psychology of individuals. It appears, however, that this insight is plain wrong. The evidence from a number of leading behavioral and neuroscientists suggests that our species is designed as a herd or group animal. Mark Earls applies this evidence to the traditional mechanisms of marketing and consumer behavior, with a result that necessitates a complete rethinking about these subjects.

Fred Reichheld's 2006 book The Ultimate Question - that question being, "How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?" - challenged the conventional wisdom of customer satisfaction programs. It coined the terms "bad profits" and "good profits" and pointed to a faster, much more accurate way of gauging customers' real loyalty to a company. Richard Owen and Laura Brooks are co-developers, along with Reichheld, of the methodology behind answering the question.

We are in the midst of a massive media revolution. For the first time in history, ordinary people around the world have the ability to create, distribute, and consume content instantly, from anywhere, using connected devices. The massive increase in media "noise" created by these consumers and devices creates an entirely new situation that makes conventional marketing models obsolete. And yet countless companies and marketing organizations continue to rely on traditional models, assuming that their "campaigns" will sway customers. They couldn't be more wrong.

Why excluding some people from your movement is actually what you want.

Have you ever walked into a fast food restaurant planning to grab something small and left with a super-sized meal, dessert, and maybe even a toy? It’s not just you—and it’s not just coincidence. Fast food chains are experts at subtly influencing your decisions. They use colour, smell, sound, urgency, and emotional cues to encourage you to spend more, eat more, and keep coming back. These techniques aren’t random—they’re carefully crafted psychological strategies designed to benefit the company far more than the consumer.

Behavior change is hard, but O’Mara shows that by adopting strategies that are well-founded in the science of brain and behavior, individuals and organizations can adapt to the demands of the modern world.

Bypassed is your how-to business guide to adopt the brand-building tactics that work in today’s real estate market. In this action-oriented playbook, you’ll learn how to build vital brand visibility online to generate influence in your community; why just having a Facebook business page isn’t enough and how to harness the power of LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, so you don’t miss a lead; the 10-step checklist you need to get more quality online reviews; how to become a legendary lead master; and the entire road map on how to create an unforgettable customer experience.

Wie kommt es, dass manche Produkte sofort von jedem erkannt werden und andere völlig floppen? Und wie ist es möglich, dass manche Apps, Onlineshops oder ähnliche Internetprodukte innerhalb kürzester Zeit so erfolgreich werden, dass sie aus dem Alltag der meisten Menschen gar nicht mehr wegzudenken sind? Für jeden, der ein Produkt auf den Markt bringen möchte, das im Alltag nicht mehr wegzudenken ist - wie Essen, Fernsehen oder Zähneputzen - hat Nir Eyal diesen Ratgeber verfasst. Anschaulich erklärt er, worauf es bei der Produktentwicklung ankommt, ergänzt durch erläuternde Praxisbeispiele.

Why do we do the things we do? The classical view of economics is that we are rational individuals, making decisions with the intention of maximizing our preferences. Behaviorists, on the other hand, see us as relying on mental shortcuts and conforming to preexisting biases. Richard Robb argues that neither explanation accounts for those things that we do for their own sake, and without understanding these sorts of actions, our picture of decision‑making is at best incomplete.

We live in an era of tribalism, polarization, and intense social division - separating people along lines of religion, political conviction, race, ethnicity, and sometimes gender. How did this happen? In Conformity, Cass R. Sunstein argues that the key to making sense of living in this fractured world lies in understanding the idea of conformity - what it is and how it works - as well as the countervailing force of dissent.

Grant McCracken, an anthropologist who now trains some of the world's biggest companies and consulting firms, argues that the CCO would keep a finger on the pulse of contemporary cultural trends, from sneakers to slow food to preppies, while developing a systematic understanding of the deep waves of culture in America and the world. The CCOs professionalism would allow the corporation to see coming changes, even when they only exist as the weakest of signals.

Now that 75 percent of screen time is spent on connected devices, digital strategies have moved front and center of most marketing plans. But what if that's not enough? What if most people ignore company messages? What if consumer engagement never goes further than the "like" button? A sobering reality is hitting marketers. Technology hasn't just reshaped mass media, it's altering behavior as well. And getting through to customers will take some radical rethinking.

Internet Reputation Management for Businesses is a new book by Guillermo "William" Rivas, co-founder of the first company to offer reputation management to businesses. The book cuts through the clutter and hype of reputation management and helps businesses understand the keys to a successful reputation-management campaign for a healthy social media presence online. This book on Internet reputation management looks into the passion and rewards of a healthy online image.

How businesses can harness the power of online consumer reviews. More than seventy percent of consumers now consult online reviews before making purchases, and they take those picks and pans very seriously. A disgruntled but ignorant customer on Yelp might have more clout than any expert guidebook, magazine article, or newspaper critic. No wonder many businesses feel terrified by the review-driven marketplace.

For years, marketers have held on to unwavering beliefs that have dictated how they market to their consumers. But the hard truth is that the changes we see in marketing and business are based on one undeniable factor - the size of the generations we are selling to. As each generation ages, what they buy and how much they buy will change.