Consumer Social

Learn what makes the African American market unique, why marketers should care, and how you can effectively connect with black Americans. Drawing on her wealth of experience and ongoing research and consulting on the African American market, Pepper shares with listeners her thoughtful insights on this influential segment.

Plastic surgery has become the answer for many Americans, and in American Plastic sociologist Laurie Essig explores how we arrived at this particular solution. Over the last decade there has been a 465 percent increase in cosmetic work, and we now spend over $12 billion annually on procedures like liposuction, face-lifts, tummy tucks, and boob jobs.

While everyone is talking about "big data", the truth is that understanding the "little data" - the stats that underlie newspaper headlines, stock reports, weather forecasts, and so on - is what helps you make smarter decisions at work, at home, and in every aspect of your life. The average person consumes approximately 30 gigabytes of data every single day but has no idea how to interpret it correctly. Everydata explains, through the eyes of an expert economist and statistician, how to decipher the small bytes of data we consume in a day.

Last Rights: The Fight to Save the 7th Amendment shines a bright spotlight on a grave but often overlooked effort by large corporate interests to undermine America's civil justice system and consumer rights. Trailblazing Plaintiff's lawyer, Jeffrey B. Simon, wrote this book as a rallying cry for anyone who has ever been wronged by a rigged system of laws. Through riveting tales of real courtroom drama, Simon exposes the insidious influence of corporate greed and political power weaponized to repeal personal rights and weaken public safety.

Lee Eisenberg's The Number hit the New York Times best-seller list and became an instant classic with those wanting to learn more about retiring comfortably. Here he investigates the forces that compel Americans to shop till they drop. A timely exploration, Shoptimism takes a critical look at an often downplayed aspect of American economic prosperity.

Unser Handeln als Konsumenten, Produzenten und Investoren zerstört die natürliche und soziale Umwelt. Ohne es zu merken, töten wir Menschen. Der Ökonom Jakob Thomä legt den Finger in die Wunde: Wie ein Detektiv sammelt er Indizien, besichtigt Tatorte und ermittelt Verdächtige. Seine harte Beweisaufnahme führt ihn zu neuen Antworten auf die Frage, wie die Menschheit zukunftsfähig wird. "Der Kill-Score" erzählt mit einem radikalen Realismus die Geschichte von den tödlichen Folgen unseres Handelns.

The greatest threat to privacy today is not the NSA, but good-old American companies. Internet giants, leading retailers, and other firms are voraciously gathering data with little oversight from anyone. In Las Vegas, no company knows the value of data better than Caesars Entertainment. Many thousands of enthusiastic clients pour through the ever-open doors of their casinos. The secret to the company’s success lies in their one unrivaled asset: they know their clients intimately by tracking the activities of the overwhelming majority of gamblers.

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.

Over the last four decades, debt, bankruptcy, and home foreclosures have risen to epidemic levels, and the personal savings rate has sunk dangerously low. Why, in the richest nation on Earth, can't Americans hold on to their money? First published in 2008, Stuart Vyse's Going Broke described the epidemic of personal debt that existed in the years leading up to the Great Recession and anticipated the home mortgage crisis that started it. Ten years later, this fully updated new edition tackles the post-recession era of economic recovery.

Drawing on insights from across the social, behavioral, and natural sciences, Michelle Baddeley explores contexts in which behavior is driven by the herd. She analyzes the rational vs nonrational and cognitive vs emotional forces involved, and she investigates why herding only sometimes works out well. With new perspectives on followers, leaders, and the pros and cons of herd behavior, Baddeley shines vivid light on human behavior in the context of our ever-more-connected world.

En esta obra revolucionaria que ocupa desde hace años los primeros puestos en las listas de ventas de Estados Unidos, Gladwell, un auténtico gurú de los negocios, analiza la trayectoria de varios productos y tendencias de gran éxito hasta descubrir cómo y por qué se alcanza el punto de inflexión a partir del cual algo se convierte en un fenómeno de masas: el punto clave.

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.

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.

With a bit of know-how and money, you, too, can have it all. At least, that's what teen pop culture was selling in surround sound at the turn of the millennium. From movies like Clueless to TV's Dawson's Creek to the music videos on MTV's Total Request Live and the catalogs of Abercrombie & Fitch, a consumer-minded ethos drove pop culture storytelling as millennials came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But in the long shadow of the Great Recession, the upwardly mobile aspirations fostered by the era's popular culture and media seem to have been thwarted.

Instagram is one of, if not THE, best platforms you can use to market your business. It provides any user a variety of ways to create content and to reach an audience. For a business, these are all that you would need to make people aware of your brand, create relationships with them, retain existing customers, manage brand reputation, and lead prospective customers to channels for conversion.

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.

It’s a new era of business and consumerism - and you play a role in defining it.

Today’s biggest trends - the mobile web, social media, real time - have produced a new consumer landscape. The End of Business As Usual explores this complex information revolution, how it has changed the future of business, media, and culture, and what you can do about it. This is the end of business as usual and the beginning of a new era of relevance.

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

You’ve probably often wondered what happens behind closed doors in doctors’ offices, how you’re really perceived by the healthcare community, and how drug selection actually works. Retired pharmaceutical market account manager Dan Mariani provides a fascinating view of how the healthcare system works. Described within are surprising behind-the-scenes machinations with detailed insights into how you, as a consumer, can make better choices to bolster your health.

In today’s world, a woman can be overwhelmed by the expectations put upon her—people who don’t know her, what she wants, or who she wants to be. Where do you turn when you know you want more, but your “more” doesn’t look like everyone else’s? Shop Social goes beyond the traditional understanding of buying from friends and shows how building a microcommunity of people who know you and who are personally invested in your well-being can be a life-changing experience that saves time and money, while putting you in control of your own health, happiness, and fulfillment.