Research Career

Companies spend millions of dollars every year trying to court consumers. They invest in flashy advertising, celebrity endorsements, loyalty programs, websites ... you name it. And they spend millions more trying to build their businesses through elaborate "relationship management" software. The result? Most marketers still aren't emotionally connecting with consumers. Married to the Brand tells the story of what makes profitable brand relationships work - through the eyes of the consumer, not the marketer.

Today’s brands face an apparent choice between two evils: continue betting on their increasingly ineffective advertising or put blind faith in the supposedly mystical power of social media, where “likes” stand in for transactions and a mass audience is maddeningly elusive. There has to be a better way... As Lennon and McCartney wrote a half century ago, money can’t buy you love. But in today’s world, where people have become desensitized - even disillusioned - by ad campaigns and marketing slogans, that maxim needs an update: Money can’t even buy you like.

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.

Delight Your Customers reveals three truths common to all exceptional customer service experiences and presents seven behaviors that, when demonstrated by employees, distinguish extraordinary customer service from the ordinary transactional customer service to which consumers have become accustomed. With real-world stories and many examples from a variety of industries, this audiobook is a resource that will help listeners everywhere take their customer service from ordinary to extraordinary!

It's Monday. Time to hit the pause button on your personality and get ready for the next meeting because, for the next five days, we'll be speaking the language of business. And, from bloated jargon and monotonous memos to syrupy slogans and deadly dull presentations, the official language of business is bull. The second we get to work, we join the masses who trade the wit and warmth of their voices for a corporate stamp of approval and the comfort of conformity.

Michael Hammer shows companies how to prosper in today’s world of slow growth, fierce competition, and enormously powerful customers. The winners in this extraordinarily difficult environment—companies like IBM, Duke Power, Progressive Insurance, and GE—succeed through superior operations. Their costs are lower and their quality higher than their competitors’; they get new products to market faster and they provide better customer service. How do they do it? Through near-fanatical attention to the basics of business, and by managing these basics in new and creative ways.

The publishing landscape can be a tricky one to navigate. There are so many aspects to authoring and publishing a book that it's easy for you to make critical mistakes that can set you off-course and significantly decrease your chances for success. How many of the 50 biggest mistakes authors make are you making? When you learn to avoid the biggest mistakes authors make, you can greatly enhance your chances for success in the publishing world.

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.

Rethink your business model to incorporate the power of "user" experiences. What’s the Future of Business? will galvanize a new movement that aligns the tenets of user experience with the vision of innovative leadership to improve business performance, engagement, and relationships for a new generation of consumerism. It provides an overview of real-world experiences versus "user" experiences in relation to products, services, mobile, social media, and commerce, among others.

Capture the Mindshare and the Market Share will Follow reveals how strong branding creates awareness, provides authentic value, motivates others to act, and builds long-term customer loyalty based on trust and respect. Author Libby Gill helps businesses define and articulate their unique brand promise by exploring case studies and client success stories to help listeners master the "Six Core Mindshare Methods," including concepts to Clarify, Commit, Collaborate, Connect, Communicate, and Contribute.

Every business knows that the best customer is a happy customer. They return again and again, bring their friends, and deliver tons of free advertising via word of mouth and social media. But in order to grow that loyal base, you must be aware of your customers’ needs. Drawing on the latest research in the exploding field of positive psychology, Columbia Business School marketing professor Bernd Schmitt offers three unique approaches any business can use to turn a casual customer into a committed fan.

Online shopping continues to grow at an astounding rate. In 2012 more than $1 trillion were spent in online retailers alone. The nature of shopping is drastically changing - but with so little information on how best to interact with online customers, how are businesses to succeed?

Imagine if you could identify your business's most profitable customers, craft a better marketing strategy to communicate with them, and inspire them to buy more? Well now you can. And the best part is that you can do it using the data you already have. Today, everything we do creates data, and the volumes are enormous. Virtually every time someone views something online, enters search on Google, or even surfs the web on a smart phone, another chunk gets added to the trove of data.

Coal, iron ore, and oil were the key productive assets that fueled the Industrial Revolution. Today data is the vital raw material of the information economy. The explosive abundance of this digital asset, more than doubling every two years, is creating a new world of opportunity and challenge. Data-ism is about this next phase, in which vast, Internet-scale data sets are used for discovery and prediction in virtually every field. It is a journey across this emerging world with people, illuminating narrative examples, and insights.

While everyone was bemoaning their alleged laziness and self-absorption, the Millennial generation quietly grew up. Pragmatic, diverse, and digitally native, this massive cohort of 80 million are now entering their prime consumer years, having children of their own, and shifting priorities as they move solidly into adulthood. Millennials with Kids changes how we think about this new generation of parents and uncovers profound insights for marketers and brand strategists seeking to earn their loyalty.

In this book, Eric von Hippel, author of the influential Democratizing Innovation, integrates new theory and research findings into the framework of a "free innovation paradigm." Free innovation, as he defines it, involves innovations developed by consumers who are self-rewarded for their efforts, and who give their designs away "for free." It is an inherently simple grassroots innovation process, unencumbered by compensated transactions and intellectual property rights.

WAS KOMMT NACH DEM SHOPPEN? ÜBER DIE ZUKUNFT UNSERES KONSUMS. Die Pandemie hat uns vorübergehend auf einen kalten Konsum-Entzug gesetzt. Doch sie hat uns nicht geheilt. Wir kaufen einfach immer weiter - auch Dinge, die wir eigentlich nicht brauchen. Was treibt uns dazu? Und was verändert sich gerade? Trendforscher Carl Tillessen nimmt uns mit hinter die Kulissen einer globalen Maschinerie, deren Erfolg vor allem auf Manipulation und Ausbeutung basiert.

Companies that are thriving, not just surviving, are much more than a set of ruthlessly efficient and mechanistic processes. They are a social system operated by people for people. The quality of relationships, both inside and outside the organization, is a far more important driver of sustainable success or failure than the quality of its control systems. The head is important, but it is the heart that matters most.