Consumer Behavior Books

The unqualified victory of consumerism in America was not a foregone conclusion. The United States has traditionally been the home of the most aggressive and often thoughtful criticism of consumption, including Puritanism, Prohibition, the simplicity movement, the '60s hippies, and the consumer rights movement. But at the dawn of the twenty-first century, not only has American consumerism triumphed, there isn't even an "ism" left to challenge it. An All-Consuming Century is a rich history of how market goods came to dominate American life over that remarkable hundred years between 1900 and 2000 and why for the first time in history there are no practical limits to consumerism. By 1930 a distinct consumer society had emerged in the United States in which the taste, speed, control, and comfort of goods offered new meanings of freedom, thus laying the groundwork for a full-scale ideology of consumer's democracy after World War II. From the introduction of Henry Ford's Model T ("so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one") and the innovations in selling that arrived with the department store (window displays, self service, the installment plan) to the development of new arenas for spending (amusement parks, penny arcades, baseball parks, and dance halls), Americans embraced the new culture of commercialism--with reservations. However, Gary Cross shows that even the Depression, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the inflation of the 1970s made Americans more materialistic, opening new channels of desire and offering opportunities for more innovative and aggressive marketing. The conservative upsurge of the 1980s and '90s indulged in its own brand of self-aggrandizement by promoting unrestricted markets. The consumerism of today, thriving and largely unchecked, no longer brings families and communities together; instead, it increasingly divides and isolates Americans. Consumer culture has provided affluent societies with peaceful alternatives to tribalism and class war, Cross writes, and it has fueled extraordinary economic growth. The challenge for the future is to find ways to revive the still valid portion of the culture of constraint and control the overpowering success of the all-consuming twentieth century.

Contrived. Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic. Do your customers use any of these words to describe what you sell--or how you sell it? If so, welcome to the club. Inundated by fakes and sophisticated counterfeits, people increasingly see the world in terms of real or fake. They would rather buy something real from someone genuine rather than something fake from some phony. When deciding to buy, consumers judge an offering's (and a company's) authenticity as much as--if not more than--price, quality, and availability. In Authenticity, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that to trounce rivals companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, nonprofit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers' perception of authenticity by: recognizing how businesses "fake it;" appealing to the five different genres of authenticity; charting how to be "true to self" and what you say you are; and crafting and implementing business strategies for rendering authenticity. The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers' intensifying demand for the real deal.

In this entertaining and informative book, Walter Friedman chronicles the remarkable metamorphosis of the American salesman from itinerant amateur to trained expert. From the mid-nineteenth century to the eve of World War II, the development of sales management transformed an economy populated by peddlers and canvassers to one driven by professional salesmen and executives. From book agents flogging Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs to John H. Patterson's famous pyramid strategy at National Cash Register to the determined efforts by Ford and Chevrolet to craft failsafe sales pitches for their dealers, selling evolved from an art to a science. Salesmanship as a term and a concept arose around the turn of the century, paralleling the new science of mass production. Managers assembled professional forces of neat, responsible salesmen who were presented as hardworking pillars of society, no longer the butt of endless travelling salesmen jokes. People became prospects; their homes became territories. into dark places. The study of selling itself became an industry, producing academic disciplines devoted to marketing, consumer behaviour, and industrial psychology. At Carnegie Mellon's Bureau of Salesmanship Research, Walter Dill Scott studied the characteristics of successful salesmen and ways to motivate consumers to buy. Full of engaging portraits and illuminating insights, Birth of a Salesman is a singular contribution that offers a clear understanding of the transformation of salesmanship in modern America.

The general market for luxury goods has become stagnant. Given the new economic reality of the early 21st Century—not to mention the all-important new demographics of the new century—it’s bad business to continue to rely on luxury’s traditional customer base to support sales, or on tired marketing strategies and tactics. In Black is the New Green authors Burnett and Hoffman show readers how to follow in the footsteps laid down by brands such as Gucci, HSBC, Sony Electronics, and Aston Martin, amongst others, to become successful in a segment corporations can’t afford to overlook if growth is the objective. The total number of affluent ethnic households in the United States in now estimated at over 1.3 million, the buying power of affluent African Americans (referred to as AAA’s in this book) is currently $87.3 billion. It would be foolish in the extreme not to tap into this rich buying segment, yet that is exactly what the marketing arms of companies do all too frequently. Sometimes this is because the executives in a particular marketing department are unaware of the potential that exists within this segment, sometimes it’s because they are baffled about how to reach out to this segment and sometimes it’s because they think they lack the money or resources to make a credible effort at adding a whole new segment. And sometimes, unfortunately, it’s because they have reached out in the past but their efforts were unappealing to the AAA audience.Black is the New Green will show you how to attract this lucrative market and create brand loyalty and product bonding among affluent African Americans in an affordable and measurable way. Up until now, the affluent African American market has been underappreciated and overlooked. But with a sitting African American president—the time is now to tap into this market and to embrace a constituency that will have a lasting effect on your bottom line. http://www.blackisthenewgreenthebook.com

The Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, form the single largest demographic spike in American history. Never before or since have birth rates shot up and remained so high so long, with some obvious results: when the Boomers were kids, American culture revolved around families and schools; when they were teenagers, the United States was wracked by rebelliousness; now, as mature adults, the Boomers have led America to become the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world. Boomer Nation will for the first time offer an incisive look into this generation that has redefined America's culture in so many ways, from women's rights and civil rights to religion and politics. Steve Gillon combines firsthand reporting of the lives of six Boomers and their families with a broad look at postwar American history in a fascinating mix of biography and history. His characters, like America itself, reflect a variety of heritages: rich and poor, black and white, immigrant and native born. Their lives take very different paths, yet are shaped by key events and trends in similar ways. They put a human face on the Boomer generation, showing what it means to grow up amid widespread prosperity, with an explosion of democratic autonomy that led to great upheavals but also a renewal from below of our churches, industries, and even the armed forces. The same generation dismissed as pampered and selfish has led a revival of religion in America; the same generation that unleashed the women's movement has also shifted our politics into its most market-oriented, anti-governmental era since Woodrow Wilson. Gillon draws many lessons from this "generational history" -- above all, that the Boomers have transformed America from the security- and authority-seeking culture of their parents to the autonomy- and freedom-rich world of today. When the "greatest generation" was young and not yet at war, it was widely derided as selfish and spoiled. Only in hindsight, long after the sacrifices of World War II, did it gain its sterling reputation. Today, as Boomer America rises to the challenges of the war on terror, we may be on the cusp of a reevaluation of the generation of Presidents Bush and Clinton. That generation has helped make America the richest, strongest nation on the planet, and as Gillon's book proves, it has had more influence on the rest of us than any other group. Boomer Nation is an eye-opening reinterpretation of the past six decades.

From the bestselling author of Buyology comes a shocking insider's look at how today's global giants conspire to obscure the truth and manipulate our minds, all in service of persuading us to buy.   Marketing visionary Martin Lindstrom has been on the front lines of the branding wars for over twenty years.  Here, he turns the spotlight on his own industry, drawing on all he has witnessed behind closed doors, exposing for the first time the full extent of the psychological tricks and traps that companies devise to win our hard-earned dollars.   Picking up from where Vance Packard's bestselling classic, The Hidden Persuaders, left off more than half-a-century ago, Lindstrom reveals how advertisers and corporations:      * Intentionally target children at an alarmingly young age    * Stoke the flames of public panic and capitalize on paranoia over global contagions, extreme weather events, and food contamination scares.    * Are secretly mining our digital footprints to uncover some of the most intimate details of our private lives    * Purposely adjust their formulas in order to make their products chemically addictive      * And much, much more.  This searing expose introduces a new class of tricks, techniques, and seductions--the Hidden Persuaders of the 21st century--and shows why they are more insidious and pervasive than ever.

In a hard-hitting book that refutes conventional wisdom, Katherine Sender explores the connection between the business of marketing to gay consumers and the politics of gay rights and identity. She disputes some marketers'claims that marketing appeals to gay and lesbian consumers are a matter of "business, not politics" and that the business of gay marketing can be considered independently of the politics of gay rights, identity, and visibility. She contends that the gay community is not a preexisting entity that marketers simply tap into; rather it is a construction, an imagined community formed not only through political activism but also through a commercially supported media. She argues that marketing has not only been formative in the constitution of a GLBT community and identity but also has had significant impact on the visibility of gays and lesbians.

Named one of Fortune Magazine's "5 Best Business Books" in 2015 See your offering through the buyer's eyes for more effective marketing Buyer Personas is the marketer's actionable guide to learning what your buyer wants and how they make decisions. Written by the world's leading authority on buyer personas, this book provides comprehensive coverage of a compelling new way to conduct buyer studies, plus practical advice on adopting the buyer persona approach to measurably improve marketing outcomes. Readers will learn how to segment their customer base, investigate each customer type, and apply a radically more relevant process of message selection, content creation, and distribution through the channels that earn the buyers' trust. Rather than relying on generic data or guesswork to determine what the buyer wants, the buyer persona approach allows companies to ask the buyer directly and obtain more precise and actionable guidance. Buyer personas are composite pictures of the people who buy solutions, services or products, crafted through a unique type of interview with the people the marketer wants to influence. This book provides step-by-step guidance toward implementing the buyer persona approach, with the advice of an internationally-respected expert. Learn who buys what, and why Understand your buyer's goals and how you can address them Tailor your marketing activities to your buyer's expectations See the purchase through the customer's eyes A recent services industry survey reports that 52 percent of their marketers have buyer personas, and another 28 percent expect to add them within the next two years - but only 14.6 percent know how to use them. To avoid letting such a valuable tool go to waste, access the expert perspective in Buyer Personas, and craft a more relevant marketing strategy.

The author of the international bestsellerWhy We Buy-- praised byThe New York Timesas "a book that gives this underrated skill the respect it deserves" -- now takes us to the mall, a place every American has experienced and has an opinion about.Paco Underhill, the Margaret Mead of shopping, has run hundreds of research assignments in malls across the country (and in Tokyo and European capitals). He has visited them, observed his fellow mall-ers, looked long and hard for his car in mammoth parking lots, chatted up the staffers, gone hunting for jeans with adolescent girls and anniversary shopping with guys.The result is a bright, ironic, funny, and shrewd portrait of the mall -- America's gift to personal consumption, its most powerful icon of global commercial muscle, the once new and now aging national town square, the place where we convene in our leisure time.Call of the Mallis about desire and buying lingerie, about why the same camel hair coat costs twice as much in the women's department as it does in the boys'. It's about why shoes, handbags, and cosmetics are clustered, why Cartier is next to cut-rate, and why the movie theater is hard to find.It's about the shopping mall as an exemplar of our commercial and social culture, the place where our young people have their first taste of social freedom, and where the rest of us compare notes.Call of the Mallexamines how we use the mall, what it means, why it works when it does, and why it sometimes doesn't.Visiting the mall with Paco Underhill is a surprising and insightful tour through the American crossroads.Why We Buychanged the way we watch ourselves shop.Call of the Mallwill deepen our understanding of how we live, work, play, and spend.

Pink ribbons, red dresses, and greenwashing--American corporations are scrambling to tug at consumer heartstrings through cause-related marketing, corporate social responsibility, and ethical branding, tactics that can increase sales by as much as 74%. Harmless? Marketing insider Mara Einstein demonstrates in this penetrating analysis why the answer is a resounding "No!" In Compassion, Inc. she outlines how cause-related marketing desensitizes the public by putting a pleasant face on complex problems. She takes us through the unseen ways in which large sums of consumer dollars go into corporate coffers rather than helping the less fortunate. She also discusses companies that truly do make the world a better place, and those that just pretend to.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. For many of us, modern memory is shaped less by a longing for the social customs and practices of the past or for family heirlooms handed down over generations and more by childhood encounters with ephemeral commercial goods and fleeting media moments in our age of fast capitalism. This phenomenon has given rise to communities of nostalgia whose members remain loyal to the toys, television, and music of their youth. They return to the theme parks and pastimes of their upbringing, hoping to reclaim that feeling of childhood wonder or teenage freedom. Consumed nostalgia took definite shape in the 1970s, spurred by an increase in the turnover of consumer goods, the commercialization of childhood, and the skillful marketing of nostalgia. Gary Cross immerses readers in this fascinating and often delightful history, unpacking the cultural dynamics that turn pop tunes into oldies and childhood toys into valuable commodities. He compares the limited appeal of heritage sites such as Colonial Williamsburg to the perpetually attractive power of a Disney theme park and reveals how consumed nostalgia shapes how we cope with accelerating change. Today nostalgia can be owned, collected, and easily accessed, making it less elusive and often more fun than in the past, but its commercialization has sometimes limited memory and complicated the positive goals of recollection. By unmasking the fascinating, idiosyncratic character of modern nostalgia, Cross helps us better understand the rituals of recall in an age of fast capitalism.

Asia currently accounts for a quarter of the world economy and half of the world's population. Few international companies can afford to ignore a market of such size and importance. Yet despite the centrality of Asia as a market, there exists a remarkable dearth of marketing theory specific to Asia. Cultural differences strongly influence consumer behavior. In the West, an effective brand name will be short, distinctive, memorable, and indicative of the product's functions. In Asia, however, a strong belief in luck and fate means that additional qualities, such as whether the characters which make up a product name are "lucky" ones, has a significant effect on brand attitude. Successful sales and marketing strategies in Asia must be rooted in an understanding of the cultural differences which affect Asian consumers' buying patterns. Consumer Behavior in Asia provides an invaluable guide to Western companies seeking to maximize their marketing success in Asia. Drawing on illustrations from a variety of Asian markets, the volume outlines the differences between Asian and Western cultures along cultural dimensions such as religion, tradition, and philosophy, explaining the effect such differences have on communication styles, brand loyalty, perceptions of products offered, and effective advertising methods.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The unique contribution of Cracking the Code is its spotlight on how the knowledge of consumer psychology principles can be used to improve managerial decision making and organizational performance. Research on consumer behavior typically has a narrow focus and does not offer reliable and practical direction for marketers. Taken collectively, however, the conclusions of research streams can provide valuable information from which managers can base their decisions. The contributing authors of Cracking the Code offer a set of rules for managerial action that has been distilled from reviews of research areas in which they are experts. The book contains systematic, prescriptive advice based on state-of-the-art knowledge from multiple research lines regarding how consumers think and choose. The chapters cover fundamental topics such as new product management, marketing mix strategy, marketing communications and advertising, social media, and experiential marketing.

A follow-up to Grant McCracken's groundbreaking Culture and Consumption, this new book trades the usual platitudes about the consumer society for a more detailed, exacting anthropological treatment. Each section of the book pairs a brief essay with an academic article. The essay is designed for a quick, provocative glimpse of the topic; the article provides a deeper anthropological treatment. The book opens with a broadside against the now thoroughly conventionalized attack on the consumer culture. Essays follow on homes, cars, people, and social mobility; celebrities, consumerism, and self-invention; museums and the power of objects; the anthropology of advertising; and marketing, meaning management, and value. Like McCracken's previous volume, this new book is an engaging, informative, and eye-opening foray into modern consumer culture. several books, including Culture and Consumption (IUP, 1988), Big Hair, and Transformation.

The Internet is often hyped as a means to enhanced consumer power: a hypercustomized media world where individuals exercise unprecedented control over what they see and do. That is the scenario media guru Nicholas Negroponte predicted in the 1990s, with his hypothetical online newspaper The Daily Me—and it is one we experience now in daily ways. But, as media expert Joseph Turow shows, the customized media environment we inhabit today reflects diminished consumer power. Not only ads and discounts but even news and entertainment are being customized by newly powerful media agencies on the basis of data we don’t know they are collecting and individualized profiles we don’t know we have. Little is known about this new industry: how is this data being collected and analyzed? And how are our profiles created and used? How do you know if you have been identified as a “target” or “waste” or placed in one of the industry’s finer-grained marketing niches? Are you, for example, a Socially Liberal Organic Eater, a Diabetic Individual in the Household, or Single City Struggler? And, if so, how does that affect what you see and do online? Drawing on groundbreaking research, including interviews with industry insiders, this important book shows how advertisers have come to wield such power over individuals and media outlets—and what can be done to stop it.

Your cell phone provider tracks your location and knows who's with you. Your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, and reveal if you're unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts expose your intimate and casual friends. Google knows what you're thinking because it saves your private searches. Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it. The powers that surveil us do more than simply store this information. Corporations use surveillance to manipulate not only the news articles and advertisements we each see, but also the prices we're offered. Governments use surveillance to discriminate, censor, chill free speech, and put people in danger worldwide. And both sides share this information with each other or, even worse, lose it to cybercriminals in huge data breaches. Much of this is voluntary: we cooperate with corporate surveillance because it promises us convenience, and we submit to government surveillance because it promises us protection. The result is a mass surveillance society of our own making. But have we given up more than we've gained? In Data and Goliath, security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, one that values both security and privacy. He shows us exactly what we can do to reform our government surveillance programs and shake up surveillance-based business models, while also providing tips for you to protect your privacy every day. You'll never look at your phone, your computer, your credit cards, or even your car in the same way again.

Capitalism and slavery stand as the two economic phenomena that have most clearly defined the United States. Yet, despite African Americans' nearly $500 billion annual spending power, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the ways U.S. businesses have courted black dollars in post-slavery America. Robert E. Weems, Jr., presents the first fully integrated history of black consumerism over the course of the last century. The World War I era Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern and southern cities stimulated initial corporate interest in blacks as consumers. A generation later, as black urbanization intensified during World War II and its aftermath, the notion of a distinct, profitable African American consumer market gained greater currency. Moreover, black socioeconomic gains resulting from the Civil Rights movement which itself featured such consumer justice protests as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, further enhanced the status and influence of African American shoppers. Unwilling to settle for facile answers, Weems explores the role of black entrepreneurs who promoted the importance of the African American consumer market to U.S. corporations. Their actions, ironically, set the stage for the ongoing destruction of black-owned business. While the extent of educational, employment, and residential desegregation remains debatable, African American consumer dollars have, by any standard, been fully incorporated into the U.S. economy. Desegregating the Dollar takes us through the "blaxploitation" film industry, the vast market for black personal care products, and the insidious exploitation of black urban misery by liquor and cigarette advertisers. Robert E. Weems, Jr., has given us the definitive account of the complicated relationship between African Americans, capitalism, and consumerism.

Purchases by women now total trillions of dollars annually, accounting for 85% of all consumer expenditures. So, reaching women should be considered the number one priority for most businesses. Don't Think Pink will help marketers see their brands through a woman's eyes, unlocking the secrets to developing products, services, and marketing strategies that truly resonate with female buyers. Based on painstaking research into women's experiences and perceptions, Don't Think Pink reveals: * How generational history, culture, life stages, and daily realities influence a woman's buying mind * How the manner in which women buy is more critical than what's being sold * How listening to women earlier and more often leads to more powerful strategies * How to use the Internet and other technology - both in market research and during the buying process - to gain a greater understanding of female consumers * How to gain a bigger share of the awesome purchasing power of women There's no question that women buy. Don't Think Pink explains what drives their buying decisions, and how businesses can capitalize on this enormous (and evergreen) market." "

Decision-making can be difficult and often results in necessary trade-offs, e.g., safety versus price in the purchasing of an automobile. This work provides a model of trade-off difficulty, focusing on its antecedents and consequences. The authors advance a new framework for the integration of the emotional and cognitive aspects of decision-making and argue that consumers perceive and appraise their choices in light of their goals and potential coping strategies.

This book is aimed at readers interested in advanced consumer behavior theories - both graduate students in their final year and practitioners with an MBA or similar background. Emotions, Advertising and Consumer Choice focuses on recent neurological or psychological insights - originating from brain scanning or neurological experiments - on basic emotional processes in the brain and their role in controlling human behavior. These insights are translated by the authors to cover the behavior of ordinary individuals in every-day life. The book looks at these developments in the light of traditional cognitive theories of consumer choice and it discusses the implications for advertising and other communication testing. The book offers a first-time thorough review of contemporary thinking in the field of consumer behavior and an exhaustive amount of empirical evidence to support the authors' notion of an emerging paradigm of emotionally-based consumer choice where mental brand equity becomes a central phenomenon.

"Empire of Things isn't just an insightful and surprisingly entertaining read, but a crucial one."--NPR What we consume has become a central--perhaps the central--feature of modern life. Our economies live or die by spending, we increasingly define ourselves by our possessions, and this ever-richer lifestyle has had an extraordinary impact on our planet. How have we come to live with so much stuff, and how has this changed the course of history? In Empire of Things, Frank Trentmann unfolds the extraordinary story of our modern material world, from Renaissance Italy and late Ming China to today's global economy. While consumption is often portrayed as a recent American export, this monumental and richly detailed account shows that it is in fact a truly international phenomenon with a much longer and more diverse history. Trentmann traces the influence of trade and empire on tastes, as formerly exotic goods like coffee, tobacco, Indian cotton and Chinese porcelain conquered the world, and explores the growing demand for home furnishings, fashionable clothes and convenience that transformed private and public life. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought department stores, credit cards and advertising, but also the rise of the ethical shopper, new generational identities and, eventually, the resurgence of the Asian consumer. With an eye to the present and future, Frank Trentmann provides a long view on the global challenges of our relentless pursuit of more--from waste and debt to stress and inequality. A masterpiece of research and storytelling many years in the making, Empire of Things recounts the epic history of the goods that have seduced, enriched and unsettled our lives over the past six hundred years.

While fads such as hula hoops or streaking are usually dismissed as silly enthusiasms, trends in institutions such as education, business, medicine, science, and criminal justice are often taken seriously, even though their popularity and usefulness is sometimes short-lived. Institutional fads such as open classrooms, quality circles, and multiple personality disorder are constantly making the rounds, promising astonishing new developments--novel ways of teaching reading or arithmetic, better methods of managing businesses, or improved treatments for disease. Some of these trends prove to be lasting innovations, but others--after absorbing extraordinary amounts of time and money--are abandoned and forgotten, soon to be replaced by other new schemes. In this pithy, intriguing, and often humorous book, Joel Best--author of the acclaimed Damned Lies and Statistics--explores the range of institutional fads, analyzes the features of our culture that foster them, and identifies the major stages of the fad cycle--emerging, surging, and purging. Deconstructing the ways that this system plays into our notions of reinvention, progress, and perfectibility, Flavors of the Month examines the causes and consequences of fads and suggests ways of fad-proofing our institutions.

What do consumers really want? In the mid-twentieth century, many marketing executives sought to answer this question by looking to the theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers. By the 1950s, Freudian psychology had become the adman's most powerful new tool, promising to plumb the depths of shoppers' subconscious minds to access the irrational desires beneath their buying decisions. That the unconscious was the key to consumer behavior was a new idea in the field of advertising, and its impact was felt beyond the commercial realm. Centered on the fascinating lives of the brilliant men and women who brought psychoanalytic theories and practices from Europe to Madison Avenue and, ultimately, to Main Street, Freud on Madison Avenue tells the story of how midcentury advertisers changed American culture. Paul Lazarsfeld, Herta Herzog, James Vicary, Alfred Politz, Pierre Martineau, and the father of motivation research, Viennese-trained psychologist Ernest Dichter, adapted techniques from sociology, anthropology, and psychology to help their clients market consumer goods. Many of these researchers had fled the Nazis in the 1930s, and their decidedly Continental and intellectual perspectives on secret desires and inner urges sent shockwaves through WASP-dominated postwar American culture and commerce. Though popular, these qualitative research and persuasion tactics were not without critics in their time. Some of the tools the motivation researchers introduced, such as the focus group, are still in use, with "consumer insights" and "account planning" direct descendants of Freudian psychological techniques. Looking back, author Lawrence R. Samuel implicates Dichter's positive spin on the pleasure principle in the hedonism of the Baby Boomer generation, and he connects the acceptance of psychoanalysis in marketing culture to the rise of therapeutic culture in the United States.

The history of consumption is a prism through which many aspects of social and political life may be viewed. The essays in this collection represent a variety of approaches and raise such themes as consumption and democracy, the development of a global economy, the role of the state, the centrality of consumption to Cold War politics, the importance of the Second World War as a historical divide, the language of consumption, the contexts of locality, race, ethnicity, gender, and class, and the environmental consequences of twentieth-century consumer society. They explore the role of the historian as social, political, and moral critic. Unlike other studies of twentieth-century consumption, this book provides international comparisons.

Praise for the First Edition `Marieke de Mooij′s insightful book on the cultural similarities and differences that exist among consumers in the global market place makes for fascinating reading ... Numerous examples abound throughout the text′ - Choice The Second Edition of this bestselling textbook explores cultural differences and similarities and shows how to apply this knowledge to the management of global branding and marketing communications. New to this edition: - Topics including culture and the media, the internet and global public relations - Consumer behavior is more extensively covered - Consideration of culture′s consequences for various strategic issues, such as the company′s mission statement, brand positioning strategy, and marketing communications - Twice as many illustrations -both recent and classic advertising examples have been added.

We are how we shop. From Mesopotamian merchants and the fairs of medieval Europe to marble palace department stores and now Wal-Mart and the Internet, social, cultural, economic, and moral forces have shaped our shopping. In this engaging and generously illustrated book, Ann Satterthwaite traces the history of shopping and considers its meaning and significance. According to Satterthwaite, shopping has become part of the American dream. To choose and to buy constitute not only a basic economic liberty but also the capacity to improve and transform ourselves. How we shop also reflects our culture, as in the twentieth century disposable incomes have grown, women's roles have changed, and new styles of shopping and advertising have made their impacts on an old adventure. But there is a downside. Shopping used to be a friendly business: shoppers and clerks knew each other, the country crossroads stores and downtown markets were social as much as economic hubs. Shopping was meshed with civic life--post offices, town halls, courts, and churches. In place of this almost vanished scene have come superstores and the franchises of international companies staffed by pressured clerks in featureless commercial wastelands. Shopping and community have been savagely divorced. However, shopping as a social plus need not be lost, says Satterthwaite. Examining trends in the United States and abroad where new approaches to an old activity are strengthening its social and civic role, she states that shopping is more than ever a public concern with profound public impacts.

`Marketing scholars and marketing research practitioners will find this book useful. It offers an excellent sourcebook for a variety of scales, and the reviews of the scales are thoughtful and well crafted. The book includes many of the most widely used scales in the field. Its relatively modest price will also make it particularly attractive′ - Journal of Marketing Research This Second Edition of the highly successful Handbook of Marketing Scales is an essential, time-saving resource for all marketing professionals, researchers, and graduate students. After an exhaustive search of the field′s major publications, they have included only those measures of most use to researchers.

This book is about strategic thinking in Hispanic marketing. The size and economic importance of the Hispanic market in the US are attracting enormous attention. The buying power of the US Hispanic market is now larger than the GDP of the entire country of Mexico, and it is the second largest Hispanic market in the world. Businesses and institutions have launched major initiatives to reach this important segment. Yet, the number of qualified individuals who understand the market is small; and many of those already catering to the market still struggle to learn about its intricacies. This book is a cultural approach to Hispanic marketing. Each of the chapters describes and explains the cultural principles of Latino marketing. Recent case studies help marketers relate to the material pragmatically. The book integrates concepts and practical examples and provides critical guidance to discern between alternative courses of action. This book is not about repeating well-known statistics, but about the Hispanic market as a cultural target. It takes a profound look at the values, beliefs, and emotions of US Hispanics, which impact consumer behaviour. Each of the chapters has been the subject of public presentations and lectures to marketing professionals. It is their positive reactions as well as the authors¿ dedication to Hispanic consumers which motivated this book. Chapter 1: The Role of Culture in Cross-Cultural Marketing Chapter 2: Characteristics of the Hispanic Market Chapter 3: What Makes Hispanics ¿Hispanic¿ Chapter 4: The Role of Language in Hispanic Marketing Chapter 5: The Processes of Enculturation, Acculturation, and Assimilation Chapter 6 Cultural Dimensions and Archetypes Chapter 7: Culturally Informed Strategy Based on Grounded Research Chapter 8: US. Hispanic Media Environment and Strategy Chapter 9: The Evolution of Hispanic Marketing Chapter 10: The Future

Why we choose companies and brands in the same way that weunconsciously perceive, judge, and behave toward one another People everywhere describe their relationships with brands in adeeply personal way--we hate our banks, love our smartphones,and think the cable company is out to get us. What's actually goingon in our brains when we make these judgments? Through originalresearch, customer loyalty expert Chris Malone and top socialpsychologist Susan Fiske discovered that our perceptions arise fromspontaneous judgments on warmth and competence, the same twofactors that also determine our impressions of people. We seecompanies and brands the same way we automatically perceive, judge,and behave toward one another. As a result, to achieve sustainedsuccess, companies must forge genuine relationships with customers.And as customers, we have a right to expect relationalaccountability from the companies and brands we support. Applies the social psychology concepts of "warmth" (whatintentions others have toward us) and "competence" (how capablethey are of carrying out those intentions) to the way we perceiveand relate to companies and brands Features in-depth analyses of companies such as Hershey's,Domino's, Lululemon, Zappos, Amazon, Chobani, Sprint, and more Draws from original research, evaluating over 45 companies overthe course of 10 separate studies The Human Brand is essential reading for understandinghow and why we make the choices we do, as well as what it takes forcompanies and brands to earn and keep our loyalty in the digitalage.

"Shopping has a lot in common with sex," Thomas Hine observes near the beginning of this wide-ranging exploration of the history and psychology of one of the most commonplace and important activities of modern Life. "Just about everybody does it. Some people brag about how well they do it. Some keep it a secret. Most people worry, at Least a little, about whether they do it right. And both provide ample opportunities to make foolish choices." Choosing and using objects is a primal human activity, and I Want That! is nothing less than a portrait of humanity as the species that shops. We shop to nourish our bodies and to feed our fantasies. We shop to belong to groups. We shop to define ourselves as individuals. We shop to be powerful. We shop to be responsible. We shop to celebrate. We shop because we don't want to miss out on the excitement of life. I Want That! shows how these fundamental desires play out in today's malls, Web sites, boutiques, and superstores. The book also offers a lively, fast-paced history of finding, choosing, and spending. It makes stops in the crossroads markets in which prehistoric merchants traded gold, amber, and obsidian; in the agora in Athens, where sharp setters wet their wool to make it weigh more, and everyone came to buy, talk, eat, and get their hair done. It visits the great fairs of medieval times -- brief, gaudy moments in monotonous, laborious lives -- and it considers the cities of Renaissance Europe, where shopping districts and the idea of individual expression arose side by side. It demonstrates how one simple idea -- manufacturing garments that were ready to wear -- brought the explosive growth of department stores and turned cities into vast shopping centers. It continues the story to the age of the Internet, when the buying never seems to stop, and, in times of crisis, political Leaders tout shopping, not sacrifice, as the act of patriots. I Want That! tells the fascinating story of how shopping came to be the way it is -- and how you became the shopper you are.

Following on from The Why of Consumption, this book examines motivational factors in diverse consumption behaviours. In a world where consumption has become the defining phenomenon of human life and society, it addresses the effects of critical life events on consumption motives, and the sociological and intergenerational influences on consumer motives and preferences. Its cross-disciplinary approach brings together some of the leading scholars from diverse subject areas to examine the central question about consumption: ¿why?¿. This is a unique and invaluable contribution to the area, and an essential asset for all those involved in researching, teaching or studying consumption and consumer behaviour.

An enlightening blueprint of the secrets of reaching femaleconsumers from the expert Just Ask a Woman is a powerful book about how totap into female consumers' needs. Mary Quinlan, the founder of thepremiere consultancy dedicated to marketing to women, haspersonally interviewed 3,000 women in the course of her researchfor Just Ask a Woman. Women are the decision-makers in an estimatedeighty-five percent of household buying decisions, and yet far toooften, products marketed specifically to them fail to connect withtheir needs. Here, Quinlan explores topics such as how women judgebrands and advertising, how they make decisions, the effects ofstress on their consumer behavior, and their increasing demands forservice and communication. Quinlan rejects the traditional focusgroup approach in favor of highly energized and intimate talksessions where women reveal their deeper feelings about productsand services. In Just Ask a Woman marketers, brand managers, andadvertisers will find a revelatory resource filled with ideas andaction steps for building your brand with women-from a woman whohas walked in a marketer's shoes. Mary Lou Quinlan (New York, NY) is the founder and CEO ofJust Ask a Woman, a marketing consultancy dedicated to buildingbusiness with women. Just Ask a Woman is a division of bcom3, a $15billion global communications firm whose clients includeCitigroup/Women & Co., Lifetime, Saks, Hearst Magazines, Toys"R" Us, and Time Inc. Known as a brand-turnaround expert, she hashelped to remake brands like Avon and Continental Airlines. Quinlanhas been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall StreetJournal, Fortune, Fast Company and AdvertisingAge and appeared on ABC, CNN, CNBC, Lifetime LIVE, Fox andnationally syndicated news shows. Her articles have been publishedin Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Redbook,and More, among others.

"Kidfluence details the latest research on the demographic and socio-cultural trends of young adults born after 1980--Generation Y. This "what works and what doesn't" book provides marketers and advertisers with sometimes-surprising findings on what information and products these kids really want, and how to reach them most effectively without turning them off completely.

Both Hollywood and corporate America are taking note of the marketing power of the growing Latino population in the United States. And as salsa takes over both the dance floor and the condiment shelf, the influence of Latin culture is gaining momentum in American society as a whole. Yet the increasing visibility of Latinos in mainstream culture has not been accompanied by a similar level of economic parity or political enfranchisement. In this important, original, and entertaining book, Arlene D#65533;vila provides a critical examination of the Hispanic marketing industry and of its role in the making and marketing of U.S. Latinos. D#65533;vila finds that Latinos' increased popularity in the marketplace is simultaneously accompanied by their growing exotification and invisibility. She scrutinizes the complex interests that are involved in the public representation of Latinos as a generic and culturally distinct people and questions the homogeneity of the different Latino subnationalities that supposedly comprise the same people and group of consumers. In a fascinating discussion of how populations have become reconfigured as market segments, she shows that the market and marketing discourse become important terrains where Latinos debate their social identities and public standing.

The latest marketing guide from expert Dennis Cahill--that teaches how to effectively use lifestyle segmentation for marketing strategies Lifestyle Market Segmentation gives author and marketing expert Dennis Cahill the chance to put his nearly 30 years of marketing and teaching experience to practical use--to clearly explain the process of market segmentation and its applications. This text goes beyond the obvious demographic and/or geographic categories to get at the "whys" of customer behaviors, carefully reviewing every facet, from theory to the exploration of applications. Step by step, this easy-to-understand book, written by the author of How Consumers Pick a Hotel: Strategic Segmentation and Target Marketing and other classic marketing books, walks readers through the process, giving real-life examples as illustration as it provides the tools to effectively market by lifestyle segment in today's competitive marketplace. Market segmentation research examines a broad range of demographic and psychographic information that can provide strategies to target both current and potential markets. This helpful guide comprehensively reveals how to gather and effectively use this crucial type of research. Lifestyle Market Segmentation consists of three main parts. The first part discusses segmentation theory and various methods for segmentation. The second part explores applications of lifestyle segmentation based on case studies. The last section focuses on ways to market products and services to the various segments discovered by the applications. This invaluable text is extensively referenced and includes several tables and figures to clarify concepts and data. Lifestyle Market Segmentation discusses in detail: the concept of market segmentation criteria for segmentation schemes types of nonlifestyle segmentation geodemographic segmentation psychographics the List of Values (LOV) guidelines for effective use of psychographics lifestyle target segments the Tribes segmentation scheme the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator life-stage segmentation illustrative real-life case studies Lifestyle Market Segmentation is an enlightening resource that is certain to be used again and again, and makes essential reading for managers, educators, and students.

In today's competitive economic environment, knowing your customer has never been more important. Research shows that most companies do not segment their market by lifestyle. Instead, they rely solely on demographic factors to define their customers. This book helps marketers understand how to reach customers from children to tweens and singles to seniors. It demonstrates how such trends as cross-shopping and the blurring of gender roles can be accounted for by one's overall marketing strategy. Yet another consumer group evaluated here is the emerging affluent market. This book is a prerequisite to relationship marketing. It tells the reader how to reach carefully defined and described market segments. Because buyers' behaviors are so important to lifestyle market segmentation strategies, this book demonstrates how such trends as cross-shopping and the blurring of gender roles can be accounted for by one's overall marketing strategy.

Economic downturns and terrorist attacks notwithstanding, America's love affair with luxury continues unabated. Over the last several years, luxury spending in the United States has been growing four times faster than overall spending. It has been characterized by political leaders as vital to the health of the American economy as a whole, even as an act of patriotism. Accordingly, indices of consumer confidence and purchasing seem unaffected by recession. This necessary consumption of unnecessary items and services is going on at all but the lowest layers of society: J.C. Penney now offers day spa treatments; Kmart sells cashmere bedspreads. So many products are claiming luxury status today that the credibility of the category itself is strained: for example, the name "pashmina" had to be invented to top mere cashmere. We see luxury everywhere: in storefronts, advertisements, even in the workings of our imaginations. But what is it? How is it manufactured on the factory floor and in the minds of consumers? Who cares about it and who buys it? And how concerned should we be that luxuries are commanding a larger and larger percentage of both our disposable income and our aspirations? Trolling the upscale malls of America, making his way toward the Mecca of Las Vegas, James B. Twitchell comes to some remarkable conclusions. The democratization of luxury, he contends, has been the single most important marketing phenomenon of our times. In the pages of Living It Up, Twitchell commits the academic heresy of paying respect to popular luxury consumption as a force that has united the country and the globe in a way that no war, movement, or ideology ever has. What's more, he claims, the shopping experience for Americans today has its roots in the spiritual, the religious, and the transcendent. Deft and subtle writing, audacious ideas, and a fine sense of humor inform this entertaining and insightful book.

Do consumers really care where products come from and how they are made? Is there such a thing as an 'ethical consumer'? Corporations and policy makers are bombarded with international surveys purporting to show that most consumers want ethical products. Yet when companies offer such products they are often met with indifference and limited uptake. It seems that survey radicals turn into economic conservatives at the checkout. This book reveals not only why the search for the 'ethical consumer' is futile but also why the social aspects of consumption cannot be ignored. Consumers are revealed to be much more deliberative and sophisticated in how they do or do not incorporate social factors into their decision making. Using first-hand findings and extensive research, The Myth of the Ethical Consumer provides academics, students and leaders in corporations and NGOs with an enlightening picture of the interface between social causes and consumption.

Charles Coolidge Parlin was considered by many to be the founder of market research. Working for the dominant Curtis Publishing Company, he revolutionized the industry by providing added value to advertisers through information about the racial, ethnic, and regional biases of readers and consumers. By maintaining contact with both businesses and customers, Parlin and Curtis publications were able to turn consumer wants into corporate profits. a a In "A New Brand of Business, "Douglas Ward provides an intriguing business history that explains how and why Curtis developed its market research division. He reveals the evolution and impact of ParlinOCOs work, which understood how readers and advertisers in the emerging consumer economy looked at magazines and advertisements. Ward also examines the cultural and social reasons for the development and use of market researchOCoparticularly in regard to CurtisOCO readership of upper-income elites. The result weaves the stories of Parlin and Curtis into the changes taking place in American business and advertising in the early twentieth century.

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. Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and legal scholar and bestselling author Cass Sunstein explain in this important exploration of choice architecture that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself. In Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful "choice architecture" can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take--from neither the left nor the right--on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative books to come along in many years.  

Loved and hated, visited and avoided, seemingly everywhere yet endlessly the same, malls occupy a special place in American life. What, then, is this invention that evokes such strong and contradictory emotions in Americans? In many ways malls represent the apotheosis of American consumerism, and this synthetic and wide-ranging investigation is an eye-popping tour of American culture's values and beliefs. Like your favorite mall, One Nation Under Goods is a browser's paradise; and in order to understand America's culture of consumption you need to make a trip to the mall with Farrell. explains how retail designers make shopping and goods irresistible. Architects, chain stores, and mall owners relax and beguile us into shopping through their water fountains, ficus trees, mirrors, and covert security cameras. From food courts and fountains to Santa and security, Farrell explains how malls control their patrons and convince us that shopping is always an enjoyable activity. And most importantly, One Nation Under Goods shows why the mall's ultimate promise - happiness through consumption - is largely an illusion. It's all here - for one low price, of course.

Online Consumer Psychology addresses many of the issues created by the Internet and goes beyond the topic of advertising and the Web to include topics such as customization, site design, word of mouth processes, and the study of consumer decision making while online. The theories and research methods help provide greater insight into the processes underlying consumer behavior in online environments. Broken into six sections, this book: focuses on community and looks at the Internet's ability to bring like-minded individuals from around the world into one forum; examines issues related to advertising, specifically click-through rates and advertising content placed within gaming online and wireless networks; provides readers with reasons why consumers customize products and the benefits of customization; discusses the psychological effects of site design; asks the question of whether the Internet empowers consumers to make better decisions; and discusses research tools that can be used online.

The definitive account of the trillion-dollar payment card industry. The payment card business has evolved from its inception in the 1950s as a way to handle payment for expense-account lunches (the Diners Club card) into today's complex, sprawling industry that drives trillions of dollars in transaction volume each year. Paying with Plastic is the definitive source on an industry that has revolutionized the way we borrow and spend. More than a history book, Paying with Plastic delivers an entertaining discussion of the impact of an industry that epitomizes the notion of two-sided markets: those in which two or more customer groups receive value only if all sides are actively engaged. New to this second edition, the two-sided market discussion provides useful insight into the implications of these market dynamics for cardholder rewards, merchant interchange fees, and card acceptance. The authors, both of whom have researched the industry for more than 25 years, also examine the implications of the recent antitrust cases on the industry as well as other business and technological changes--including the massive consolidation brought about by bank mergers, the rise of the debit card, and the emergence of e-commerce--that could alter the payment card industry dramatically in the years to come.

This volume synthesizes and advances existing knowledge of consumer response to visuals. Representing an interdisciplinary perspective, contributors include scholars from the disciplines of communication, psychology, and marketing. The book begins with an overview section intended to situate the reader in the discourse. The overview describes the state of knowledge in both academic research and actual practice, and provides concrete sources for scholars to pursue. Written in a non-technical language, this volume is divided into four sections: Image and Response - illustrates the difficulty encountered even in investigating the basic influences, processes, and effects of "mere exposure" to imagery. Image and Word - presents instances in which the line between words and pictures is blurred, such as the corporate logo which is often pictorial in nature but communicates on an abstract level usually attributed to words. Image and the Ad - contributes to our appreciation for the exquisite variations among advertising texts and the resultant variability in response, not only to different ads but among different viewers of the same ad. Image and Object - carries the inquiry of visual response over the bridge toward object interaction. Having traveled a path that has gone from the precise working of the brain in processing visual stimuli all the way to the history of classical architecture, readers of this volume will have a new respect for the complexity of human visual response and the research that is trying to explain it. It will be of interest to those involved in consumer behavior, consumer psychology, advertising, marketing, and visual communication.

"An engaging, highly readable survey of the sophisticated methods of persuasion we encounter in various situations. From television to telemarketing and from self-deception to suicide cults, Levine takes a hard look at all the ways we attempt to persuade each other--and how and why they work (or don't). . . . The next time you wonder what possessed you to pay $50 for a medallion commemorating the series finale of Friends, you'll know where to turn." --Slashdot.org "If you're like most people, you think advertising and marketing work--just not on you. Robert Levine's The Power of Persuasion demonstrates how even the best-educated cynics among us can be victimized by sales pitches." --The Globe and Mail "Levine puts [his] analysis in the service of his real mission--to arm the reader against manipulation." --The Wall Street Journal "This wonderful book will change the way you think and act in many realms of your life." --Philip Zimbardo former president, American Psychological Association

Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50-cent aspirin? Why does recalling the Ten Commandments reduce our tendency to lie, even when we couldn't possibly be caught? Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup? Why do we go back for second helpings at the unlimited buffet, even when our stomachs are already full? And how did we ever start spending $4.15 on a cup of coffee when, just a few years ago, we used to pay less than a dollar? When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we're in control. We think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we? In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities. Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable-making us predictably irrational. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, Ariely explains how to break through these systematic patterns of thought to make better decisions. Predictably Irrational will change the way we interact with the world-one small decision at a time.

The cultural and media studies perspectives on the technology of electronic consumer profiling. In this book Greg Elmer brings the perspectives of cultural and media studies to the subject of consumer profiling and feedback technology in the digital economy. He examines the multiplicity of processes that monitor consumers and automatically collect, store, and cross-reference personal information. When we buy a book at Amazon.com or a kayak from L.L. Bean, our transactions are recorded, stored, and deployed to forecast our future behavior -- thus we may receive solicitations to buy another book by the same author or the latest in kayaking gear. Elmer charts this process, explaining the technologies that make it possible and examining the social and political implications. Elmer begins by establishing a theoretical framework for his discussion, proposing a "diagrammatic approach" that draws on but questions Foucault's theory of surveillance. In the second part of the book, he presents the historical background of the technology of consumer profiling, including such pre-electronic tools as the census and the warranty card, and describes the software and technology in use today for demographic mapping. In the third part, he looks at two case studies -- a marketing event sponsored by Molson that was held in the Canadian Arctic (contrasting the attendees and the indigenous inhabitants) and the use of "cookies" to collect personal information on the World Wide Web, which (along with other similar technologies) automate the process of information collection and cross-referencing. Elmer concludes by considering the politics of profiling, arguing that we must begin to question our everyday electronic routines.

This appealing text, written for students and marketing practitioners, provides a thorough introduction to qualitative methods in market research. All key topics are covered including the differences between quantitative and qualitative research, steps to take prior to conducting research, data collection techniques and tools, decoding and understanding collected data, and explaining research findings to someone else. Borrowing techniques from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and communication, the book presents specific examples to illustrate how these techniques are adapted for marketplace research. Studies conducted by renowned scholars and practitioners guide readers through all the nuances of qualitative methods needed to develop, execute and analyze state-of-the-art marketplace studies.

In the present electronic torrent of MTV and teen flicks, Nintendo and Air Jordan advertisements, consumer culture is an unmistakably important--and controversial--dimension of modern childhood. Historians and social commentators have typically assumed that the child consumer became significant during the postwar television age. But the child consumer was already an important phenomenon in the early twentieth century. The family, traditionally the primary institution of child socialization, began to face an array of new competitors who sought to put their own imprint on children's acculturation to consumer capitalism. Advertisers, children's magazine publishers, public schools, child experts, and children's peer groups alternately collaborated with, and competed against, the family in their quest to define children's identities. At stake in these conflicts and collaborations was no less than the direction of American consumer society--would children's consumer training rein in hedonistic excesses or contribute to the spread of hollow, commercial values? Not simply a new player in the economy, the child consumer became a lightning rod for broader concerns about the sanctity of the family and the authority of the market in modern capitalist culture. Lisa Jacobson reveals how changing conceptions of masculinity and femininity shaped the ways Americans understood the virtues and vices of boy and girl consumers--and why boys in particular emerged as the heroes of the new consumer age. She also analyzes how children's own behavior, peer culture, and emotional investment in goods influenced the dynamics of the new consumer culture. Raising Consumers is a provocative examination of the social, economic, and cultural forces that produced and ultimately legitimized a distinctive children's consumer culture in the early twentieth century.

Are Americans obsessed with shopping? Shop 'til You Drop is a lively look at our consumer culture and its role in our everyday lives and society. Is the United States different from other first-world nations in the amount of time we spend shopping or in our attitudes toward consumption? Are we one unified consumer culture or are several cultures operating and battling against one another? Arthur Asa Berger uncovers the answers to these and other questions, considering the sacred roots of consumer culture, the demographics of consumption, theories about competing cultures, and the semiotics of shopping. Accessibly written and entertaining, Shop 'til You Drop is ideal for courses in cultural studies, advertising, and American studies, as well as for anyone curious about our nation's drive to consume.

Shopping as an Entertainment Experience explores the ways in which shopping has become a significant entertainment feature in our daily lives. Dr. Mark H. Moss examines the department store, the mall, and the e-store to demonstrate how shopping is often the most common leisure experience that people indulge in to occupy themselves. This unique book focuses on the historical evolution of shopping environments into contemporary entertainment or cultural zones. Through a phenomenological framework, Moss analyzes the way stores, outlets, and restaurants in malls mingle and merge aspects of consumption and merchandising. Shopping as an Entertainment Experience appeals to sociologists, cultural theorists, and those interested in popular culture.

In America today, you can connect to your ethnic heritage in dozens of ways, or adopt an identity just for an evening. Our society is not a melting pot but a salad bar--a bazaar in which the purveyors of goods and services spend close to $2 billion a year marketing the foods, clothing, objects, vacations, and events that help people express their (and others') ethnic identities. This is a huge business, whose target groups are the "hyphenated Americans"--in other words, all of us. As immigrant groups gain economic security, they tend to reinforce--not relinquish--their ethnic identification. Marilyn Halter demonstrates that, to a great extent, they do it by shopping. And their purchasing power is enormous. How has the marketplace responded to this hunger? Instantly and wholeheartedly: tweaking old products and inventing new ones; launching new brands in supermarkets, new music groups, vacation itineraries, language courses, toys, greeting cards, et cetera. This nexus of business and ethnicity is already seen as the hottest consumer development of this decade, and Halter is uniquely qualified to describe its origins, the exponential growth of products and advertising, and the phenomenal sales of items from salsa to Chieftains CDs. She addresses her subject with an abundance of anecdotal evidence, telling examples of ethnic marketing, and interviews with entrepreneurs (many of them immigrants) who are vigorously seizing the opportunities offered by the business of ethnicity. Shopping for Identity is provocative, intriguing, and farseeing, illuminating an important aspect of our contemporary way of life while validating the yearning we all feel for connection to our roots.

A leading behavioral economist reveals the tools that will improve our decision making on screens Office workers spend the majority of their waking hours staring at screens. Unfortunately, few of us are aware of the visual biases and behavioral patterns that influence our thinking when we're on our laptops, iPads, smartphones, or smartwatches. The sheer volume of information and choices available online, combined with the ease of tapping "buy," often make for poor decision making on screens. In The Smarter Screen, behavioral economist Shlomo Benartzi reveals a tool kit of interventions for the digital age. Using engaging reader exercises and provocative case studies, Benartzi shows how digital designs can influence our decision making on screens in all sorts of surprising ways. For example:  * You're more likely to add bacon to your pizza if you order online.  * If you read this book on a screen, you're less likely to remember its content.  * You might buy an item just because it's located in a screen hot spot, even if better options are available.  * If you shop using a touch screen, you'll probably overvalue the product you're considering.  * You're more likely to remember a factoid like this one if it's displayed in an ugly, difficult-to-read font.  Drawing on the latest research on digital nudging, Benartzi reveals how we can create an online world that helps us think better, not worse.

A national bestseller, Snobbery examines the discriminating qualities in all of us. With dishy detail, Joseph Epstein skewers all manner of elitism in contemporary America. He offers his arch observations of the new footholds of snobbery: food, fashion, high-achieving children, schools, politics, being with-it, name-dropping, and much more. Clever, incisive, and immensely entertaining, Snobberyexplores the shallows and depths of status and taste -- with enviable results.

At the turn of the twentieth century, an emerging consumer culture in the United States promoted constant spending to meet material needs and develop social identity and self-cultivation. In Sold American, Charles F. McGovern examines the key players active in shaping this cultural evolution: advertisers and consumer advocates. McGovern argues that even though these two professional groups invented radically different models for proper spending, both groups propagated mass consumption as a specifically American social practice and an important element of nationality and citizenship. Advertisers, McGovern shows, used nationalist ideals, icons, and political language to define consumption as the foundation of the pursuit of happiness. Consumer advocates, on the other hand, viewed the market with a republican-inspired skepticism and fought commercial incursions on consumer independence. The result, says McGovern, was a redefinition of the citizen as consumer. The articulation of an "American Way of Life" in the Depression and World War II ratified consumer abundance as the basis of a distinct American culture and history.

A leading evolutionary psychologist probes the hidden instincts behind our working, shopping, and spending Evolutionary psychology-the compelling science of human nature-has clarified the prehistoric origins of human behavior and influenced many fields ranging from economics to personal relationships. In Spent Geoffrey Miller applies this revolutionary science's principles to a new domain: the sensual wonderland of marketing and status seeking that we call American consumer culture. Starting with the basic notion that the goods and services we buy unconsciously advertise our biological potential as mates and friends, Miller examines the hidden factors that dictate our choices in everything from lipstick to cars, from the magazines we read to the music we listen to. With humor and insight, Miller analyzes an array of product choices and deciphers what our decisions say about ourselves, giving us access to a new way of understanding-and improving-our behaviors. Like Freakonomics or The Tipping Point, Spent is a bold and revelatory book that illuminates the unseen logic behind the chaos of consumerism and suggests new ways we can become happier consumers and more responsible citizens.

How the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite, and how their consumer habits affect us all In today's world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption--like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children's growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society "the aspirational class" and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide. Exploring the rise of the aspirational class, Currid-Halkett considers how much has changed since the 1899 publication of Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. In that inflammatory classic, which coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption," Veblen described upper-class frivolities: men who used walking sticks for show, and women who bought silver flatware despite the effectiveness of cheaper aluminum utensils. Now, Currid-Halkett argues, the power of material goods as symbols of social position has diminished due to their accessibility. As a result, the aspirational class has altered its consumer habits away from overt materialism to more subtle expenditures that reveal status and knowledge. And these transformations influence how we all make choices. With a rich narrative and extensive interviews and research, The Sum of Small Things illustrates how cultural capital leads to lifestyle shifts and what this forecasts, not just for the aspirational class but for everyone.

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

Why do American children sleep alone instead of with their parents? Why do middle-aged Western women yearn for their youth, while young wives in India look forward to being middle-aged? In these provocative essays, one of the most brilliant advocates of cultural psychology reminds us that cultural differences in mental life lie at the heart of any understanding of the human condition. Drawing on ethnographic studies of the distinctive modes of psychological functioning in communities around the world, Richard Shweder explores ethnic and cultural differences in ideals of gender, in the life of the emotions, in conceptions of mature adulthood and the stages of life, and in moral judgments about right and wrong. Shweder, a cultural pluralist, dares readers to broaden their own conceptions of what is good, true, beautiful, and efficient and to take a closer look at specific cultural practices--parent/child cosleeping, arranged marriage, male and female genital modifications--that we may initially find alien or disturbing. He invites us to reject both radical relativism (the view that whatever is, is okay) and imperial visions of universal progressive cultural development (for example, the idea that "the West is Best") and to engage in more deeply informed cultural critique. The knowable world, Shweder observes, is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from nowhere in particular. This work strives for the "view from manywheres" in a culturally diverse yet interdependent world.

Although consumers have a strong vision of "the good life," they wrestle with the problem of how best to express that vision in material terms through what they want to buy. How do consumers choose the brands they buy? What circumstances lead consumers to make their purchases--habit, weighing the pros versus the cons, pure liking or simple whim? Why People Buy provides an original approach to understanding and studying the consumer--it details a way of identifying the goals, wants, beliefs and choices currently motivating consumers. O'Shaughnessy discusses many situations from the point of view of the marketing manager seeking to attract new users, retain customers, increase business or convert from rivals. He argues that the consumer's choice criteria never involve more than six categories of reason, which he explains at length.

If the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female. If the business world had a sex, it would be male. And therein lies the pickle. Women are the engine of the global economy, driving 80 percent of consumer spending in the United States alone. They hold the purse strings, and when they’ve got a tight grip on them as they do now, companies must be shrewder than ever to win them over. Just when executives have mastered becoming technology literate, they find there’s another skill they need: becoming female literate. This isn’t always easy. Gender is the most powerful determinant of how a person views the world and everything in it. It’s stronger than age, income, or race. While there are mountains of research done every year segmenting consumers and analyzing why they buy, more often than not it doesn’t factor in the one piece of information that trumps them all: the sex of the buyer. It’s stunning how many companies overlook the psychology of gender when we all know that men and women look at the world so differently. Bridget Brennan’s Why She Buys shows decision makers how to bridge this divide and capture the business of the world’s most powerful consumers just when they need it most. • No Matter Where You Live, Women Are a Foreign Country: You’ll discover the value in studying women with the same intensity that you would a foreign market. Women grow up within a culture of their own gender, which is often invisible to men. Brennan dissects this female culture and explains the important brain differences between men and women that may cause your female customers to notice things about your products, marketing campaigns, or sales environment that you might have overlooked. • The High Fives: There are five major trends driving the global female population that are key to determining their wants and needs. These global shifts are just beginning to be tapped by businesses, and learning about them can provide you with an invaluable blueprint for long-range planning. • The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Find out how the best and brightest companies have cracked the female code, and hear horror stories about those that haven’t. Through instructive case studies and interviews, Why She Buys provides practical, field-proven techniques that you can apply to your business immediately, from giants like Procter & Gamble and Toyota to upstarts like Method home-care products and lululemon athletica apparel. At a time when every company is looking for a competitive advantage, Bridget Brennan offers a new and effective lens for capturing market share.

The culmination of 15 years of meticulous research and observation, this riveting audiobook offers hilarious anecdotes and amazing hard facts about one of Americas favorite pastimes. Abridged. 7 CDs.