Business : Consumer Behavior

In the tradition of Why We Buy, this is a marketer's guidebook to what motivates grocery store consumers to choose or pass over certain products. Written by a widely-respected and passionate supermarket analyst, this book explores the buyer's choice. Lempert reveals the secrets to catching even the most fickle consumer's attention and how to establish lasting brand loyalty through powerful marketing strategies. This is a must-read for marketers, brand managers, and retailers everywhere - not just for grocery stores - that dissects each and every aspect of the shopping experience, showing how to appeal to today's discriminating consumer. more...

Price: $27.95

In a world undergoing rapid change, this essential collection discusses why consumption has become so important, and what role, if any, it plays in underpinning social, economic and political transformation. more...

Price: $53.95

An Atlantic correspondent uncovers the true cost—in economic, political, and psychic terms—of our penchant for making and buying things as cheaply as possible. From the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt—and almost everywhere in between—America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time—the engine of globalization, outsourcing, planned obsolescence, and economic instability in an increasingly unsettled world. Low price is so alluring that we may have forgotten how thoroughly we once distrusted it. Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the birth of the bargain as we know it from the Industrial Revolution to the assembly line and beyond, homing in on a number of colorful characters, such as Gene Verkauf (his name is Yiddish for “to sell”), founder of E. J. Korvette, the discount chain that helped wean customers off traditional notions of value. The rise of the chain store in post–Depression America led to the extolling of convenience over quality, and big-box retailers completed the reeducation of the American consumer by making them prize low price in the way they once prized durability and craftsmanship. The effects of this insidious perceptual shift are vast: a blighted landscape, escalating debt (both personal and national), stagnating incomes, fraying communities, and a host of other socioeconomic ills. That’s a long list of charges, and it runs counter to orthodox economics which argues that low price powers productivity by stimulating a brisk free market. But Shell marshals evidence from a wide range of fields—history, sociology, marketing, psychology, even economics itself—to upend the conventional wisdom. Cheap also unveils the fascinating and unsettling illogic that underpins our bargain-hunting reflex and explains how our deep-rooted n more...

Price: $25.95

Competing in a Service Economy is a hands-on guide to creating services, with illustrative examples from service-oriented companies including Disney, Ericsson, IKEA, National Association of Convenience Stores, Ritz Carlton, Scandinavian Airline Systems, Sterling Pulp Chemicals, and Telia Mobile. This practical resource for executives, general managers, and managers in marketing, operations, and human resources reveals how to gain a competitive advantage by creating and implementing a strategic plan that will ultimately improve their organization's services. more...

Price: $29.95

This is a detailed study of the material lives of the middle-classes in the pre-industrial era, a period which saw considerable growth in consumption. Weatherill has brought her research in her very important study completely up-to-date. more...

Price: $42.95