Business Research

Revolutionary retail guru Paco Underhill is back with a completely revised edition of his classic, witty, best-selling book on our ever-evolving consumer culture—full of fresh observations and important lessons from the cutting edge of retail, which is taking place in the world’s emerging markets.

When CEOs think about the supply chain, it's usually to cut costs. But the smartest leaders see supply chain and sourcing for what they can be: hidden tools for outperforming the competition. Steve Jobs, upon returning to Apple in 1997, focused on transforming the supply chain. He hired Tim Cook - and the company sped up the development of new products, getting them into consumers' hands faster. The rest is history.

In this groundbreaking audiobook, Pauline Brown, a former leader of the world’s top luxury goods company and a pioneer in identifying the role of aesthetics in business, shows executives, entrepreneurs, and other professionals how to harness the power of the senses to create products, services, and experiences that stand out, resonate with their customers, and create long-term value for their businesses. The power is rooted in Aesthetic Intelligence - or "the other AI", as Brown refers to it.

Based on the single largest neuromarketing study ever conducted, Buyology reveals surprising truths about what attracts our attention and captures our dollars.

Ever since Adam Smith, the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us with material well-being, as if by an invisible hand. In Phishing for Phools, Nobel Prize-winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller deliver a fundamental challenge to this insight, arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception.

An informative and entertaining account of how actions send signals that shape behaviors and how to design better incentives for better results in our life, our work, and our world.

Why are you captivated by some people but not by others? Why do you recall some brands yet forget the rest? In a distracted, overcrowded world, how do certain leaders, friends, and family members convince you to change your behavior? Answer: fascination, the most powerful way to influence decision-making. It's more persuasive than marketing, advertising, or any other form of communication. And it all starts with seven universal triggers: lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust.

The best companies in the world discover what their customers desire - and then deliver it in memorable and deeply human experiences. How well do you know your customers? What Customers Crave examines how the hyper-connected economy is radically changing consumer expectations, and reveals what companies need to do to stay on top. The solution rests on two simple questions: What do your customers love? What do they hate? Find the answers, and you're well on your way to success

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

At its best, business is both purposeful and profitable, dynamic and gainful, commercial and rewarding. Far from being opposites, good business and good behavior go hand-in-hand, and biblical principles can align with best practices. In Wisdom-Based Business, marketing and supply-chain professor Hannah J. Stolze draws principles from the Bible's wisdom literature and from evidence-based research to create a framework for business that is oriented toward excellence and sustainability.

Why are people named Kim, Kelly, and Ken more likely to donate to Hurricane Katrina victims than to Hurricane Rita victims? Are you really more likely to solve puzzles if you watch a light bulb illuminate? How did installing blue lights along a Japanese railway line halt rising crime and suicide rates? Can decorating your walls with the right artwork make you more honest? The human brain is fantastically complex, having engineered space travel and liberated nuclear energy, so it's no wonder that we resist the idea that we're deeply influenced by our surroundings.

From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. But this isn't the age of distrust - far from it. Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history. A new world order is emerging: We might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people rent their homes to total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. This is the age of "distributed trust", a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules....

Today, more writers are turning to self-publishing. Due to its multiple benefits, people now prefer to self-publish. Many times, self-publishers do not wish to give up control of their book at all. Publishers are interested in a say in the final draft of the book, from a book’s cover to an editorial standpoint. When thought of as a business approach, publishers also wish to put forth control over the pricing, sales plan, marketing and distribution of the book to maximize their profit. The majority of writers select to control their work themselves, on both the business and artistic side ...

La persuasión es una habilidad imprescindible en cualquier actividad profesional a todos los niveles en organizaciones y empresas. Pero, ¿cuáles son las mejores técnicas de persuasión?, ¿qué elementos de la comunicación permiten conquistar al público?, ¿cuáles son los momentos fundamentales en una argumentación? y ¿qué diferencia a un comunicador eficaz de un auténtico persuasor? Con el rigor científico y la capacidad de divulgación que le caracterizan, Robert Cialdini explica en este libro cómo capitalizar el tiempo previo a la transmisión de un mensaje importante.

Learn the secret of what really drives sales - and how to give people what they need so they want to buy from you.

Word of mouth is directly responsible for 19 percent of all purchases, and influences as much as 90 percent. Every human on Earth relies on word of mouth to make buying decisions. Yet even today, fewer than 1 percent of companies have an actual strategy for generating these crucial customer conversations. Talk Triggers provides that strategy in a compelling, relevant, timely book that can be put into practice immediately, by any business.

Decorated gaming and social media research and marketing executive Jonathan Stringfield delivers a roadmap to understanding and navigating marketing and business integrations into the gaming ecosystem: who plays games (and why), how modern games are created and oriented around the world of esports, and where brands can get involved with games. Perfect for marketing strategists, brand managers, and chief marketing officers, Get in the Game will also earn a place in the libraries of executives seeking to connect with the misunderstood yet largest segment in consumer entertainment.

Technology has evaporated the barriers of complaint. With smartphones and always-on Internet access, consumers complain more often and across more channels, many of them public. This requires a completely new system for instantly finding, evaluating, and addressing these complaints. Jay Baer and Edison Research conducted a landmark study of more than 2,000 consumers and found that not all complainers ("haters") are created equal.

We live in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and shopping to binge eating and opioid abuse. Sugar can be as habit-forming as cocaine, researchers tell us, and social media apps are hooking our kids. But what can we do to resist temptations that insidiously and deliberately rewire our brains? Nothing, David Courtwright says, unless we understand the history and character of the global enterprises that create and cater to our bad habits.

Spread through the public in the form of popular stories, ideas can go viral and move markets - whether it's the belief that tech stocks can only go up or that housing prices never fall. Whether true or false, stories like these - transmitted by word of mouth, by the news media, and increasingly by social media - drive the economy by driving our decisions about how and where to invest, how much to spend and save, and more. But despite the obvious importance of such stories, most economists have paid little attention to them. Narrative Economics sets out to change that.