Consumer Research

Sales have dropped precipitously. The board is meeting next week. Bob, founder and long-time CEO, is urged by his team to hire an expensive management consulting firm and drastically cut costs as a last ditch effort to improve the company’s bottom line.

A compelling argument - masterfully researched and brilliantly articulated - that despite increasing prosperity for most of Earth’s inhabitants and an explosion of goods overall, consumption of natural resources such as metals, water, and timber has begun to decline. Best-selling author and codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy Andrew McAfee says there’s a new reason for optimism: We’re past the point of "peak stuff" - from here on out, it'll take fewer resources to make things and fewer dollars to lead a comfortable life.

After enjoying my best-selling book, How to Publish a Book on Amazon, people have sent me scores of emails asking me to write a follow-up book about how to market a book on Amazon. Many of them say that although they wrote a great book, the sales just aren't coming in. They are discouraged because they put so much work into their book. They are desperate for an answer to one burning question: How can I get the word out about my book and start making sales? I’ll give you an easy-to-follow, step-by-step launch and maintenance plan for your book’s success.

For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimize our own “utility”. Then, in the 1970s, psychologists demonstrated that the reality is a lot messier. We don’t really know what our utility is, and we care about people other than ourselves. We are susceptible to external nudges. And far from being perfectly rational, we are prone to “cognitive biases” with complex effects on decision-making, such as forgetting to prepare for retirement.

Demographics not only define who we are, where we live, and how our numbers change. For those who can read beyond the raw figures, they open up hidden business opportunities that lie ahead. What will happen when retiring Boomers free up jobs? How will Generation Y alter supermarkets? Which states will have the most dynamic workforces? Will American manufacturing rebound as Asia's population declines? Upside puts this powerful yet little-understood science to work finding answers.

These days, virtually anything you need can come through a subscription. Far beyond Spotify and Netflix, companies in nearly any industry, from home contractors to florists, can build subscriptions into their business. Subscription is the key to increasing cash flow, igniting growth and boosting the value of your company. Whether you want to transform your entire business into a recurring revenue engine or just pick up an extra five per cent of sales growth, The Automatic Customer will be your secret weapon.

As Lawrence Ingrassia shows in this timely and eye-opening audiobook, a growing number of digital entrepreneurs have found new and creative ways to crack the code on the bonanza of physical goods that move through our lives every day. They have discovered that manufacturing, marketing, logistics, and customer service have all been flattened - where there were once walls that protected big brands like Gillette, Sealy, Victoria’s Secret, or Lenscrafters, savvy and hungry innovators now can compete on price, value, quality, speed, convenience, and service.

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

One of Michiko Kakutani's (New York Times) top 10 books of 2016. A funny thing happened on the way to the digital utopia. We've begun to fall back in love with the very analog goods and ideas the tech gurus insisted that we no longer needed. Businesses that once looked outdated, from film photography to brick-and-mortar retail, are now springing with new life. Notebooks, records, and stationery have become cool again.

Social media connected the world - and gave rise to fake news and increasing polarization. Now a leading researcher at MIT draws on 20 years of research to show how these trends threaten our political, economic, and emotional health in this eye-opening exploration of the dark side of technological progress.

For many marketing professionals, "science" is a four-letter word. They see brand-building as an unteachable art guided by their intuition and experience. But at its core, marketing aims to seed ideas into people's minds, make them feel a certain way, and, ultimately, get them to act. In Brand Seduction, Daryl reveals the latest psychological and neuroscientific discoveries about how our minds process brand information and make decisions, and the important roles our emotions and unconscious play in our selections.

Scientific research has found that your ability to resist the damaging effects of stress - your hardiness - can reduce stress-related illness and strengthen your ability to thrive under pressure. Hardiness, written by respected clinical and research psychologists, will help develop your psychological hardiness which, in turn, enables you to enjoy more of life's rewards. Mastering the 3 C's of hardiness - commitment, control, and challenge - is essential to increasing hardiness and responding effectively to stressful situations.

A Wharton professor and tech entrepreneur examines how algorithms and artificial intelligence are starting to run every aspect of our lives and how we can shape the way they impact us.

Four innovation experts from the startup world, large enterprises, nonprofits, and academia come together to reveal the secret of uncovering authentic demand to build successful innovations. Books on innovation mostly focus on how to nurture innovative cultures and brainstorm ideas. The Heart of Innovation is the first popular book to concretely delve into what innovations really are and how to create them.

This guide will walk you step by step through all the essential phases of conducting a low cost market research in your business To be successful a business must know its market. Marketing research is simply an orderly, objective way of learning about people - the people who buy from you or might buy from you. This Guide provides an overview of what market research is and how it's done. It introduces inexpensive techniques that you can apply to gather facts about your customers and the people you'd like to have for customers. My name is Meir Liraz and I'm the author of this book. According ...

Going Public is a character-driven narrative centered on the last five years of unparalleled change in how technology startups sell shares to the public. Initial public offerings, or IPOs, are typically the first time retail investors can own a piece of the New Economy companies promising to rewire economic rules. Selling IPOs is also one of the most profitable businesses for Wall Street investment banks, who have spent the last 40 years protecting their profits.

How much time have you spent reflecting on the fact that revenues are generated by actual customers—the people who pull out their wallets and pay for your products and services? In The Customer-Base Audit: The First Step on the Journey to Customer Centricity, experts Peter Fader, Bruce Hardie, and Michael Ross start you on the path toward really getting to understand your customers' buying behavior as well as the health of your overall customer base.

In Branding Is Sex, brand dominatrix Deb Gabor explains how proper brand positioning gets your customers in the mood. In just seven short and sweet chapters, Deb covers these juicy topics and more: how the most successful brands in the world get their customers laid; how to never fail the Bullshit Test; and who your brand should hop in the sack with (and it’s not who you think).

Following the success of his best-selling book, How to Launch a Brand, acclaimed brand strategist Fabian Geyrhalter is back with an enlightening new book that digs deep into today's new world of brand creation. Bigger Than This challenges companies - from startups to Fortune 100s - to (re)discover their spark and connect with today's consumers on a deeper level. In Bigger Than This, Geyrhalter analyzes brands that are based on commodity products - watches, socks, shoes, fish - yet they quickly turn into beloved brands. He emphasizes the importance of storytelling.

What type of business should you start? For the past 10 years, Inc. 500 CEO and number-one national best-selling author, Ryan Levesque - featured for his work in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, and Entrepreneur - has guided thousands of entrepreneurs through the journey of answering this question. One of the biggest reasons why so many new businesses fail is because in the quest to decide what business to start, most of the conventional wisdom is wrong.