Consumer behaviour is a dynamic field, which, increasingly, is influencing business. It is also a fascinating subject. Not only does it have critical implications for areas such as marketing, public policy and ethics - issues that affect business decisions - but it also helps us understand ourselves - why we buy certain items, why we use them in certain ways, and how we dispose of them. Consumer behaviour is an essential component of both marketing and industrial psychology courses. Consumer behaviour has been specifically written to meet the needs of southern African universities, universities of technology and private colleges. While providing the student with a thorough theoretical grounding, the book moves swiftly into southern African marketing and business scenarios, and focuses on current and future issues, both nationally and internationally.

Consumer capitalism dominates our economy, our politics and our culture. Yet there is a growing body of research from a range of disciplines that suggests that consumer capitalism may be past its sell-by date. Beyond Consumer Capitalism begins by showing how, for people in the developed world, consumer capitalism has become economically and environmentally unsustainable and is no longer able to deliver its abiding promise of enhancing quality of life . This cutting-edge book then asks why we devote so little time and effort to imagining other forms of human progress. The answer, Lewis suggests, is that our cultural and information industries limit rather than stimulate critical thinking, keeping us on the treadmill of consumption and narrowing our vision of what constitutes progress. If we are to find a way out of this cul de sac, Lewis argues, we must begin by analysing the role of media in consumer capitalism and changing the way we organize media and communications. We need a cultural environment that encourages rather than stifles new ideas about what guides our economy and our society. Timely and compelling, Beyond Consumer Capitalism will have strong appeal to students and scholars of media studies, cultural studies and consumer culture.

In recent years, American shoppers have become more conscious of their food choices and have increasingly turned to CSAs, farmers' markets, organic foods in supermarkets, and to joining and forming new food co-ops. In fact, food co-ops have been a viable food source, as well as a means of collective and democratic ownership, for nearly 180 years.

In Food Co-ops in America, Anne Meis Knupfer examines the economic and democratic ideals of food cooperatives. She shows readers what the histories of food co-ops can tell us about our rights as consumers, how we can practice democracy and community, and how we might do business differently. In the first history of food co-ops in the United States, Knupfer draws on newsletters, correspondence, newspaper coverage, and board meeting minutes, as well as visits to food co-ops around the country, where she listened to managers, board members, workers, and members.

What possibilities for change be they economic, political, environmental or social might food co-ops offer to their members, communities, and the globalized world? Food co-ops have long advocated for consumer legislation, accurate product labeling, and environmental protection. Food co-ops have many constituents members, workers, board members, local and even global producers making the process of collective decision-making complex and often difficult. Even so, food co-ops offer us a viable alternative to corporate capitalism. In recent years, committed co-ops have expanded their social vision to improve access to healthy food for all by helping to establish food co-ops in poorer communities."

Toys - from teddy bears to Barbie dolls to train sets - define our image of childhood innocence. But the truth is that toys represent a $21 billion a year industry, and with so much money at stake, the toy business is anything but child's play. In The Real Toy Story, investigative journalist Eric Clark exposes the startling truths behind Britain's favourite toys. Drawing on interviews with over 200 industry insiders, Clark names and shames the corporations spending millions on research into the best way to manipulate their target audience while manufacturing products in China under virtual slave labour conditions. In a world of cut-throat competition and cold-blooded marketing, toy companies are increasingly willing to sacrifice our children in the rush for profits. And as more children forsake cuddly play things for Ipods and cell phones, companies are using even more extreme tactics- unashamedly using sex and violence to sell dolls and action men to children as young as three - to make sure that their toy is the one that children want to have. The Real Toy Story is essential reading for the millions of adults who care about the toys they choose for the children in their lives.

The book argues that the Cuban Revolution warrants a closer look as a model of socialist human development. A re-reading of the Cuban Revolution from this angle engages unresolved issues in the theory of socialist humanism and the notion of human development popularized by the United Nations Development Programme (i.e., predicated on capitalism). UNDP economists and other agencies of international cooperation for development give a human face to a capitalist development process that is anything but humane. Socialism in Cuba has taken a very different form (socialist human development) than it did elsewhere in the twentieth century. The Cuban Revolution's unique characteristics enabled it to survive adverse conditions - a 'near-perfect storm' - that still threaten its evolution.

Today's marketers are confronted with a spate of differing opinions and conflicting information about the changing consumer in the era of globalization. This book, Consumer Cosmopolitism in the Age of Globalization offers authoritative answers to the following questions: "What marketing opportunities are associated with consumer cosmopolitanism?" How do trends in consumer cosmopolitanism affect long-range planning?" "What are the best communications strategies for reaching the cosmopolitan consumer?" "What are the best means of understanding and engagement with these consumers?" "What retail environments and channels work best with this market segment?" "How does marketing to cosmopolitan consumers fit into overall marketing strategies?" "In which directions must organizations change to adapt to consumer cosmopolitanism?" The book analyzes cosmopolitan consumers in considerable depth and is a rich source of ideas for relevant marketing strategies. It shows how to re-formulate traditional marketing principles that no longer work in the shifting global environment. The book is written under the editorship of Melvin Prince in collaboration with notable experts in the field.

In this revelatory examination of the most overlooked force that is changing the face of China, the Oxford historian and scholar of modern Asia Karl Gerth shows that as the Chinese consumer goes, so goes the world. While Americans and Europeans have become increasingly worried about China's competition for manufacturing jobs and energy resources, they have overlooked an even bigger story: China's rapid development of an American-style consumer culture, which is revolutionizing the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese and has the potential to reshape the world. This change is already well under way. China has become the world's largest consumer of everything from automobiles to beer and has begun to adopt such consumer habits as living in large single-occupancy homes, shopping in gigantic malls, and eating meat-based diets served in fast-food outlets. Even rural Chinese, long the laggards of consumerism, have been buying refrigerators, televisions, mobile phones, and larger houses in unprecedented numbers. "As China Goes, So Goes the World "reveals why we should all care about the everyday choices made by ordinary Chinese. Taken together, these seemingly small changes are deeper and more profound than the headline-grabbing stories on military budgets, carbon emissions, or trade disputes.

The book highlights research undertaken by marketers, social researchers and anthropologists who have an interest in this field. Anti consumption is of relevance to practitioners and academics as it is important to understand consumer trends and values. The book has a particular relevance to professionals employed in marketing, retail and associated industries, who need to consider anti consumption as an influence on their target markets. The study of anti consumption can be seen as the 'flip side' to marketing which aims to understand promotion of consumption.

Consider the culture of the twenty-first century: Each morning, you hear a half-dozen ads on the radio before your feet touch the floor. By the end of the day, hundreds--perhaps thousands--of marketing messages have targeted you. And yet little is understood about how marketing affects our lives and society. Enter Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant, the ad men behind "The Age of Persuasion," the popular radio show broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Sirius Radio. They have made it their mission to share the back-room story of modern marketing, entertaining asides and all: "Think of advertisers as millions of ants in a colony, each working hard and each with its own objective. Except that in this colony, every single ant is competing against the others. That's the ad business. Almost every ad you see, hear, and otherwise experience is competing for a piece of your imagination. And like any cross-section of humanity, the vast, worldwide advertising community is diverse: composed of geniuses and idiots, saints and buffoons, and everything in between." From the early players to the Mad Men of the 1960s and beyond, "The Age of Persuasion" provides an entertaining--and eye-opening--look at a world driven by marketing.

What does shopping mean to American women? This question is the focus of our book. We profile the American woman and examine how life has changed since her grandmother was young. Women have many choices about when and where to shop; thus retailers need to understand her needs and wants to attract and maintain her business.We provide a brief history of retailing in the United States to show how the retail industry has changed as women's lives have changed. Malls have contributed to the development of contemporary society, particularly as a site for relaxation and social connections outside of the home. We examine shopping as a life skill and a craft that is taught, both indirectly and deliberately by parents, particularly mothers.Our research identified five distinct types of shoppers. Most women tended toward or were clearly identifiable as one of these five types. We delve into each shopping typology and discuss the underlying motivations for the shopping behavior in each group. We discuss identity and creativity, power and independence, seeking solitude, emotional release, and companionship as motivations for shopping and what these mean to the retailer.Some women love and others loathe shopping. Our goal in this book is to alert retailers, merchandisers, property developers, and manufacturers about the major dos and don'ts to appeal to women. Retail is detail and it is easy to get the simple elements wrong, leading to unhappy customers. For example, we analyze what women want from retail sales staff and explore the customer and sales assistant relationship and its importance to women.Will shopping remain a female activity or will a new gender balance develop? What are the two consumers segments that present huge opportunities to the retail industry? Insights to these questions are provided in the last chapter.

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 need for bargains colors every aspect of our psyches and social lives. In this myth-shattering, closely reasoned, and exhaustively reported investigation, Shell exposes the astronomically high cost of cheap.

Description: Who's Responsible Here? Media, Audience, Ethics presents essays that challenge readers to examine and take responsibility for their role as media consumers. While there are undeniable ethical responsibilities placed upon a medium or media outlet and the content it creates, the media cycle that the audience participates in also requires a level of awareness and active participation of the consumer. The articles in Who's Responsible Here? first acclimate the reader to the language of media and audience studies with essays on communication, media, and audience theory. They then guide readers through contemporary ethical issues and concerns within the media before finally turning attention to the audience and their role. Ultimately, the articles create a discussion on defining the relationship and responsibilities between media and society. This is especially important at a time when the democratization of media has allowed audiences to become content producers themselves. Bio Robert A. Emmons Jr. is a digital documentary filmmaker. His films include: Enthusiast: The 9th Art, Wolf at the Door, Yardsale , Goodwill: The Flight of Emilio Carranz, and De Luxe: The Tale of the Blue Comet. In 2009 he received Mexico's Lindbergh-Carranza International Goodwill Award as a "Messenger of Peace" for his work on Goodwill. His published work focuses on electronic media, documentary film, and comic books and includes The Encyclopedia of Documentary Film (Routledge, 2005) and Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools (Univ. of Minn. 2007). Emmons teaches film, media, and comics history at Rutgers University-Camden where he is also the Associate Director of the Honors College.

For society to thrive long into the future, we must move beyond our unsustainable consumer culture to one that respects environmental realities. In State of the World 2010, the Worldwatch Institute s award-winning research team reveals not only how human societies can make this shift but also how people around the world have already started to nurture a new culture of sustainability. Chapters present innovative solutions to global environmental problems, focusing on institutions that are the principal engineers of culture, such as governments, the media, and religious organizations. Written in clear, concise language, with easy-to-read charts and tables, State of the World presents a view of our changing world that we, and our leaders, cannot afford to ignore."

Why do people behave and think the way they do? What makes people choose certain products and services? How does consumption affect our everyday lives? Informed by psychological theory and supported by research, this book provides an overall understanding of consumer behaviour and underlying thought processes. Psychology is central to an effective understanding of consumer behaviour and this book shows how it can be used to explain why people choose certain products and services, and how this affects their behaviour and psychological well-being.

It explores key theories within social, cognitive and developmental psychology to show how psychology can help explain consumption behaviours. These include: Memory Learning Perception Attention Emotions Decision making

Each chapter features an introduction, key terms and a summary as well as study questions or class exercises that encourage you to think critically about the subjects covered. Each topic is illustrated with real-life examples, including adverts and case studies, allowing you to relate the theory to everyday life.

Written in a clear and accessible style, this book is essential reading for students of consumer psychology. It is also important reading for anyone studying consumption, whether in marketing, consumer behaviour, sociology, anthropology or business studies.

Garifuna live in Central America, primarily Honduras, and the United States. Identified as Black by others and by themselves, they also claim indigenous status and rights in Latin America. Examining this set of paradoxes, Mark Anderson shows how, on the one hand, Garifuna embrace discourses of tradition, roots, and a paradigm of ethnic political struggle. On the other hand, Garifuna often affirm blackness through assertions of African roots and affiliations with Blacks elsewhere, drawing particularly on popular images of U.S. blackness embodied by hip-hop music and culture.

"Black and Indigenous" explores the politics of race and culture among Garifuna in Honduras as a window into the active relations among multiculturalism, consumption, and neoliberalism in the Americas. Based on ethnographic work, Anderson questions perspectives that view indigeneity and blackness, nativist attachments and diasporic affiliations, as mutually exclusive paradigms of representation, being, and belonging.

As Anderson reveals, within contemporary struggles of race, ethnicity, and culture, indigeneity serves as a normative model for collective rights, while blackness confers a status of subaltern cosmopolitanism. Indigeneity and blackness, he concludes, operate as unstable, often ambivalent, and sometimes overlapping modes through which people both represent themselves and negotiate oppression.

Over-consumption is one of the key issues of our time, especially in the Western world. Over the past decade, in the face of historically unprecedented levels of consumer spending in the West - and the more recent impact of recession - a vigorous politics of anti-consumerism has emerged in a range of wealthy nations.

This timely and original new book provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of what has come to be called the 'new politics of consumption'; a politics embodied in movements such as culture jamming, simple living, slow food and fair trade. The book offers an examination of anti-consumerism at a time when the idea of 'consumer excess' is being re-framed by a global economic downturn, and crucially explores what this means for the future of political debate. Drawing on interviews with activists across three continents, and offering a refreshingly accessible discussion of contemporary commentary and theory, Kim Humphery sympathetically explores anti-consumerism as cultural interpretation, lifestyle change, and collective action.

Whilst analysing the positive advances of the anti-consumerist movement, "Excess "also challenges contemporary critical thinking on consumption, taking issue with the return to theories of mass culture in contemporary anti-consumerist polemic. Alternatively, Humphery begins to forge a politics of anti-consumerism that addresses the complexity of material acquisition and which avoids treating consumers as mere dupes in the logic of capitalism, viewing them instead as active participants in a culture which is capable of transformation.

The history of consumerism is about much more than just shopping. Ever since the eighteenth century, citizen-consumers have protested against the abuses of the market by boycotting products and promoting fair instead of free trade. In recent decades, consumer activism has responded to the challenges of affluence by helping to guide consumers through an increasingly complex and alien marketplace. In doing so, it has challenged the very meaning of consumer society and tackled some of the key economic, social, and political issues associated with the era of globalization.

In Prosperity for All, the first international history of consumer activism, Matthew Hilton shows that modern consumer advocacy reached the peak of its influence in the decades after World War II. Growing out of the product-testing activities of Consumer Reports and its international counterparts (including Which? in the United Kingdom, Que Choisir in France, and Test in Germany), consumerism evolved into a truly global social movement. Consumer unions, NGOs, and individual activists like Ralph Nader emerged in countries around the world including developing countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America concerned with creating a more equitable marketplace and articulating a politics of consumption that addressed the needs of both individuals and society as a whole.

Consumer activists achieved many victories, from making cars safer to highlighting the dangers of using baby formula instead of breast milk in countries with no access to clean water. The 1980s saw a reversal in the consumer movement's fortunes, thanks in large part to the rise of an antiregulatory agenda both in the United States and internationally. In the process, the definition of consumerism changed, focusing more on choice than on access. As Hilton shows, this change reflects more broadly on the dilemmas we all face as consumers: Do we want more stuff and more prosperity for ourselves, or do we want others less fortunate to be able to enjoy the same opportunities and standard of living that we do?

Prosperity for All makes clear that by abandoning a more idealistic vision for consumer society we reduce consumers to little more than shoppers, and we deny the vast majority of the world's population the fruits of affluence."

Bananas are the most-consumed fruit in the world. In the United States alone, the public eats about twenty-eight pounds of bananas per person every year. The total value of the international banana trade is nearly five billion dollars annually, with 80 percent of all exported bananas originating in Latin America. There are as many as ten million people involved in growing, packing, and shipping bananas, but American consumers have only recently begun to think about them and about their working conditions. Although European nations have helped create a "fair trade" system for bananas grown in Mediterranean and Caribbean regions, the United States as a country has not developed a similar system for bananas grown in Latin America, where large corporations have dominated trade for more than a century.
"Fair Bananas " is one of the first books to examine the issue of "fair-trade bananas." Specifically, Henry Frundt analyzes whether a farmer-worker-consumer alliance can collaborate to promote a fair-trade label for bananas--much like those for fair-trade coffee and chocolate--that will appeal to North American shoppers. Researching the issue for more than ten years, Henry Frundt has elicited surprising and nuanced insights from banana workers, Latin American labor officials, company representatives, and fair-trade advocates.
Frundt writes with admirable clarity throughout the book, which he has designed for college students who are being introduced to the subject of international trade and for consumers who are interested in issues of development. Frankly, though, "Fair Bananas " will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about bananas, including where they come from and how they get from there to here.

This book will shock you. Consumer Kids shows how, more than ever before, and perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, our children are being tracked and targeted by big business, which sells them back their dreams, packages their childhood and exploits their vulnerabilities. It looks at why children torture their Barbies, how boys feel about David Beckham, why mums are cooler than dads, why children in the toughest families make the most ardent consumers and why, above all, too much marketing makes you unhappy. This hard-hitting expose is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the deeper implications of the runaway commercial world we live in.

What does it mean to be cheap? When is it mature to stow money away and when is it miserly, even Scrooge-like? And how might Americans navigate the economic downturn in an era when everything seems disposable and when credit has felt dangerously unlimited?

In answering these questions, In Cheap We Trust combines a consideration of cheapness as it relates to personality, lifestyle, and philosophy with a colorful ride through the history of thrift in America, from Ben Franklin and his famous maxims to Hetty Green, the 19th-century millionaire named by Guinness as "the world's most miserly person," to the branding of Jews, Chinese, and other ethnic groups as cheap in order to neutralize the economic competition they represented.

Weber also explores contemporary expressions and dilemmas of thrift, from Dumpster-diving to Keynes's "Paradox of Thrift" to today's recession-driven enthusiasm for frugal living.

This book examines the nature of social innovation processes which determine the economic and social performance of nations, regions, industrial sectors and organizations. The current transformation of the world economy underlines the importance of systemic adjustment capacity for the long-term success of industrial economies. The expert contributors outline a theory of social innovation which differentiates between incremental and radical change processes, and suggests areas where policy makers can facilitate proactive changes. Case studies highlight the various rigidities of structural adjustment processes, the economic importance of systemic adjustment capacity, and the challenges of social innovation and structural change in different societies, regions and sectors. An important contribution to the emerging research on social innovations, this book offers invaluable insights for all decision makers struggling with structural adjustment challenges. As such, it will prove essential reading for scholars and students focussing on social and economic innovation and change processes, national and regional development, and economic competitiveness and growth. National, regional, sectoral and organizational policymakers and strategists will also find much to interest them within this book.

You can shop anywhere you like -- as long as it's Tesco The inexorable rise of supermarkets is big news but have we really taken on board what this means for our daily lives, and those of our children? In this searing analysis Andrew Simms, director of the acclaimed think-and-do-tank the New Economics Foundation and the person responsible for introducing 'Clone Towns' into our vernacular, tackles a subject none of us can afford to ignore. The book shows how the supermarkets -- and Tesco in particular -- have brought: " Banality -- homogenized high streets full of clone stores " Ghost towns -- superstores have drained the life from our town centres and communities " A Supermarket State -- this new commercial nanny state that knows more about you than you think " Profits from poverty -- shelves full of global plunder, produced for a pittance " Global food domination -- as the superstores expand overseas But there's change afoot, with evidence of the tide turning and consumer campaigns gaining ground. Simms ends with suggestions for change and coporate reformation to safeguard our communities and environment -- all over the world. This book has been written and published independently from the Tescopoly Alliance and is not endorsed by them.

We constantly hear about 'the consumer'. The 'consumer' has become a ubiquitous person in public discourse and academic research, but who is this person? The Making of the Consumer is the first interdisciplinary study that follows the evolution of the consumer in the modern world, ranging from imperial Britain to contemporary Papua New Guinea, and from the European Union to China. It makes a novel contribution by broadening the study of consumption from a focus on goods and symbols to the changing role and identity of consumers. Offering a historically informed picture of the rise of the consumer to its current prominence, authors discuss the consumer in relation to citizenship and ethics, law and economics, media, work and retailing.Contributors include:Donald Winch (University of Sussex)Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck College, University of London)Vanessa Taylor (Birkbeck College, University of London)Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel (CNRS: Centre de Recherches Historiques, cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)Michelle Everson (Birkbeck College, University of London)Erika Rappaport (University of California, Santa Barbara)Uwe Spiekermann (Georg-August University, Gttingen)Jos Gamble (Royal Holloway University)Stephen Kline (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada)Frank Mort (University of Manchester)Ina Merkel (Philipps-Universitt, Marburg, Germany)James G. Carrier (Indiana University and Oxford Brookes University)Ben Fine (SOAS: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)

When Dr. Duane Graveline, former astronaut, aerospace medical research scientist, flight surgeon, and family doctor is given Lipitor to lower his cholesterol, he temporarily loses his short-term memory. Urged a year later to resume the drug at half dose, he lost both short-term and retrograde memory and was finally diagnosed in a hospital ER as having transient global amnesia (TGA). This is the "scary, appealingly written" account of his search for answers that his medical community didn't have -- the how and why of his traumatic experience, and what needs to be done to prevent the devastating side effects to body and mind from the escalating use of the statin drugs.