We are living in a new machine age offering unique opportunities, particularly for generating customer insights, which is radically transforming the way business value is created. Across industries, players are affected by the pace of progress of machine learning tools, novel technologies, and the abundance of data. These developments require mastering new capabilities. The Machine Age of Customer Insight explains the transformation of customer insights and demonstrates the growing impact of machine learning. Thought leaders from renowned universities in the US and Europe as well as from different industries provide a comprehensive overview. Addressing both academics and practitioners, they discuss the transformation, cutting edge tools, and success factors to thrive in the new age. The book shows how machine learning helps to understand customers better and faster. It supports everyone who considers the machine age a great opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by transforming customer insights into business value.

Influencer Marketing is the most important new approach to marketing in a decade for those professionals at the leading edge of purchasing decision making. It shows that key decision makers in all major markets operate within communities of influencers- because major decisions are too complex and risky to taken in isolation. The 'ecosystems' this creates are full of these critically important people, whose impact on purchasing decisions is both pivotal and misunderstood. This new book demonstrates that- * As mass media impact wanes so the role of influencers grows - marketers need to know why and how to use this knowledge * The impact of blogs, wikis and other social media is that they enable new influencers to emerge, and disperse traditional sources of influence. * Large and small businesses worldwide pour billions of pounds each year into influencing what they think are their influencers. This book shows you that most of that money is being spent on the wrong people, leaving the real influencers all too often untouched. * Influencers do not do the buying, are not obvious, cannot be bought, and start off neutral - which is why their potential to affect sales is so great * Influencers are not all equal - they can be assessed, ranked and prioritised to be used effectively * Influencers can be influenced - the question is how to get to them to generate market awareness, leads and address sales barriers Influencer marketing is closely related to the relentless rise and success of word of mouth (WOM) and relationship marketing, and is now established as one of the armoury of new techniques professionals must use. For all those involved in marketing and sales this book will be an essential analysis of how to identify who has influence, how they apply it, and how you can turn it to your advantage.

"Ethnography for Marketers does an excellent job of capturing the academic aspects of ethnography but does so from a practical, useful point of view. Author Hy Mariampolski's expertise in the field is clearly communicated through the vast, in-depth coverage of the various aspects of ethnography for purposes of marketing research." --Cara Lee Okleshen, Peters Winthrop University "I've been waiting for this book - a practical, how-to guide to conducting ethnographic studies for practitioners and clients, studies that will yield useful consumer insights that can impact marketing practice." --Ellen Day, The University of Georgia Ethnography, with its focus on observed everyday behavior, is quickly becoming the method of choice to identify unmet needs, stimulate novel insights, create strategies and develop new ideas. Hy Mariampolski, author of Qualitative Market Research: A Comprehensive Guide (Sage, 2001) again takes readers on a voyage of discovery in Ethnography for Marketers. These two companion works are essential guides for marketers seeking rich insights into their customers' thoughts and behaviors. Key Features Offers a step-by-step guide to help students and practitioners plan and execute ethnographic marketing research studies of their own Sets standards emphasizing best practices in ethnographic market research Provides real-world examples and experienced-based advice for novices and experienced market researchers Introduces powerful methods for new product/service innovations Approaches the topic cross-culturally and internationally demonstrating effective techniques for creating innovations around the world Ethnography for Marketers is designed as a standard training and reference resource to help corporate managers and marketers design and implement ethnographic studies. It is an excellent textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying ethnography or research methods in a variety of programs including business, sociology, anthropology and education. "Mariampolski, a sociologist by training, is not your traditional market researcher." --THE WASHINGTON POST "For any researcher wanting the definitive text on organising and conducting commercial ethnographic research, this is the book for you." --QUALITATIVE MARKET RESEARCH

This book offers a compact introduction to the topic of trend management in companies. Fundamental decisions in companies are based on assumptions about future developments in markets and society and diverse technologies. Trend management is a useful tool to discover and understand these developments and thus generates a solid basis for decision making. Although it is mostly applied in strategy development, many more company tasks may profit from it. The author explains the individual activities and results of trend management, and how a sound process can be established in a company. Trend management is a powerful tool at the interface of futures knowledge and concrete entrepreneurial decisions. The book shows how these insights can be transferred into the operational processes of a company. It will serve as a useful guide for interested newcomers as well as for experienced trend managers to recognize opportunities and risks at an early stage and to open up new scope for action for their company.

This book provides an understanding of the concept of marketing and its role in business and public organization including the need for scientific marketing analysis. It includes a variety of mathematical models applied for better decision making, promotional decisions in the presence of competition, and sales forecasting using an Operational Research (OR) approach. The book also provides a platform to academicians, practitioners, and researchers to gain understanding of marketing management concepts from an OR perspective. This book offers relevant, international perspectives on techniques for market assessment under one canopy. It will be helpful for those who want to gain insight into understanding the managerial aspects from an OR analyst point of view and is a collaboration that contains plenty of related and valuable techniques used in real-life problems faced by industries.

The purpose of "Creating Images and the Psychology of Marketing Communication" is to advance the understanding of the concept of image as it is applied to various areas of interest. It also serves to meet the growing interest in image-related studies by the public and academics, and provides an innovative and holistic approach to the study of image. The text reflects the importance of brand leveraging as the sections cover in-depth discussion on cross-country and tourism images, corporate and sponsorship images, individual and celebrity images, and cultural and social images. It provides a comprehensive and holistic look at the concept of image: the topics range from theories of image creative to other image studies on a country, corporate, and individual level. The sections cover the major topics currently being debated in image marketing and the psychology of communications. Several new and innovative concepts are also introduced in the book.
"Creating Images and the Psychology of Marketing Communication" is intended for academics and scholars (including students) in the interdisciplinary fields of consumer psychology, marketing, and communication.

This book is about how emotion affects consumer behavior. In the last twenty five years or so, the role of emotion in information processing has been widely acknowledged and scholars have shown that we need to understand both emotion and reason if we want to understand the real meanings that products and services have for consumers. This has had immense ramifications for advertising, marketing and other domains of persuasive intercourse in today's 'brave new world'. As our world comes closer together, 'global' messages, which transcend cultural boundaries, become more appropriate than localized messages for particular cultures. Emotion is a language that is understood by all people regardless of their local habitats. With a swish, Nike speaks to the whole world. With a few cute polar bears, Coke befriends consumers from Bermuda to Bangkok. With a smile on CNN, a politician appears warm and kind to the electronic global village. Emotion via non-verbal communication is the language of humanity and it brings us closer together.

Multinational enterprises have become a main engine of the global economy, technical advancement, and product innovation, playing a pivotal role in the world economy and the global technological revolution. However, MNEs are also often embroiled in financial fraud and corporate scandal which show that MNEs should improve their corporate governance. Meanwhile, as COVID- 19 runs rampant across the world, populism and deglobalisation have resurged, and protectionism and unilateralism are exerting negative impacts on the world economy. Achieving sustainable development in this context is a test of a company's management and governance abilities. How should they be governed? This book will be a useful tool for university research-led teaching and fundamental research in corporate governance theories of MNEs in general, as well as using Chinese case studies as evidence to support our theoretical arguments.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Multinational corporations (MNCs) have long played a crucial role in the Chinese economy. This role is one that is set to continue in the post-pandemic era as China works to transit to a high-quality growth model that is more sustainable and innovation-driven. With global experience and front-line involvement in some of the most pressing economic, technological, and environmental issues of our day, leading figures in MNCs and chambers of commerce are well placed to share insights that could potentially contribute to policymaking and development strategies so that everyone can "make the most" of China's future. This collection of essay aims to share these invaluable insights with a wider audience, offering balanced and diverse perspectives from companies and advocacy groups working on a range of issues related to China's domestic development, international economic cooperation, and China-US competition. These insights are useful not only for the wider business community, but also for academics, policymakers, students, and anyone trying to deepen their understanding of this exciting period of "transition and opportunity," and make the most of China's bright future.

This book explores the implications of talent management in four practical settings across the globe. Focusing on countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the authors illustrate how multinational corporations (MNCs) can benefit from talent management practices and as a result, develop a strategy of organizational leadership. Offering empirical examples from each region, this book examines how economic and cultural contexts influence talent management. Talent Management in Global Organizations discusses successful cases in different cross-cultural settings, and aims to inspire companies around the world to develop and implement talent management practices effectively.

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.

First published in 1999, this volume is part of the Plymouth Studies in Contemporary Shipping series represents a unique collection of papers and edited texts from the leading maritime institute in Western Europe at the University of Plymouth. It covers all aspects of the industry from operations through to the logistical framework that supports the sector. Designed both for practising academics and the shipping and ports industry itself, the series, combining the output from some of the leading academic commentators in the world from the UK, Korea, Germany and Poland, is an original and novel contribution to the maritime debate. This volume specialises in Turkey.

In this book distinguished theorist and author Shelby D. Hunt analyzes the major controversies in the "philosophy debates" raging throughout the field of marketing. Using an historical approach, Hunt argues against relativism and for scientific realism as a philosophy for guiding marketing research and theory. He also shows how the pursuit of truth and objectivity in marketing research are both possible and desirable. Specific controversies analyzed in the book include: Does positivism dominate marketing research? Does positivism imply quantitive methods? Is relativism an appropriate foundation for marketing research? Does relativism imply pluralism, tolerance, and openness? Should marketing pursue the goal of objective research? An ideal companion to Hunt's classic text, Foundations of Marketing Theory, this volume will be equally useful on its own in any graduate level course on marketing theory.

In this book distinguished theorist and author Shelby D. Hunt analyzes the major controversies in the "philosophy debates" raging throughout the field of marketing. Using an historical approach, Hunt argues against relativism and for scientific realism as a philosophy for guiding marketing research and theory. He also shows how the pursuit of truth and objectivity in marketing research are both possible and desirable. Specific controversies analyzed in the book include: Does positivism dominate marketing research? Does positivism imply quantitive methods? Is relativism an appropriate foundation for marketing research? Does relativism imply pluralism, tolerance, and openness? Should marketing pursue the goal of objective research? An ideal companion to Hunt's classic text, Foundations of Marketing Theory, this volume will be equally useful on its own in any graduate level course on marketing theory.

Innovation remains an arduous and painful process for many companies, doing untold damage to brands, profitability, and careers. Some have used line extensions to mitigate risk, but all too often they have ended up extending the core brand into oblivion. Others have used test markets to help gauge opinion before a national rollout, only to have competitors snatch ideas and undermine results. Given the problems with conventional approaches, it's not surprising that 90% of new products and services fail. Market New Products Successfully is the definitive guidebook for using simulated test marketing (STM), a technology that can help companies dramatically improve the odds of introducing a successful new product or service. The book examines why STM is important, what the differences are between the major systems, how to do a simulation, and what insights it offers a marketing plan. It is the ultimate guidebook for any smart marketer looking to improve the financial outcome of the innovation process.

Will your questionnaire work as well as it needs to by today's standards? Use this new edition of the bestselling guide to make sure it does. Good data is central to information-based decision making. Increasing access to online survey software is allowing more organizations to benefit from contact with their customers, employees and the public. However, the challenges facing the questionnaire writer remain and the greater volume of surveys and demands on potential respondents' time is making the task even harder. Your questionnaire needs to work better than ever to keep their attention. Questionnaire Design provides comprehensive and practical guidelines to plan, structure and compose questionnaires across all industries and purposes, ensuring valuable data insights are captured with accuracy and efficiency. You can't write a good questionnaire unless you know exactly what you are trying to achieve. This updated fifth edition recognizes this fundamental challenge, with advice for gaining the clarity needed to plan and focus your questionnaire. It continues to provide guidance for those using interviewer administered surveys, but now reflects the primacy of online and the challenges that brings. With pressure on everyone's time, this revised edition makes it even easier to navigate to the key points with new bullet-pointed takeaways at the end of each chapter.

Semiotics is a superpower for marketers. It generates profits for brands. It's a proven, powerful method of uncovering consumer insight and tailoring brand strategies that work. Companies such as Unilever and P&G attest to the success of Lawes semiotics in stimulating innovation and boosting sales. This book makes semiotics accessible. You can do semiotics. All agency-side and client-side marketers can pick up the skills to use and apply semiotics to brands. Using Semiotics in Marketing is an acclaimed how-to guide. It's the only book on semiotics ever published that sets out a complete blueprint for research projects. Clear instructions show how to write briefs and proposals, design projects, conduct analysis, write reports and present research findings. Newly updated, this second edition is packed with even more revelations about brands, consumers and their emerging needs. Three new chapters reveal the unseen social forces that drive the Be Kind movement, public appetite for sincerity and the emotions of younger generations. Start using semiotics today. Position and launch new brands. Rejuvenate established brands. Design products and packaging. Inspire timely and provocative ad campaigns. Innovate. See the future.

"Scholarly and extensively footnoted, the book is meant to be used as a sourcebook for anthropological research. . . . The book's primary audience should be marketing and anthropology researchers, and graduate students, faculty, and researchers." --P. G. Kishel in Choice "As a business person responsible for the development of advertising strategies and advertising campaigns, I was impressed with the contributors' willingness and desire to apply anthropological principles to real world problems. John Sherry Jr.'s comment sums it up nicely, 'Anthropology is a practical discipline, anchoring the blue sky thinking it encourages firmly to the local ground it inhabits.' We need to encourage blue sky thinking so we don't repeatedly get the same answers to our inquiries. Anthropologists can help us with these issues. . . "This book gives me enormous hope that applied anthropology will help restore the tremendous value that can be gained through qualitative research techniques. Today in marketing and advertising, focus groups are grossly overused, misused, and underanalyzed. I was encouraged and excited about the authors' discussions of good ethnographies and focus groups that, for example, instead of simply asking respondents whether or not EMF causes cancer, a far more creative and insightful exercise was performed with consumers, and then was intensely analyzed by anthropologists. All too often today, qualitative research is carelessly and quickly administered and the analysis consists of a 30-minute debriefing at the end of the last focus group. . . "In the last few years, the need for cross-cultural consumer understanding has grown rapidly. This phenomenon makes it imperative that not only must we fully understand the meanings of brands and products to our domestic consumers, but we must know which meanings are 'transportable' to consumers in other cultures. John Sherry Jr.'s book suggests that anthropologists could and should have a major role in cross-cultural consumer understanding." --Patricia A. Cafferata, President and Chief Executive Officer, Young & Rubicam Chicago "John Sherry Jr. and his contributors bring 'marketplace anthropology' out of the shadows and into the dazzling piazza of contemporary social thought. Wide-ranging, lively, and often witty, the sourcebook raises many intriguing questions about the trajectory of anthropology and social science in general for the 21st century. Though readers might not always agree with the approaches used, these chapters are pointed reminders of vast fields of anthropological neglect on subjects of huge importance for today's world, yet inspirations for the work reach back to the foundations of modern anthropology, from Malinowski to W. Lloyd Warner. . . "This book makes a convincing case for the role of marketplace anthropology in basic research on humankind. While many anthropologists might approach this collection with some apprehensiveness, the editor does not shrink from the ethical issues of business anthropology. Applied anthropologists in many fields can benefit from the insights and ideas presented here. This book goes a long way toward replacing the pop-anthropology so rampant in corporate circles these days with substantive anthropological materials and sets of ideas on advertising, organizational behavior, buying and selling, profit-making, consumer relations, and much more." --J. Anthony Paredes, Florida State University "Anyone concerned with understanding the consumer will find John F. Sherry Jr.'s new book invaluable. In the past decade, the most important contributions to the meaning of products, brands, and advertising in consumers' lives have come from anthropology. Sherry and the contributors to this volume have been in the forefront of that movement. The chapters in this volume, whether on shampoo, electric utilities, or life histories of brand behavior, capture the excitement and illumination of looking at marketing and advertising through the lens of anthropology." --Myra Stark, Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising "This book is long overdue; anthropologists as consumer researchers have been a powerful underground force for the past 15 years of innovative marketing. Major companies, as well as government and private institutions, have looked to anthropologists to help when other research has failed. John Sherry Jr. has collected outstanding anthropological practitioners in this volume, and they have written cutting-edge chapters on product symbolism, consumer culture, advertising efficacy, and international marketing. The power of this collection lies in the fresh insights to each of these themes and the ability to reframe old problems to reperceive what it means to live the life of a consumer as we approach the next century." --Steve Barnett, Managing Director, Global Business Network Containing original articles and empirical substance, Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior responds to a growing demand for scholarship more tuned to the empirical and practical realities of consumer culture. Written by leading anthropologists who specialize in marketing and consumer research, it is intended as a sourcebook for readers interested in consumption and its managerial consequences. The topics and their treatments run a gamut of concerns including elements of the marketing mix (such as goods and services), advertising and promotion, relationship management, managerial intervention and development, class-and-gender-linked consumer behaviors, and the production of consumption. Anthropological perspectives and methods employed by the authors range from materialistic to semiotic and both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed. Contributors range across time, space, and topics in pursuit of understanding. The result is a multifaceted perspective of marketing and consumer behavior. Also, the remarks of eminent senior Fellows of the Association for Consumer Research, who have drawn upon anthropology to make their own seminal contributions to a number of disciplines, punctuate this exceptional volume. A remarkable and extraordinary text, Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior is ideal for scholars, students and professionals in marketing, cultural studies, gender studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and communication.

We know how eager you are to learn practical workplace skills at university so that you are "job ready" following graduation. In marketing, one of the most practical things you can learn how to do is create a sound marketing plan. This new book guides you concisely through the marketing planning process from start to finish, drawing on examples from large brands like Ikea and Krispy Kreme to digital start-ups like Starling Bank. Features a running case study about a small services business that breaks the marketing plan down into easy to digestible chunks. A dedicated chapter on marketing strategy concepts to help you understand how they link to market, firm or decision-related factors. Self-test questions and scenarios with tasks throughout make for an active learning experience. Practical in its step-by-step approach and inclusion of activities and scenarios and written simply whilst still underpinned by marketing strategy scholarship, this book will help you to develop your marketing decision-making throughout by learning key skills such as how to do a SWOT analysis and how to budget and forecast correctly. Supported by online resources for lecturers including PowerPoint slides, an instructor's manual and a suggested syllabus. Suitable reading for marketing planning and marketing strategy courses.

Qualitative Market Research follows through a complete research project from the perspective of both user and practitioner. In this respect, it can be used as both a continuous teaching text and training manual, or individual sections may be consulted to enhance knowledge of `best practices' and improve productivity in any specific research application. Section one begins with an overview of the history and philosophy behind the practice of qualitative research, using qualitative or quantitative approaches, organizing qualitative research (particularly those in `practice' such as research consultants), qualitative research applications (including product development, branding and advertising) and the varieties of qualitative research methods. Section two looks at the management of qualitative research and discusses project management, planning and budgeting issues. Section three looks at group moderation and interviewing techniques, and section four addresses the whole area of collecting and analyzing qualitative data, including discussion of computer-assisted software methods, as well as research reporting. This book meets the needs of several audiences by creating some common ground in the applied practice of qualitative research. It should consequently be invaluable reading to a wide readership, from social research methods students (particularly those in sociology, business, psychology, education, marketing and market research) to worldwide practitioners of qualitative research, both clients and consultants.

". . . a comprehensive survey of the topic . . . a complete resource and a fundamental yet creative cookbook . . . Mariampolski offers detailed suggestions on how to effectively set up each particular type of project with step-by-step guidelines on how to proceed at each stage along the way. . . . It will be very interesting to those who wish to work in marketing, advertising, or research."

--Journal of Advertising Research

The nature of work is changing, due to demographic shifts, globalization, and digitization. Regional local labor markets are in global competition for (highly) qualified and specialized workers. At the same time, the workforce's desire for flexibility and the increasing speed at which skill requirements are changing are producing disparities at the spatial, social, and economic levels. This book discusses the global and local drivers behind these developments. It explores the factors which cause global inequalities between urban and rural areas, and highlights how cities, regions and countries attract these sought-after employees to address skills shortages. The book includes an in-depth case study on high-skilled workers in South Tyrol, Italy. No single academic discipline can adequately capture the dynamics of the future labor market, and the authors therefore take an interdisciplinary approach, combining insights from different disciplines. This book will be a valuable resource for policymakers, students and researchers seeking to understand the driving forces behind the ever-changing labor market and the future of high-skilled work.

The goal of this book is to help business managers and academic researchers understand the means-end perspective and the methods by which it is used, and to demonstrate how to use the means-end approach to develop better marketing and advertising strategy. The authors discuss methodological issues regarding interviewing and coding, present applications of the means-end approach to marketing and advertising problems, and describe the conceptual foundations of the means-end approach.
This book is of interest to academic researchers in marketing and related fields, graduate students in business, marketing research professionals, and business managers. It is intended as a reference book containing ideas about the means-end approach and its applications.

Gendering Theory in Marketing and Consumer Research showcases state-of-the-art scholarship on gender in the field of marketing and consumer research. The book presents seven original contributions by a group of internationally renowned academics, who take up the task of theorising gender and gendering theory in new ways, accommodating recent intersectional, material-discursive, and practice-oriented theorisations. Connecting the study of marketing and consumer behaviour to different theoretical perspectives on gender, the contributors explore and critically examine the gendered nature and dimensions of contemporary marketplace activity. Through innovative conceptual development and insightful empirical analyses, the book offers important scholarly contributions to the literature on gender, marketing, and consumer research, and advances our understanding of gender as lived experience and socially regulated performance. It also frequently employ an intersectionalist perspective, theorising gender as only a part of one's subject position, which is constituted by mutually reinforcing categories. The book will be essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners who are interested in the implications and contemporary manifestations of gender as a cultural category in the marketplace. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

Taste is a core concept for the social sciences and an orienting notion in everyday practice. It is of equal relevance to academics and laypeople alike. Theorizations of taste are frequently multi- disciplinary, bringing an opportunity to cross-fertilize ideas and concepts. At the same time, a reader, challenged by the diverse body and dispersed nature of theories on taste, needs guidance navigating the literature and framing areas of interest. Until now, those interested in an academic perspective on the concept have had to traverse a wide range of literature. This is the first book that assembles a range of writings on taste from across disciplines to provide the reader with a sense of the emerging and expanding boundaries of this field of study. Taste, Consumption and Markets offers a comprehensive and up-to-date review of taste, with an emphasis on how taste shapes boundaries, subcultures, and global culture, complemented by an introduction that provides a scaffold for the reader and a concluding section that reflects on the past, present, and future of research on taste. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to students at an advanced level, academics, and reflective practitioners. It addresses the topics with regard to the sociology of taste and consumption and will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of consumer studies, consumption ethics, sociological perspectives on consumption, and cultural studies.