John Butman

Michael Silverstein

Neil Fiske

Explains how businesses can profit from middle-market revenues, reveals what motivates customers, identifies accessible luxury items, and shares the success stories of several "new luxury" companies.

Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods--and how Companies Create Them

Trading Up

Michael J. Silverstein

Kate Sayre

In our current economic crisis, companies everywhere will begin reexamining their strategies for finding new ways to target customers. With women responsible for 64% of household spending and accounting for an astonishing $12 trillion per year, companies that ignore them do so at their peril. WHAT WOMEN WANT is a timely book based on the findings of a groundbreaking study (The Boston Consulting Group′s Global Inquiry into Women and Consumerism, which polled 12,000 women in 21 countries) that gets to the heart of women′s deepest desires, frustrations, and goals. The authors describe how this "invisible market" has grown in size, influence, and buying power, and they reveal the countless opportunities for companies who understand that meeting women′s needs is the key to repowering our crrent economy. WHAT WOMEN WANT offers companies real strategies for growing their global markets by finding innovative ways to appeal to women′s needs and concerns through the results of their well-timed study. Business people should take note of the book′s many revelations. Among them: Demands on time were cited as the number one challenge by 47 percent of our respondents. 48 percent said managing household finances was the top challenge. The predominant sources of arguments between the respondent and her spouse or partner were: - Money, 19 percent - Chores, 15 percent - Work schedule, 12 percent - Children, 10 percent - Sex, 10 percent Some 68 percent of the respondents believe they are significantly or slightly higher than their ideal body weight Only 25 percent of the women surveyed believe they are extremely or very attractive 44 percent say they rarely or never feel powerful While the main audience is business readers, this book will appeal to a wide general audience, as well. Like Paco Underhill′s WHY WE BUY, WHAT WOMEN WANT doesn′t just offer a glimpse into consumer behavior, how to get their attention, and better serve their needs; it reveals what consumer behavior says about human psychology and desire.

How to Capture Your Share of the World's Largest, Fastest-Growing Market

Women Want More

The essential follow-up to the BusinessWeek bestseller Trading Up A BMW in a Costco parking lot? A working class family with a 50 inch plasma TV? A 27-year-old Japanese administrative assistant with a collection of Coach purses? An 87-year-old retiree in Ohio exclaiming the value of Aldi brand honey? What's going on in the mind of the new consumer? Today's consumers can seem impossible to understand, and even harder to please. For instance, the average mall shopper will spend her $100, then leave when she hits that limit. She'll probably buy shoes rather than clothing, because she doesn't want to think about her dress size. And the store most likely to get her money isn't the one with the nicest display or the deepest discounts... it's the one closest to her parking spot. In his research with dozens of leading companies, Michael J. Silverstein has interviewed thousands of customers, extracting fascinating patterns about what really drives their purchase decisions. His first book, the acclaimed bestseller Trading Up, has taught a generation of marketers about the "new luxury" phenomenon, and why consumers will happily pay a steep premium for goods and services that are emotionally satisfying, from golf clubs to bathroom hardware to beauty products. But Trading Up only revealed part of the story of the new consumer. The same middle class consumers who are happily trading up at Victoria's Secret and Panera are going on treasure hunts at Costco and Home Depot. And they are often getting as much emotional satisfaction in the discount stores as in the luxury stores. Silverstein's new book explains how the new consumer approaches bargain hunting, and how even the most mundane shopping Â– for things like paper towels and pet food -- have become an adventure rather than a tedious chore. It turns out that, in just about every consumer category, both the high end and the low end are growing and innovation rich. Many middle class consumers gladly spend $5.00 a day for a vente Starbucks latte; others spend 40 cents a day on home brewed coffee, feel good about their frugality, and save up the difference to buy Apple's newest Nano. Treasure Hunt explains the success of companies as diverse as Dollar General, LG, H. E. Butt, Ebay, Commerce Bank, and Tchibo. Beware: in our bifurcated global market, businesses need a clear strategy for aiming high or low, while staying away from the treacherous middle, where so many have recently stumbled. If your offering isn't exciting enough to inspire trading up, but not enough of a bargain to satisfy the treasure hunters, you'll have no emotional connection with your target audience. And, like General Motors or Sears in recent years, your tried-and-true marketing strategies will go into a severe stall. Treasure Hunt takes us into the homes of real people making real decisions, and into the CEO's offices of innovative companies finding new ways to accommodate them. Written with the same flair, empathy, and intelligence that made Trading Up an instant business classic, this book is an essential guide to the moods and habits of the constantly changing consumer.

Inside the Mind of the New Global Consumer

Treasure Hunt

Simon Targett

Three generations of English merchant adventurers-not the Pilgrims, as we have so long believed-were the earliest founders of America. Profit-not piety-was their primary motive. Some seventy years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed "The Mysterie, Company, and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown," the world's first joint-stock company. Back then, in the mid-sixteenth century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe, and it had begun to face a daunting array of social, commercial, and political problems. Struggling with a single export-woolen cloth-the merchants were forced to seek new markets and trading partners, especially as political discord followed the straitened circumstances in which so many English people found themselves. At first they headed east, and dreamed of Cathay-China, with its silks and exotic luxuries. Eventually, they turned west, and so began a new chapter in world history. The work of reaching the New World required the very latest in navigational science as well as an extraordinary appetite for risk. As this absorbing account shows, innovation and risk-taking were at the heart of the settlement of America, as was the profit motive. Trade and business drove English interest in America, and determined what happened once their ships reached the New World. The result of extensive archival work and a bold interpretation of the historical record, New World, Inc. draws a portrait of life in London, on the Atlantic, and across the New World that offers a fresh analysis of the founding of American history. In the tradition of the best works of history that make us reconsider the past and better understand the present, Butman and Targett examine the enterprising spirit that inspired European settlement of America and established a national culture of entrepreneurship and innovation that continues to this day.

The Making of America by England's Merchant Adventurers

New World, Inc.

George Stalk

Robert Lachenauer

Hardball takes leaders deep inside the world of hardball competition - a world where the players are zealously committed to winning and relentlessly driven to strengthen their competitive positions, creating a virtuous cycle that puts them far out of competitors' reach. Based on twenty-five years of experience advising and observing a range of companies, Stalk and Lachenauer reveal how hardball competitors achieve decisive victories - without bending the law and without compromising their obligations to customers and stakeholders. These companies often play rough, and they don't apologize for it. Yet they are also extraordinarily adept at the "soft" side of management - rallying talent and building culture through a laserlike focus on the few issues most critical to success. Using detailed and engaging stories from many industries, Hardball outlines seven classic hardball strategies: unleash massive and overwhelming force, exploit anomalies, threaten competitors' profit sanctuaries, take it and make it your own, entice competitors' into retreat, break industry compromises, and hardball M&A. The authors reveal who uses hardball strategies, under what circumstances each strategy is most effective, and how to orchestrate the attack.

Are You Playing to Play Or Playing to Win?

Hardball

How do you gain influence for an idea? In Breaking Out, idea developer and adviser John Butman shows how the methods of today’s most popular “idea entrepreneurs”—including dog psychologist Cesar Millan, French lifestyle guru Mireille Guiliano (French Women Don’t Get Fat), TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie, and many others—can help you take an idea public and build influence for it. It isn’t easy. Butman argues that the rise of the “ideaplex” (TED, Twitter, NPR, YouTube, online learning, and all the rest) has caused such an explosion in the creation and sharing of ideas that it has become much easier to go public—yet much harder to gain influence. But it can be done. Based on his own experience in advising content experts worldwide, Butman shows how the idea entrepreneur breaks out—by combining personal narrative with rich content, creating many forms of expression (from books to live events), developing real-world practices, and creating “respiration” around the idea such that other people can breathe it in and make it their own. The resulting idea platform can reach many different audience groups and continue to build influence for many years and even decades. If you have an idea and want to make a difference in your organization, build a change movement in your community, or improve the world in some way—this book will get you started on the journey to idea entrepreneurship.

How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas

Breaking Out

These days no-one is shocked when an administrative assistant buys silk pjamas, or when a young professional chooses only premium wines. 'Trading Up' examines why luxury goods still retail at huge premiums, despite selling in greater volumes than ever before.

In Women Want More, Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre, two of the world’s leading authorities on the retail business, argue that women are the key to fixing the economy. Based on a groundbreaking study and offering tremendous insight into the purchasing habits and power of women, Women Want More doesn’t just offer a glimpse into consumer behavior; it reveals what consumer behavior says about human psychology and desire.

The essential follow-up to the BusinessWeek bestseller Trading Up A BMW in a Costco parking lot? A working class family with a 50-inch plasma TV? What's going on in the mind of the new consumer? Today's consumers can seem impossible to understand, and even harder to please. For instance, the average mall shopper will spend about $100, then leave when she hits that limit. She'll probably buy shoes rather than clothing, because she doesn't want to think about her dress size. And the store most likely to get her money isn't the one with the nicest display or the deepest discounts-it's the one closest to her parking spot. In his consulting with dozens of leading companies, Michael J. Silverstein has interviewed thousands of customers, extracting fascinating patterns about what really drives their purchase decisions. His first book, the acclaimed bestseller Trading Up, has taught a generation of marketers about the "new luxury" phenomenon, and why consumers will happily pay a steep premium for goods and services that are emotionally satisfying, from golf clubs to bathroom fixtures to beauty products. But Trading Up revealed only part of the story of the new consumer. The same middle-class people who are happily trading up at Victoria's Secret and Panera are going on treasure hunts at Costco and Home Depot. And they are often getting as much emotional satisfaction in the discount stores as in the luxury stores. TREASURE HUNT shows how even the most mundane shopping-for things like paper towels and pet food-has become an adventure rather than a tedious chore. In just about every category, both the high end and the low end are growing and innovation- rich. Many middle-class consumers gladly spend $5 a day for a Starbucks venti latte; others spend forty cents a day on home-brewed coffee, feel good about their frugality, and save up the difference to buy Apple's newest Nano. TREASURE HUNT explains the success of companies as diverse as Dollar General, H. E. Butt, eBay, Commerce Bank, and Tchibo. But beware: in our bifurcated global market, businesses need a clear strategy for aiming high or low, while avoiding the treacherous middle, where so many have recently stumbled. If your offering isn't exciting enough to inspire trading up, but not enough of a bargain to satisfy the treasure hunters, you'll have no emotional connection with your target audience. And then, as many fallen companies have discovered, your tried-and-true marketing strategies will go into a severe stall. TREASURE HUNT takes us into the homes of real people making real decisions, and into the CEO's offices of innovative companies finding new ways to accommodate them. Written with the same flair, empathy, and intelligence that made Trading Up an instant classic, this is an essential guide to the moods and habits of the constantly changing consumer.

Inside the Mind of the New Consumer

A study on middle-class consumerism finds that today's customers are seeking higher levels of quality, taste, and aspiration, in a revised edition of the best-seller that draws on new research to explore the trading up phenomenon to reveal how entrepreneurs, innovators, managers, and marketers can make the most out of related opportunities. Reprint.

Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods--and How Companies Create Them

Three generations of English merchant adventurers -- not the Pilgrims, as we have so long believed -- were the earliest founders of America. Profit -- not piety -- was their primary motive. Some seventy years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed 'The Mysterie, Company, and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown, ' one of the world's first joint-stock companies. Back then, in the mid-sixteenth century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe, and it had begun to face a daunting array of social, commercial, and political problems. Struggling with a single export -- woolen cloth -- the merchants were forced to seek new markets and trading partners, especially as political discord followed the straitened circumstances in which so many English people found themselves. At first the merchants headed east, and dreamed of Cathay -- China, with its silks and exotic luxuries. Eventually, they turned west, and so began a new chapter in world history. The work of reaching the New World required the very latest in navigational science as well as an extraordinary appetite for risk. Trade and business drove English interest in establishing colonies, and determined what happened once their ships reached the New World.--Publisher's description.

How England's Merchants Founded America and Launched the British Empire

New World, Inc

James P. Andrew

Harold L. Sirkin

If you're like most people, you bet your career and company on innovation--because you must. Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation offers you a new way to think about and manage innovation that will dramatically improve the odds of success. Authors James Andrew and Harold Sirkin, senior partners in The Boston Consulting Group, describe an approach to managing innovation based on the concept of a cash curve--which tracks investment against time. They ask the questions you need to ask: How much should you invest in a new product or service? How fast should you push it to market? How quickly can you get to optimal value? How much additional investment should you pour into sustaining and building the product or service? Payback offers you practical and economically sound advice on when to pursue cash flow indirectly by first pursuing other benefits, such as brand and knowledge. It also shows you how to reshape the cash curve by using different business models--integrator, orchestrator, and licenser--each of which balances risk and reward differently. The authors then present a short list of decisions and activities that you must make--not delegate--to achieve a high return on innovation. You won't find facile answers in Payback--but you will find valuable insights and practical guidance for mastering one of the most challenging and critical business activities: innovation.

Reaping the Rewards of Innovation

Payback

Rob Lachenauer

Great companies stumble and fall when they lose it. Highfliers crash when a competitor notices they don't have it. Start-ups shut down if they can't develop it. "It" is a strategy so powerful and an execution-driven mindset so relentless that companies use it to gain more than just competitive advantage--they achieve an industry dominance that is virtually unassailable and that competitors often try to explain away as unfair. In their "hardball manifesto," authors George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer of the leading strategy consulting firm The Boston Consulting Group show how hardball competitors can build or maintain an enviable competitive edge by pursuing one or more of the classic "hardball strategies": unleash massive and overwhelming force, exploit anomalies, devastate profit sanctuaries, raise competitors' costs, and break compromises. Based on 25 years of experience advising and observing a range of companies, the authors argue that hardball competitors can gain extreme competitive advantage--neutralizing, marginalizing, or even destroying competitors--without violating their contracts with customers or employees and without breaking the rules. A clear-eyed paean to the timeless strategies that have driven the world's winning companies, Hardball Strategy redefines and reinterprets the meaning of competition for a new generation of business players. George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer are directors of The Boston Consulting Group. Stalk is the author of Competing Against Time, the classic work on time-based competition.

Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

The thrilling story of the English merchant adventurers who changed the world. In the mid-sixteenth century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe, and it had begun to face a daunting array of social, commercial and political problems. Struggling with a single export - woollen cloth - a group of merchants formed arguably the world's first joint-stock company and set out to seek new markets and trading partners. It was a venture that relied on the very latest scientific innovations and required an extraordinary appetite for risk. At first they headed east, and dreamed of Cathay, with its silks and exotic luxuries. Eventually, they turned west, and so began a new chapter in history. Based on archival research and a bold interpretation of the historical record, New World, Inc. draws a portrait of life in London, on the Atlantic and across the New World, and reveals how profit-hungry business people transformed England into a world power.

John Butman

Books

Your next favorite book is out there