Friday November 21, 2008
Business & Investing: Marketing & Sales
Displayed below are the top selling items for today, Friday November 21, 2008 along with the review customers have voted "most useful".
To find top selling items in for a specific category, use the menu on the left or click here to see all categories.
- influence : The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) by Robert B. Cialdini
- Predictably Irrational : The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
- Nudge : Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler
- The Tipping Point : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
- Buyology : Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom
- Sway : The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman
- Raving Fans : A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service by Kenneth H. Blanchard
- Yes! : 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein
- Blue Ocean Strategy : How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim
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influence
The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)
by Robert B. Cialdini
(based on 270 customer reviews)
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(Paperback)
Edition: Revised
Author: Robert B. Cialdini
Publisher: Collins Business
Price: $12.21
You save: $5.74 (32%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
358 out of 368 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 1/26/03
A Superb Text About Influence
As I sit here and write, I wonder why I did not draft this review long before now. I read Cialdini's book about five years ago and have been hooked ever since. It is simply a superb book about influence.Cialdini believes that influence is a science. This idea attracted me. As a rhetorician, I have always thought of persuasion as more of an art. Cialdini, however, makes a first-rate case for the science point of view. But maybe most importantly, he makes his case in a well-written, intelligent, and entertaining manner. Not only is this an important book to read, it is a fun book to read too.
He introduces you to six principles of ethical persuasion: reciprocity, scarcity, liking, authority, social proof, and commitment/consistency. A chapter is devoted to each and you quickly see why Cialdini looks at influence as a science. Each principle is backed by social scientific testing and restesting. Each chapter is also filled with interesting examples that help you see how each principle can be applied. By the end of the book, I had little doubt that these are six important dimensions of human interaction.
I highly recommend this book to all professionals. It does not matter if you are a manager, sales person, pastor, or non-profit volunteer. The ideas in this book, once applied, will make it easier for you to accomplish your goals. In a video featuring the author, Professor Cialdini even goes so far as to promise that these principles can help you influence the most resistant of all audiences--your children.
With a claim like that, who wouldn't be intrigued?
My advice is to read this sooner rather than later. You will be quite glad you did.
Click here to see more reviews for: influence
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Predictably Irrational
The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
by Dan Ariely
(based on 152 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Dan Ariely
Publisher: HarperCollins
Price: $17.13
You save: $8.82 (34%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
153 out of 175 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 2/19/08
Welcome to the fuzzy world of being human.
Dan Ariely is the guy you'd want at your dinner party. He's witty, smart and also very inclusive - sharing his passion for the way humans tick in a way that makes us feel great about the fact that, rational as we like to think we are, we make bad snap decisions, we cheat and we get ruled by our heart precisely when the facts are screaming "go the other way!" There's a lot in this writing which celebrates our human-ness. Why do we do this?
What Ariely has done here is shift a lot of the thinking developed by such pioneers as Kahneman & Tversky who worked in behavioural economics, and moved it into the everyday sphere. And he's done a great, insightful job. Where the behavioural economists are focused on financial decisions (why we buy high and sell low - and confound the assumptions of the classic economists who assume 'the rational man,) Ariely eschews the technical language and walks us through everyday examples of our often fuzzy and quite irrational decision-making.
The result is utterly engaging - and this easy 300 page read still has academic rigour and strong foundations. Ariely cites many experiements and examples, and shows that we often get things wrong because we frame things the wrong way, mis-judge probabilities, apply heuristic rules of thumb that don't always work, or we just plain let our emotions rule.
We love to think that we're educated, rational and moral. Yet who hasn't pocketed that conference pen, tweaked their numbers on a tax claim, overestimated the upside on a sure-fire investment, bought some clothing that we knew was a mistake even as we bought it, or got our wires crossed between work-rules and social rules? This book is fascinating, entertaining and very, very illuminating.
Recommended for the general public, but I'd urge marketers, market researchers and business people to read this one carefully. Dan provides excellent dinner-party insights, but they apply to our real world and explain why so many poor decisions are made - whether by customers or by the 'rational' business people who make million-dollar decisions.
Click here to see more reviews for: Predictably Irrational
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Nudge
Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
by Richard H. Thaler (based on 47 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Richard H. Thaler
Publisher: Yale University Press
Price: $17.16
You save: $8.84 (34%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
138 out of 149 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 3/23/08
The elephant in the room.
Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein are both professors at the University of Chicago and where the Chicago school was once famous for the Milton Friedman doctrine of free markets (look where they've got us today!) Thaler and now his Law professor friend Cass Sunstein have swung the pendulum the other way.
Here in Nudge, they argue that totally free markets can lead to disasters precisely because human individuals are not actually very good decision-makers. As Behavioural Economists (Kahneman & Tversky Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases- who credited Thaler as being a key inspiration - and Dan Ariely, whose Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions has become a best seller) argue, we are riddled with little psychological tics in our decision-making processes. We buy things, then suffer remorse. We get confused by choices and often make no choice at all.
But where Ariely keeps his discourse in the world of the day to day, Thaler and Sunstein develop an argument that is political - and is bound to cause heated debate. What they argue is that, in the face of our decision-making weaknesses, Governments and Businesses can help "nudge" us in the right direction. The elephant in the room can be benign.
They call their viewpoint `libertarian paternalism' and what they argue is that it would be a good thing for some gentle nudging of the citizenry in the right direction. As Thaler said recently in the New York Times: "In light of human limitations, Cass Sunstein and I argue for policies that we call libertarian paternalism. Although the phrase sounds like an oxymoron, we contend that it is often possible to design policies, in both the public and private sector, that make people better off -- as judged by themselves -- without coercion. We oppose bans; instead, we favor nudges."
How does a Government do this without imposing laws and edicts. A primary argument is that defaults can be set that counter the tendency by humans to procrastinate or make no decision. One example is the Save More Tomorrow Plan which Thaler developed back in 1996 as an employer sponsored retirement plan for employees. Instead of presenting the details and asking employees to consciously sign-up to increase their savings each time they got a pay rise, the plan presented the details and asked employees to basically check the box if they wished in future to automatically increase their savings as their pay went up. To pre-commit. Such schemes have proved very successful, yet they offer the same free choice, though with a different default.
As Thaler argues: "Since it is often impossible for private and public institutions to avoid picking some option as the default, why not pick one that is helpful?"
Another form of nudge might be the act of disclosure. Thaler & Sunstein argue, for example that credit card companies should issue annual statements that tell us how much we've spent this year on late fees and interest. Again: we have the complete freedom to use cards as we want, but the additional information may help us reframe our own spending strategies. Or how about stickers on new cars that show how much gasoline each vehicle would burn over the next 5 years under typical usage. Hold that Hummer.
These are examples of what the authors call helpful "choice architecture." Nice phrase. The architecture puts our options on more clear display.
I must say, I like the thinking here, and it gives credence to agent-based simulation modelling I've carried out whereby small changes can lead to big effects.
But this volume is about more than modelling and mere theory. One cannot help but think that the book has been timed to coincide with the meltdown of the present economy. The free market, the totally free market, the authors implicitly argue, needs quite a nudge itself. Rather than seeking highly regulated solutions, the better response might simply be a series of tweaks to the choice architecture that influences our spending, saving, health care and borrowing patterns.
The authors present a clear argument and no doubt it will cause heated and lively debate. This book has landed like a rock, right into the centre of the current and somewhat stagnant economic pond. It will definitely cause ripples. Well worth reading.
Click here to see more reviews for: Nudge
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The Tipping Point
How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell (based on 940 customer reviews)
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(Paperback)
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Price: $10.19
You save: $4.80 (32%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
687 out of 772 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 5/7/00
Interesting Read
Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for New Yorker Magazine, in The Tipping Point, writes a fascinating study of human behavior patterns, and shows us where the smallest things can trigger an epidemic of change. Though loaded with statistics, the numbers are presented in a way that makes the book read like an exciting novel. Gladwell also gives several examples in history, where one small change in behavior created a bigger change on a national level. He also studies the type of person or group that it takes to make that change.Gladwell's first example is the resurgence of the popularity of Hush Puppies, which had long been out of fashion, and were only sold in small shoe stores. Suddenly, a group of teenage boys in East Village, New York, found the cool to wear. Word-of-mouth advertising that these trend-setters were wearing the once-popular suede shoes set off an epidemic of fashion change, and boys all over America had to have the "cool" shoes.
Galdwell also examines the difference in personality it takes to trigger the change. For example, we all know of Paul Revere's famous ride, but how many of us know that William Dawes made a similar ride? The difference was that people listened to Revere and not to Dawes. Why? Revere knew so many different people. He knew who led which village, knew which doors to knock on to rouse the colonists. Dawes didn't know that many people and therefore could only guess which people to give his message.
There are several other phenomena that Gladwell examines, showing the small things that spark a change, from the dip in the New York City crime rate to the correlation between depression, smoking and teen suicide. If you want to change the world for the better, this book will give you an insight into the methods that work, and those that will backfire. It's all in knowing where to find The Tipping Point.
Jo @ MyShelf.Com
Click here to see more reviews for: The Tipping Point
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Buyology
Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
by Martin Lindstrom (based on 44 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Martin Lindstrom
Publisher: Doubleday Business
Price: $16.47
You save: $8.48 (34%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
16 out of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 10/21/08
A report of the findings of a neuromarketing study. Not really why we buy, but instead why we react to advertisements positively
This book was OK. I'm not sure I was really the target market for this short little something called a book. I like to read business books that a small business owner can get something out of. As far as I am concerned, this book is one for marketing professionals in LARGE companies that rely on traditional advertising as their marketing vehicle of choice. We all know that advertising is such a waste of money. And to read a book on how to get a little more value out of valueless advertising seems to me to be a waste, too. But that's just me. This book has an introduction and the following 11 chapters:
0. Introduction
1. The largest neuromarketing study ever conducted
2. Product placement, American Idol, and Ford's multi-million dollar mistake
3. Mirror neurons at work
4. Subliminal messaging, alive and well
5. Ritual, superstition, and why we buy
6. Faith, religion, and brands
7. The power of somatic markers
8. Selling to our senses
9. Neuromarketing and predicting the future
10. Sex in advertising
11. Brand new day
Before I started reading this book I thought it would be about "Why consumers buy." But after I scoped out the book jacket, the Intro, and skimmed the book, I quickly came to realize the book was simply a report of the findings from a pretty big neuromarketing study. You may ask: What is neuromarketing? Well, one source online says it is "a new field of marketing that studies consumers' sensorimotor, cognitive, and effective response to marketing stimuli." I say it is the study of how people react to advertising messages.
Today most marketers (except those selling commodities from large companies) try to minimize wasting their marketing dollars on advertisements. If you are like most marketers, then this book will probably be a waste of time and money for you to consider. Get back to focusing on your Internet Marketing, Personal Networking, Book Authorship, semnars, and workshops. But if you rely heavily on advertising in magazines, newspapers, television, and online, then get this book and study it. It's pretty well written and kind of informative. 3.8 stars!
Click here to see more reviews for: Buyology
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Sway
The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
by Ori Brafman (based on 48 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Edition: 1
Author: Ori Brafman
Publisher: Doubleday Business
Price: $14.93
You save: $7.02 (32%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
124 out of 132 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 6/8/08
When The Emperor Has No Clothes
Why would a seasoned pilot, the head of KLM's safety program, ignore his co-pilot and attempt a takeoff in fog at an unfamiliar airport, causing the worst air disaster in history? Why did the co-pilot, who had done exactly the right thing when he reminded his captain that the flight had not been cleared for takeoff, fail to repeat his warning when the pilot pressed ahead?
The collision at Tenerife airport cost the lives of 584 people. Using that accident as their starting point, the Brafman brothers explore the psychological forces that cause people to take large risks to avoid small losses, to judge people and situations by first impressions despite subsequent inconsistent evidence, and to ignore objections from dissenters.
"Sway" is the latest in an engaging series of books like Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" and "Blink" and Steven Levitt's "Freakonomics." The Brafmans' effort is one of the best written and most approachable of the recent crop, and somehow it kept my focused attention for the duration of a cross-country flight--perhaps the authors are appealing to my irrational impulses in ways they don't let on!
Anyway, one of the most interesting parts of the book is the most reassuring. Research reveals that groups often make better decisions if there's a "blocker" or "dissenter" present--even if that person dissents for the wrong reasons. The authors describe a classic experiment in which the test subjects are led to believe they are being tested for their visual skills--three lines of different lengths are to be matched to a fourth line. The differences in line length are very obvious, so there is plainly only one correct answer. If you put the real subject in a room with several actors who are pretending to be test subjects but who have actually been instructed to give a manifestly wrong answer, most subjects in the experiment will behave in a compltely irrational manner, agreeing with the other "subjects" that lines that are obviously different are exactly the same. But if an actor playing "blocker" is added to the mix and points out that the group is wrong, the subject feels free to disagree and usually makes the right choice. This is true even if the "blocker" makes a different "wrong" choice by picking two other lines of plainly different lengths. What this experiement says for the business and political world is that organizations that "brook no dissent" (like the Bush administration) are likely to perform about as well as that ill-fated flight at Tenarife.
Back to the cockpit: pilots at Southwest and other airlines are now trained to avoid the disaster that happened at Tenerife. Pilots are taught to listed to objections from other crew members, and crew members are trained to communicate those objections in a way that enables the pilot to respond quickly and correctly.
The Brafmans approach this fascinating subject with wit and style, and they tackle other interesting problems besides the one described above: why people often judge a book by its cover (so to speak), why people insist on being treated fairly even if that means foregoing a benefit, and why audiences for the French and Russian versions of "Who Wants to be A Millionaire" behave much differently from each other and from their American counterparts.
If you enjoy books like "Sway," you might want to visit my "Quirkology" list. Gladwell and Levitt unleashed a torrent of similarly conceived books, many of which are quite good.
To steal a march from the disclaimer on the back of "Sway" (which you can see above), if you decide to buy the book because of this review, "you just got swayed." But you should still give this review a "helpful" vote.
Click here to see more reviews for: Sway
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Raving Fans
A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service
by Kenneth H. Blanchard (based on 123 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Edition: 1
Author: Kenneth H. Blanchard
Publisher: William Morrow
Price: $15.61
You save: $7.34 (32%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
64 out of 68 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 6/10/98
This book saved my company!
I've been a struggling small business owner (some 32 to 38 employees, depending upon the season) thinking my problem was either that I was undercapitalized or that I had hired the wrong people. Raving Fans was a wake up call. The problem was I wasn't creating raving fans. I was satisfied if my customers were satisfied, but I learned in this book that service is so bad that customers expectations are low. It's easy to satisfy low expectations and it doesn't mean very much. You have to create raving fans. Customers who tell others how wonderful you are. Today everyone in my company is focused on customers. Focused on creating stories our customers can tell others. Creating those magic moments the book calls giving symbolic hugs. Best of all Raving Fans gave me the road map to do it, all wrapped up in three easy lessons. This book may be simple, but it is also profound and by far the best customer service book I've ever read, and I guess the best business book too. I'd be out of business today if I hadn't adopted the strategy of creating raving fans and then getting everyone in the company to do the same. The result is we've stopped buring our customer list every six months. We're retaining old customers, adding new ones and sales are way up. Today Raving Fans is required reading for every new hire. Thanks Amazon for this opportunity to write this review. You're the best. I'm your RAVING FAN!Richard Anders
Click here to see more reviews for: Raving Fans
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Yes!
50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
by Noah J. Goldstein (based on 82 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Noah J. Goldstein
Publisher: Free Press
Price: $16.50
You save: $8.50 (34%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
38 out of 42 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 6/16/08
Become a Master Pursuader
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive, written by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini, takes the scientific research and studies done on persuasion over the past 50+ years and presents an easy to understand book on how to convince people.
According to the authors, "The central purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a better understanding of the psychological processes underlying our efforts to influence others to shift their attitudes or behavior in a direction that results in positive outcomes for both parties."
The authors go to pains to convince us that persuasion is a science, not an art. They believe that, unlike books on business, economics and so on, there are not many books on persuasion because most people believe they already know how to convince people. which is a mistake, according to them.
They begin with the 6 universal principles of social influence:
* Reciprocation
* Authority
* Commitment/consistency
* Scarcity
* Liking
* Social proof
What follows are 50 mini-chapters. Each refers to scientific studies, but the chapters are breezy and easy to read.
Here are some examples:
* When pursuasion might backfire, how do you avoid the magnetic middle?
* when does a bonus become an onus?
* Does fear persuade or does it paralyze?
* What is the active ingredient in lasting commitments?
* What's the hidden danger of being the brightest person in the room?
*When is a loser an winner?
Insightful and thought-provoking, this book is useful for both social and business situations.
By the author of the award winning book,
Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify and Energize Your Life, Your Home and Your Planet.
Click here to see more reviews for: Yes!
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Blue Ocean Strategy
How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
by W. Chan Kim (based on 167 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Edition: 1
Author: W. Chan Kim
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Price: $19.77
You save: $10.18 (34%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
399 out of 428 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 1/10/05
Value Innovation - strategy book of the year 2005?
The authors have published many articles over the last decade on Value Innovation. This is their first book. It summarizes their extensive knowledge on out-of-the-box strategic thinking.
What is a BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY? The authors explain it by comparing it to a red ocean strategy (traditional strategic thinking):
1. DO NOT compete in existing market space. INSTEAD you should create uncontested market space.
2. DO NOT beat the competition. INSTEAD you should make the competition irrelevant.
3. DO NOT exploit existing demand. INSTEAD you should create and capture new demand.
4. DO NOT make the value/cost trade-off. INSTEAD you should break the value/cost trade-off.
5. DO NOT align the whole system of a company's activities with its strategic choice of differentiation or low cost. INSTEAD you should align the whole system of a company's activities in pursuit of both differentiation and low cost.
A red ocean strategy is based on traditional strategic thinking - e.g. Harvard's strategy guru Michael Porter.
Some cases:
* Airline industry price wars result in bankruptcies and low profit margins. Southwest Airlines creates a new market by offering the speed of air travel with the low cost and flexibility of driving.
* Golf equipment industry competes to win a greater share of existing golf customers. Callaway Golf creates "Big Bertha", a golf club with a large head that attracted new customers to golf that had been frustrated by the difficulty of hitting the ball.
* The cosmetic industry creates a red ocean with models, expensive advertising, and promises of youth and beauty. The Body Shop creates a blue ocean that lasts more than a decade by creating functional cosmetics that defied the industry which sold emotionally appealing cosmetics.
* The wine industry gluts the market with a red ocean of thousands of brands competing on the finest oaks and tannins and legacy winey names. Casella wines creates [yellow tail], a blue ocean wine that succeeded by eliminating complexity, elitism and consumer confusion and creating a fun simple image that non-wine drinkers could enjoy.
A blue ocean is created in the region where a company's actions favourably affect both its cost structure and it value proposition to buyers. Cost savings are made from eliminating and reducing the factors an industry competes on. Buyer value is lifted by raising and creating elements the industry has never offered. Over time, costs are reduced further as scale economies kick in, due to the high sales volumes that superior value generates.
Examples of strategic moves that created blue oceans of new, untapped demand:
- NetJets (fractional Jet ownership)
- Cirque du Soleil (the circus reinvented for the entertainment market)
- Starbucks (coffee as low-cost luxury for high-end consumers)
- Ebay (online auctioning)
- Sony (the Walkman - personal portable stereos)
- Cars: Japanese fuel-efficient autos (mid-70s) and Chrysler minivan (1984)
- Computers: Apple personal computer (1978) and Dell's built-to-order computers (mid-1990s).
The INSEAD professors Kim and Mauborgne have written regularly on the subject of Value Innovation since 1997 in Harvard Business Review. Being a business development manager, their thought leadership on strategic innovation has inspired me tremendously over the years. Their articles have been standard texts for many MBA students for some time (e.g. "Value Innovation", "Creating New Market Space", "Charting your Company's Future"). I expect their first book to be just as dominant in any strategy library as Michael Porter's books (the guru behind the classic red ocean strategies).
Peter Leerskov,
M.Sc. in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business
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