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CUSTOMER SENSE

HOW THE 5 SENSES INFLUENCE BUYING BEHAVIOR

Despite some dry prose, Krishna presents a sophisticated, easy-handed elucidation of the practice of marketing to our senses.

Krishna (Marketing/Univ. of Michigan) examines the relatively new idea of sensory marketing, which “engages the consumer’s senses and affects their perception, judgment, and behavior.”

The study of sensory marketing may be in its infancy, writes the author, but its use, intentional or otherwise, has been around for years, including such sensory signatures as the royal purple dye of the city of Tyre, Tiffany Blue and the pink of the breast cancer campaign. Krishna is clearly beguiled by sensory marketing, and she manages to convey that fascination by concentrating on each sense in turn, explaining how it works and giving sharp examples of how it has affected marketing. Her touch is light as she tackles how marketers make use of visual bias, cultural preferences for certain colors, packaging designs that move our feelings, the impact of a spokesperson’s voice or the music in a store, the dance of brand names and sound patterns, the different desires people bring to the need for touching, the connections among smells, emotions and recollections, and the fashioning of food design to taste buds. When the author digs deeper—into the mechanics of the senses, the innate and learned views of smell perception, how taste is “an amalgamation of all of our senses that combine with…those receptors on the tongue to form a perception of an object on our mouth”—she still treads lightly, at least for the most part. Nor is she immune to the pleasures of the more whimsical ploys: scratch and sniff, the crunch of Rice Krispies, the role of heft in food products.

Despite some dry prose, Krishna presents a sophisticated, easy-handed elucidation of the practice of marketing to our senses.

Pub Date: April 2, 2013

ISBN: 978-0230341739

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013

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THE CONFIDENCE GAME

HOW UNELECTED CENTRAL BANKERS ARE GOVERNING THE CHANGED GLOBAL ECONOMY

This blue-chip status report makes a substantive contribution to the growing body of literature of the pivotal role played by central banks in in the Global Village's financial affairs (see Marjorie Deane and Robert Pringle's The Central Banks, 1995). Former Forbes reporter Solomon's principal accomplishment is providing accessible briefings on how America's Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, Germany's Bundesbank, and lesser lights have dealt (by default) with a weary world's financial traumas over the past two decades. Cases in point include management of recurrent less-developed-countries (LDC) debt crises; coordinating exchange- rate policy to keep the value of key currencies in line with economic realities; and responding to 1987's cataclysmic stock market crash (which the author employs as a leitmotif throughout his text). While monetary authorities (who attempt to control the stability and supplies of money in their own countries) have proved adept in working together in emergencies, Solomon observes that their success at staving off disaster raises a wealth of vital issues, not the least of which is the accountability of independent technocrats whose preoccupation is containment of inflationary pressures, not job-creating economic growth. Also of concern is dominion over a volatile new order in which stateless pools of capital could at almost any time swamp a global monetary system that has lacked anchors to windward since the 1970s collapse of the Bretton Woods accord. Covered as well are the manifold failures of fiscal policy in a variety of industrial powers (notably the US), the importance of sound money to democracy, the odds on the EU's creating a supranational central bank, and the resourceful (albeit potentially ruinous) means by which political leaders seek to buy time for their reelection campaigns or other purposes. An on-the-money introduction to the financial fraternity's ruling class.

Pub Date: June 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-684-80182-5

Page Count: 624

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995

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MAKING IT IN AMERICA

PROVEN PATHS TO SUCCESS FROM FIFTY TOP COMPANIES

Slick, sunny-side-up profiles of 50 flourishing industrial enterprises. Some brief connective commentary apart, Jasinowski (president of the National Association of Manufacturers) and Hamrin (a freelance economic consultant) rely on anecdotal evidence to make their principal point: that American manufacturing has staged a remarkable, competitive comeback from its near-death experience during the 1980s. In addition, the achievements of every organization in their 50-company sample are attributed to one of ten paths to success: employee empowerment; training and retraining of workers; rewarding performance; exceeding customer expectations; envisioning new products and markets; going global; total quality management; achieving environmental excellence; speed and agility; and shaking up the organization. While the authors round up many of the usual world-class suspects as exemplars of latter-day excellence (Chrysler, Emerson Electric, Ford Motor, Intel, Motorola, Searle, and Xerox, to name but a few), they have showcased some less familiar outfits as well. Cases in point range from Great Plains Software through Johnsonville Foods, Kingston Technology, Remmele Engineering, Thermo Electron, and Wadia Digital. On the minus side of the ledger, the relatively rigid format Jasinowski and Hamrin use to present their summary case studies soon grows tiresome. Nor could all selections pass a cognitive-dissonance test. By way of example, the authors include happy-talk rundowns on USX-US Steel as well as three of the nimbler rivals (Chaparral, Nucor, Oregon Steel) that have poached on its traditional preserves in recent years. Although Jasinowski and Hamrin cover a handful of corporations that have made a virtue of environmental necessity, moreover, they stand mute on the score of those that may have overcome less edifying problems with product recalls, racial discrimination, or sexual harassment. The bottom line: These relentlessly upbeat vignettes of US business are to management guides what fast food is to haute cuisine.

Pub Date: March 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-671-50756-7

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995

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