A genuinely original contribution to marketing literature.
A new profiling tool promises to change the marketing landscape by focusing on consumers’ values.
Conventional marketing wisdom has long held the principal predictor of consumer behavior is age, which is precisely why so much time and energy has been expended trying to effectively reach millennials (defined here are people born between 1980 and 1995). However, while Allison (The Stackable Boomer, 2015) was researching baby boomers, he discovered that many of their life decisions align with millennials’, undermining the regnant view that the latter are “an entirely new species of human.” He argues that, in general, relying upon age as a profiling tool is misguided and that it should be discarded in favor of a reliance on values—what people “want, need, and expect from life.” He transformed this key insight into a practical instrument, he says, by inventing “Valuegraphics,” which he describes as the “world’s largest purpose-built database of shared values,” comprised of 75,000 surveys that one can algorithmically mine. It classifies respondents according to basic types, determined by core values; the 10 most popular are called “Valuegraphics Archetypes,” such as “The Adventure Club” (“the curious ones, always restless and looking to try new things”) and “The Savers Society” (which includes Allison’s “mother-in-law, who will drive forty-five minutes across town because butter is on sale”). According to the author, members of a particular archetype are overwhelmingly likely to agree with one another, which makes them remarkably predictable as a group. For example, he says, those who consider loyalty to be their chief value tend to agree with others who do so about 83 percent of the time. As one might expect, the book often reads like a long infomercial, as its sales pitch for Valuegraphics is relentless. However, Allison’s prose is lucid, engaging, and convincing, and he makes a powerful argument that our society’s “new agelessness” demands a seismic shift in marketing analysis. Further, he provides a rigorous account of Valuegraphics’ various applications and benefits. Oddly, though, he doesn’t include a full sample survey, stating that it’s too complex to show in book form.
A genuinely original contribution to marketing literature.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0087-4
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing study of the role of style and design in early postwar American culture. Marling (Art History and American Studies/ Univ. of Minnesota; coauthor of Iwo Jima: Monuments and the American Hero, 1991) examines the period when TV first leveled its electronic gaze at American life and a dynamic new set of visual and cultural values were born. She describes leisure pursuits like amateur painting— and its ghastly derivative, the paint-by-numbers set—that rose with the country's self-conscious new prosperity; the growth of automobile fetishism; kitchen gadgets and their meaning for ever- busier women; Elvis's nouveau-riche stylistic pretensions; and national unease over the comparative worth of less frivolous Soviet accomplishments. The book begins slowly, detailing the national obsession with Mamie Eisenhower's hair and clothing, but gathers momentum in describing Disneyland's antecedents, the psychosexual lure of chrome-laden cars, and the growing hegemony of design over function in the development of American products. Marling writes with flair, and her text engages the reader even when profound insight is lacking. Readers may disagree with her on occasion (that ``the French [fashion] salon is a woman's place, ultimately governed by her preferences and skills'' seems debatable). And sometimes the breezy tone is less appropriate—memoranda showing how Betty Crocker psychologists exploited women's fears of failure in the kitchen arouse no comment from the author. Assertions that designers provided buyers a sensation of mobility and choice, and that these aren't bad aims, on the other hand, make sense. And Marling's right in noting that critics often missed what was pleasurable—and anti-elitist—about ``populuxe'' fashions of the '50s. Though Marling chooses to remain more chronicler than critic, this archaeology of our recent visual past is as important as any recent political history of the period, and far fresher in approach. (Illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-674-04882-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
An ideal pathfinder on the Beatles' long and winding road from moptops to magi—insightful, informative, contentious, and as ambitious and surprising as its heroes. Popular music criticism is often a thankless task, falling uneasily between mindless hype and lugubrious academicism. MacDonald, former deputy editor of New Musical Express, adroitly bridges that gap, taking the factual chassis—recording session data, itineraries, etc.—laboriously assembled by Beatlemaniacs like Mark Lewisohn and bringing to bear a fan's enthusiasm, a musicologist's trained ear, and a critic's discernment to produce the most rigorous and reliable assessment of the Beatles' artistic achievement to date. Advancing chronologically through the songs, MacDonald provides an encyclopedic wealth of biographical, musical, and historical detail, yet always keeps his eyes on the prize—the uniquely rich elixir the group distilled from these disparate elements. He considers the Beatles on their own musical and cultural terms, taking his cue from contemporary influences (rhythm-and-blues, soul, and the supercharged social crucible of the '60s), rather than straining for highbrow parallels in Schoenberg or Schubert—you'll find no reference to the infamous ``Aeolian cadences'' of ``This Boy'' here. MacDonald makes no bones about his own critical convictions: He prefers the artful structures of pop, its ``energetic topicality'' that ``captures a mood or style in a condensed instant,'' to rock's ``dull grandiosity,'' a shift he attributes to a general retreat since the '60s away from depth and craftsmanship into spectacle and sensation. Accordingly, he champions the pop classicism of the Beatles' early-middle period, culminating in Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, and in his most memorably acerbic passages deplores the rockist leanings of their later work: ``Helter Skelter,'' for instance, is dismissed as ``ridiculous, McCartney shrieking weedily against a backdrop of out-of-tune thrashing.'' The ultimate Beatles Bible? Certainly a labor of love, and all the more valuable for holding the Fabs to the highest critical standards.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-2780-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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