This is a book about choices. Not the kind you make when you decide who to marry, whether to quit your job, or when to go for a hike. It’s about the kind that hardly existed a hundred years ago but now govern our lives. The kind that have architects.Choose Your Captivity exposes the hidden forms of designed choice that, by determining the options made available to us, are deployed to steer our attention, behaviour and desires, influencing everything from what we eat to whe...

How did Americans come to quantify their society’s progress and well-being in units of money? In today’s GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of not only our goods and commodities but our environment, our communities, our nation, even our self-worth. The Pricing of Progress traces the long history of how and why we moderns adopted the monetizing values and valuations of capitalism as an indicator of human prosperity while losing sight of earlier social and moral metrics ...

Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan. The story, told in seventeen cantos, begins with the birth of Don Juan. As a young man he is precocious sexually, and has an affair with a friend of his mother. The husband finds out, and Don Juan is sent away to Cadiz. On the way, he is shipwrecked, survives, and meets the daughter of a pirate, whose men sell Don Juan as a slave. A young woman who is a member of a Sultan’s harem, sees that this slave is purchased. ...

Haters are not your problem. . . .Ignoring them is.Eighty percent of companies say they deliver outstanding customer service, but only 8 percent of their customers agree. This book will help you close that gap by reconfiguring your customer service to deliver knockout experiences.The near-universal adoption of smartphones and social media has fundamentally altered the science of complaints. Critics (“haters”) can now express their displeasure faster ...

Meet the Billionaires: the 1,645 men and women who control a massive share of global assets worth $6.5 trillion. Darrell West reveals what the other 99.99998% of us need to know.With rich anecdotes and personal narratives, West goes inside the world of the ultra wealthy. Meet U.S. billionaires such as Sheldon Adelson, Michael Bloomberg, David and Charles Koch, George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Donald Trump-as well as international billionaires from around the globe.The growing po...

According to super pollster John Zogby, whom The Washington Post calls “the maverick predictor,” the conventional wisdom about the United States–that we’re isolated from the world, politically fragmented, and inclined toward material pleasure–isn’t just flawed; it may be 180 degrees from the truth. In this far-reaching and illuminating look at contemporary American life, Zogby reveals nothing less than The Way We’ll Be. Drawing on thousands of in-depth surveys conducted e...

In America today, you can connect to your ethnic heritage in dozens of ways, or adopt an identity just for an evening. Our society is not a melting pot but a salad bar--a bazaar in which the purveyors of goods and services spend close to $2 billion a year marketing the foods, clothing, objects, vacations, and events that help people express their (and others') ethnic identities. This is a huge business, whose target groups are the "hyphenated Americans"--in other words, all of us.A...

The old saying does often seem to hold true: the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, creating a widening gap between those who have more and those who have less. The sociologist Robert K. Merton called this phenomenon the Matthew effect, named after a passage in the gospel of Matthew. Yet the more closely we examine the sociological effects of this principle, the more complicated the idea becomes. Initial advantage doesn't always lead to further advantage, and disadvantage doesn't n...

This book reflects the current thinking and research on how consumers’ perception of product risks and benefits affects their behavior. It provides the scientific, regulatory and industrial research community with a conceptual and methodological reference point for studies on consumer behavior and marketing. The contributions address various aspects of consumer psychology and behavior, risk perception and communication, marketing research strategies, as well as consumer product regulation....

A fundamental and interesting approach of the structure of the economic evolution and the impact of money on people's behaviorWhat do shells, 3 tons stones, paper, gold and digital bits have in common?They all are, have been or will be currencies.What does money, debt or a gift have in common?They are all, explicitly or implicitly, a form of credit.What do families, communities and economic entities have in common?They are all bas...

Economic growth is a constant mantra of politicians, economists and the media. Few understand what it is, but they love and follow it blindly. The reality is that since the global financial crisis, growth has vanished in the more industrialised economies and in the so-called developing countries. Politicians may be panicking, but is this really a bad thing?Using real-life examples and innovative research, acclaimed political economist Lorenzo Fioramonti lays bare society’s perverse...

In today's business world, the customer service experience is the most critical component that leads small businesses to remarkable success. Good service can be a business owner's greatest asset if it is properly implemented, practiced on a regular basis, and customized to meet the needs and wants of customers. The good relationships entrepreneurs have with customers will be essential to growing their businesses and evolving to the next level.This book is designed as a tool for the ...