"A funny thing has happened on our way to the digital utopia: we find ourselves increasingly missing reality. In this spirited book, David Sax has found story after story of entrepreneurs, artisans, and creators who make real money by selling real things. And they're not just local craftspeople, either. As paper is supposedly vanishing, Moleskine notebooks--a company founded in 1997, the same year as the first dot-com boom--has grown into a large...

"In the 1930s, menthols were 3% of the smoking market but by the 1970s, they accounted for a quarter and climbing. What explains this rise? Moreover, how did it happen that early into the new millennium an estimated 75% of Black smokers, compared to 30% of white smokers, chose menthol brands? Pushing Cool covers the contentious history of the menthol cigarette. It is a story steeped in racial and gendered marketing and revealing of the "endless inventiveness...

Captains of Consciousness offers a historical look at the origins of the advertising industry and consumer society at the turn of the twentieth century. For this new edition Stuart Ewen, one of our foremost interpreters of popular culture, has written a new preface that considers the continuing influence of advertising and commercialism in contemporary life. Not limiting his critique strictly to consumers and the advertising culture that serves them,...

The numbers don't lie. In today's extraordinarily competitive environment, marketing to women is unequivocally the fastest track to sales growth, share dominance, and profit improvement. Women make 85 percent of all buying decisions, the majority of corporate purchasing agents and managers are women, and women entrepreneurs account for 70 percent of new business start-ups. This book presents a compelling business case why marketing professionals should...

In their rush to appeal to the 18 to 35 age group, marketers have largely ignored consumers in their 50s and beyond. In this compelling investigation, The 50-plus Market shows why marketers can no longer ignore the inevitable consequences of demographic and economic change.

Asserting that a history of shopping was, until recently, a history of women, Rachel Bowlby trains her eye on the evolution of the modern shopper. She uses a compelling blend of history, literary analysis, and cultural criticism to explore the rise of department stores and supermarkets of the United States, France, and Great Britain. Bowlby recalls the fascinating early days of these institutions. In the mid-nineteenth century, when department stores...

An evaluation of the sources of illogical decisions explores the reasons why irrational thought often overcomes level-headed practices, offering insight into the structural patterns that cause people to make the same mistakes repeatedly.