This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

Customers demystified! How you can move them to buy...buy more...and keep on buying!

• The truth about what customers really want, think, and feel

• The truth about keeping current customers happy—and loyal

• The truth about the newest trends and advances in consumer behavior

Simply the best thinking

THE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

This book reveals 50 bite-size, easy-to-use techniques for finding and keeping highly profitable customers

“Michael Solomon’s The Truth About What Customers Want contains great insights into consumer behavior and is a must-have tool for anyone working in a consumer-driven field. His 50 truths take the guesswork out of marketing intelligence and give insight into navigating today’s technology-driven world.”

Tim Dunphy, Senior Marketing Manager, Consumer Insights, Black & Decker

Introduction ix

Truth 1 Your customers want a relationship, not a one-night stand 1

Truth 2 Design it, and they will come 5

Truth 3 Sensory marketing–smells like profits 9

Truth 4 Pardon me, is that a breast in your Coke? 13

Truth 5 One man’s goose… 17

Truth 6 Throw ‘em a bone, and they’ll no longer roam 21

Truth 7 Stay in their minds–if you can 25

Truth 8 These are the good old days 29

Truth 9 Why ask why? Understand consumers’ motives to meet their needs 33

Truth 10 He who dies with the most toys wins 37

Truth 11 Your customers are looking for greener pastures 41

Truth 12 “Because I’m worth it” 45

Truth 13 Love me, love my avatar 49

Truth 14 You really are what you wear 53

Truth 15 Real men don’t eat quiche (but they do moisturize) 57

Truth 16 Girls just want to have fun 61

Truth 17 Queer eye for the spending guy 65

Truth 18 Yesterday’s chubby is today’s voluptuous 69

Truth 19 Men want to sleep with their cars 73

Truth 20 Your PC is trying to kill you 77

Truth 21 Birds of a feather buy together 81

Truth 22 Sell wine spritzers to squash players 85

Truth 23 They think your product sucks–but that’s not a bad thing 89

Truth 24 When to sell the steak, when to sell the sizzle 93

Truth 25 People are dumber than robots (lazier, too) 97

Truth 26 Your customers have your brand on the brain 101

Truth 27 Let their mouseclicks do the walking 105

Truth 28 Nothing shouts quality like leather from Poland 111

Truth 29 Consider investing in a drive-thru mortuary 115

Truth 30 Go to the Gemba 119

Truth 31 Your customers want to be like Mike (or someone like him) 123

Truth 32 Go tribal 127

Truth 33 People like to do their own thing–so long as it’s everyone else’s thing too 131

Truth 34 Catch a buzz 135

Truth 35 Go with the flow–get shopmobbed today 139

Truth 36 Find the market maven, and the rest is gravy 143

Truth 37 Hundreds of housewives can predict your company’s future 147

Truth 38 Know who wears the pants in the family 149

Truth 39 Youth is wasted on the young 153

Truth 40 Make millions on Millennials 157

Truth 41 Grownups don’t grow up anymore 161

Truth 42 Dollar stores make good cents 165

Truth 43 The rich are different 169

Truth 44 Out with the ketchup, in with the salsa 173

Truth 45 Look for fly-fishing born-again environmentalist jazz-loving Harry Potter freaks 177

Truth 46 Ronald McDonald is related to Luke Skywalker 181

Truth 47 Sign a caveman to endorse your product 185

Truth 48 Make your brand a fortress brand–and make mine a Guinness 189

Truth 49 Turn a (pet) rock into gold 193

Truth 50 Think globally, act locally 197

References 201

About the Author 209

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For marketers and readers to understand consumer behavior in the 21st century - 2009-05-04
Reviewer Rating:
The premise of this book is that the most effective way for intrepid marketers to promote their products and services is to understand consumer behavior. This book covers 50 timely and innovative marketing techniques for marketers to understand how consumers see, feel, and think when searching for and selecting their preferred products and services.

To Professor Solomon, how and why consumers flaunt to select different products and services are predicted on how they perceive and interpret values to be associated with the products and services that can satisfy their needs and desires. The perception and interpretation of values are influenced by interpersonal and intrapersonal stimulus together with other environmental factors. In looking at consumer behavior, Professor Solomon blends elements of psychology, social psychology, anthropology, economics, and culture to debunk some of the pervasive myths about how consumers see, feel, and think their needs and desires to be satisfied. In a technology-driven world, customers tend to voice their opinions products and brands on blogs and social networking sites (truth 23 and 35). Some of the opinions can be enormously influential because the process of consumer choices is partly influenced by what others say and do (truth 31 and 34) and consumers like to follow others (truth 33) due to fear of deviance and group pressure. Many of the purchase decisions consumers make might not be rational (truth 25). In terms of culture, consumers in different parts of the world have homogeneous tastes but varying ethics (truth 44), convention, and customs in different countries result in heterogeneous product preference (truth 50). Some of the contemporary consumer activities are very ritualistic (truth 48) and they resist product innovation. Novice consumers tend to rely on country-of-origin information to infer specific product attributes (truth 28). In terms of market segmentation, the rich are different in their motivation to consume. Nouveau riches flaunt their wealth to buy luxury products to provide visible evidence of their ability to afford luxury goods (truth 43) whereas old-money families identify products and services with their lifestyles or aesthetic preferences. Low-income families can be very profitable to marketers because consumers spend staples such as such as milk and tea at the same rate as average-income families (truth 42).

This book covers different successful and failure marketing cases and Professor Solomon bases on sound consumer research to provide marketers with grounding evidence on how to succeed in this dizzy market environment. For instance, truth 30 introduces Dell's Idea Storm and Host Foods' Gemba techniques to figure out how consumers experience products and services in order to lower level of customer dissatisfaction. Truth 1 analyses why Apple can be more successful than Sony in the digital music player market and how solid marketer-consumer relationships can trump technical prowess. This book is a must-have tool for marketers and readers who wants to understand consumer behavior in the 21st century.

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