Microcultures Understanding The Consumer Forces That Will Shape The Future Of Your Business

Consumer culture is becoming increasingly diverse. Markets are fragmenting. More bespoke solutions are stealing share from companies who innovate for the masses. Yet companies continue to use practices that assume the opposite, creating a fundamental disconnect between why a company does what it does, and why people buy from that company. Understanding what microcultures are and how they work can help counter this. This book will provide current and future leaders with a learnable, teachable, repeatable, and most importantly, scalable framework with which to drive true organizational transformation. It will help leaders get past the industry-led lens that they've unknowingly become accustomed to and explore opportunities through a purely consumer-led, empathic lens. It will enable you to create solutions for the influential microcultures today, that will shape the macrocultures that will impact your business tomorrow.

Consumer culture is becoming increasingly diverse. Markets are fragmenting. More bespoke solutions are stealing share from companies who innovate for the masses. Yet companies continue to use practices that assume the opposite, creating a fundamental disconnect between why a company does what it does, and why people buy from that company. Understanding what microcultures are and how they work can help counter this. This book will provide current and future leaders with a learnable, teachable, repeatable, and most importantly, scalable framework with which to drive true organizational transformation. It will help leaders get past the industry-led lens that they've unknowingly become accustomed to and explore opportunities through a purely consumer-led, empathic lens. It will enable you to create solutions for the influential microcultures today, that will shape the macrocultures that will impact your business tomorrow.

What happens when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture go away and everything becomes available to everyone? "The Long Tail" is a powerful new force in our economy: the rise of the niche. As the cost of reaching consumers drops dramatically, our markets are shifting from a one-size-fits-all model of mass appeal to one of unlimited variety for unique tastes. From supermarket shelves to advertising agencies, the ability to offer vast choice is changing everything, and causing us to rethink where our markets lie and how to get to them. Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it, from DVDs at Netflix to songs on iTunes to advertising on Google. However, this is not just a virtue of online marketplaces; it is an example of an entirely new economic model for business, one that is just beginning to show its power. After a century of obsessing over the few products at the head of the demand curve, the new economics of distribution allow us to turn our focus to the many more products in the tail, which collectively can create a new market as big as the one we already know. The Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance. New efficiencies in distribution, manufacturing, and marketing are essentially resetting the definition of what's commercially viable across the board. If the 20th century was about hits, the 21st will be equally about niches.

If you want your business to grow, you need to be able to rely on your ability to hire talent reliably and consistently. No talent pipeline? No growth, and no business. But your recruiting team is drowning (I asked them). They need help. Now, if you ask recruiters, they will ask for headcount. Or more technology. But more bodies and more tools won't solve the issue (though it will eat up your budget). What you need a is a better strategy. And that strategy is called employer branding.Employer branding is about understanding, distilling and communicating what your company is all about in order to attract all the talent you need. That will differentiate your company as a place where people will want to work, rather than a place they land because they didn't know better.If you've heard about employer branding in business magazines, it might seem like something only "big companies" can do. Something that requires a dedicated team, expensive platforms, or a bunch of consultants. That isn't true. If you understand where your brand comes from, and how to apply it, any company (especially yours) can hire better with it.And this book will teach you how to do all of that, and then some.In this book, you'll learn what employer branding really is, how to make a compelling argument internally to leadership that creates commitment, how to work with other teams and be creative in finding solutions. As a special bonus, we are including a handbook on how to work with recruiting teams. This hands-on workbook is chock full of examples, checklists, step-by-step instructions and even emails you can copy and paste to make things happen immediately.

Books on intercultural communication are rarely written with an intercultural readership in mind. In contrast, this multinational team of authors has put together an introduction to communicating across cultures that uses examples and case studies from around the world. The book further covers essential new topics, including international conflict, social networking, migration, and the effects technology and mass media play in the globalization of communication. Written to be accessible for international students too, this text situates communication theory in a truly global perspective. Each chapter brings to life the links between theory and practice and between the global and the local, introducing key theories and their practical applications. Along the way, you will be supported with first-rate learning resources, including: • theory corners with concise, boxed-out digests of key theoretical concepts • case illustrations putting the main points of each chapter into context • learning objectives, discussion questions, key terms and further reading framing each chapter and stimulating further discussion • a companion website containing resources for instructors, including multiple choice questions, presentation slides, exercises and activities, and teaching notes. This book will not merely guide you to success in your studies, but will teach you to become a more critical consumer of information and understand the influence of your own culture on how you view yourself and others.

Success in the Asian market is crucial to many firms. Yet many marketing strategies are based on a 'western' perspective of what consumers want and respond to. In Consumer Behaviour in Asia , the authors argue that Asian culture is so fundamentally different to Western Culture that existing consumer behaviour concepts cannot be applied to Asian consumers. In this book the authors outline and explain these differences and put forward modifications to many well-known consumer behaviour concepts. Consumer Behaviour in Asia shows how firms need to modify their marketing strategies in such areas as segmentation, positioning and the marketing mix in order to successfully penetrate these markets.

"Introduction to Sociology 2e adheres to the scope and sequence of a typical, one-semester introductory sociology course. It offers comprehensive coverage of core concepts, foundational scholars, and emerging theories, which are supported by a wealth of engaging learning materials. The textbook presents detailed section reviews with rich questions, discussions that help students apply their knowledge, and features that draw learners into the discipline in meaningful ways. The second edition retains the book's conceptual organization, aligning to most courses, and has been significantly updated to reflect the latest research and provide examples most relevant to today's students. In order to help instructors transition to the revised version, the 2e changes are described within the preface."--Website of text.