Despite the time and money spent on market research, 60% to 80% of new offerings fail.

As many businesses are discovering, customer behavior doesn’t always make sense. That really shouldn’t be surprising. As recent studies have shown, people tend to base their decisions on more subconscious, emotional desires than on rational, practical choices. What’s more, customers aren’t able to tell you accurately why they do what they do. Combining recent research findings with real-world examples from his consulting practice on customer experience, William J. Cusick examines how the sub­con­scious part of the brain drives the decisions and behavior of every customer on a daily basis and introduces the concept of "the irrational customer." All Customers Are Irrational shows why businesses must change their approach to attracting and retaining customers, and proposes ways they can alter their strategies on everything from customer research, product design and website development to call center management, employee recruitment, and retail store layouts, by focusing on what customers are actually doing instead of what they’re saying. Honest, direct and insightful, All Customers Are Irrational will help businesses tap into the impulses and motivations that both attract and retain consumers for the long haul.

Engaging, enlightening, provocative, and sensational are the words people use to describe compelling experiences and these words also describe this extraordinary book by Bernd Schmitt. Moving beyond traditional "features-and-benefits" marketing, Schmitt presents a revolutionary approach to marketing for the branding and information age. Schmitt shows how managers can create holistic experiences for their customers through brands that provide sensory, affective, and creative associations as well as lifestyle marketing and social identity campaigns. In this masterful handbook of tools and techniques, Schmitt presents a battery of business cases to show how cutting-edge companies use "experience providers" such as visual identity, communication, product presence, Web sites, and service to create different types of customer experiences. To illustrate the essential concepts and frameworks of experiential marketing, Schmitt provides: SENSE cases on Nokia mobile phones, Hennessy cognac, and Procter & Gamble's Tide Mountain Fresh detergent; FEEL cases on Hallmark, Campbell's Soup, and Häagen Dazs Cafés in Asia, Europe, and the United States; THINK cases on Apple Computer's revival, Genesis ElderCare, and Siemens; ACT cases on Gillette's Mach3, the Milk Mustache campaign, and Martha Stewart Living; RELATE cases on Harley-Davidson, Tommy Hilfiger, and Wonderbra. Using the New Beetle and Sony as examples, Schmitt discusses the strategic and implementation intricacies of creating holistic experiences for customers. In an intriguing final chapter, he presents turn-around techniques such as "Objective: To Dream," "Send in the Iconoclasts," and "Quit the Bull," to show how traditional marketing firms can transform themselves into experience-oriented organizations. This book will forever change your perception of customers, marketing, and brands -- from Amtrak and Singapore Airlines to Herbal Essences products and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Five years and more than 100,000 copies after it was first published, it's hard to imagine anyone working in Web design who hasn't read Steve Krug's "instant classic" on Web usability, but people are still discovering it every day. In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters in the same style as the original: wry and entertaining, yet loaded with insights and practical advice for novice and veteran alike. Don't be surprised if it completely changes the way you think about Web design. Three New Chapters! Usability as common courtesy -- Why people really leave Web sites Web Accessibility, CSS, and you -- Making sites usable and accessible Help! My boss wants me to ______. -- Surviving executive design whims "I thought usability was the enemy of design until I read the first edition of this book. Don't Make Me Think! showed me how to put myself in the position of the person who uses my site. After reading it over a couple of hours and putting its ideas to work for the past five years, I can say it has done more to improve my abilities as a Web designer than any other book. In this second edition, Steve Krug adds essential ammunition for those whose bosses, clients, stakeholders, and marketing managers insist on doing the wrong thing. If you design, write, program, own, or manage Web sites, you must read this book." -- Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards

You have a God-given right to happiness, wealth, and success. In this dynamic book by Reverend Terry Cole-Whittaker, you’ll learn how to cast off the shackles of fear and false beliefs to discover your own inner path—the route to your inborn talents and limitless potential! Explore your deepest feelings with self-awareness strategies and consciousness-raising exercises. Learn how to cope with physical, mental, and spiritual problems, involving love, money, risk-taking, relationships, guilt, self-reliance, self-image, sexuality, and more. It’s all here in one astonishing book: the motivation, tools, and tactics to resolve personal conflicts—and change your life forever!

On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong—with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can—with our help—avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking and reveal how new technologies may actually hinder accurate diagnoses. How Doctors Think offers direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track. Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country’s best doctors, and his own experiences as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his own debilitating medical problems. How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.

No matter your field, industry, or specialty, as a leader you make a series of crucial decisions every single day. And the harsh truth is that the majority of decisions—no matter how good the intentions behind them—are mismanaged, resulting in a huge toll on organizations, the people they employ, and even the people they serve. So why is it so hard to make sound decisions? In Think Twice, now in paperback, Michael Mauboussin argues that we often fall victim to simplified mental routines that prevent us from coping with the complex realities inherent in important judgment calls. Yet these cognitive errors are preventable. In this engaging book, Mauboussin shows us how to recognize and avoid common mental missteps. These include misunderstanding cause-and-effect linkages, not considering enough alternative possibilities in making a decision, and relying too much on experts. Through vivid stories, the author presents memorable rules for avoiding each error and explains how to recognize when you should “think twice”—questioning your reasoning and adopting decision-making strategies that are far more effective, even if they seem counterintuitive. Armed with this awareness, you'll soon begin making sounder judgment calls that benefit (rather than hurt) your organization.