Research Catalog

Title

Unthinking : the surprising forces behind what we buy / Harry Beckwith.

Author

Beckwith, Harry, 1949-

Publication

New York : Business Plus, 2011.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 325 pages; 20 cm

Summary

Overview: What do Howard Hughes and 50 Cent have in common, and what do they tell us about Americans and our desires? Why did Sean Connery stop wearing a toupee, and what does this tell us about American customers for any product? What one thing did the Beatles, Malcolm Gladwell and Nike all notice about Americans that helped them win us over? Which uniquely American traits may explain the plights of Krispy Kreme, Ford, and GM, and the risks faced by Starbuck's? Why, after every other plea failed, did "Click It or Ticket" get people to buy the idea of fastening their seat belts? To paraphrase Don Draper's character on the hit show Mad Men, "What do people want?" What is the new American psyche, and how do America's shrewdest marketers tap it? Drawing from dozens of disciplines, the internationally acclaimed marketing expert Harry Beckwith answers these questions with some surprising, even startling, truths and discoveries about what motivates us.

Subject

• Consumer behavior
• Consumption (Economics) > Psychological aspects
• Marketing > Psychological aspects
• Business and Management
• Consumers

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

• Deciding without thinking: the very strange case of Kobe Bryant -- Forces And Their Sources: -- 1: Our Childhoods: -- 1: Our love of play -- All play, some work -- eBay and our other toys -- Fridays at Maine South: forever young -- 2: Our love of surprise: -- Chasing pavements up "Solsbury Hill": how music gets us -- Riddles & rhymes & theming lines -- Issaquah's wizards of surprise -- 3: Our first love: stories: -- Story behind 60 minutes -- Great communicator's secret -- George Eliot's grandfather's wild ride -- J Peterman's fantasies -- Storytellers of Stumptown -- Moral of two stories: Nike and Scion -- 4: Little versus big: -- Moral of a hundred childhood stories -- Underdogs in the mist -- 2: Our Culture: -- 1: Me: the great individualists: -- What Howard Hughes and 50 cent showed us -- Getting Bonnies and Clydes to buckle up -- Solved mystery of the $70 watch -- Our wish to stand apart -- Tattoos, nightsters, and design-us-ourselves -- Rise and fall of Krispy Kreme -- Age of me: talking to us -- 2: We: the great togetherists: -- American Gothic, Chris Isaak, and Cast Away -- We are the world -- Tall, dark, and handsome? The lesson of American actors -- American way: trust none of us but all of us -- Following the crowds over the cliffs to the malls: 2008-2010 -- Hog's wonderful tale: CAAS -- Panera's invisible secret -- 3: Lovers of the familiar: -- What was in the Marshall Field's name? -- Fall, rise, and fall of The Mary Tyler Moore Show -- How the mop tops cleaned up -- Sunday with Christina Applegate -- How the new gets old: the ocean that stopped roaring -- GM and Ford: did their familiarity breed our contempt? -- 4: Eternal optimists: -- Hello, Norma Jeane -- Is irrational exuberance in Americans' DNA? -- Three masters at tapping our optimism --
• 3: Our Eyes: -- 1: Our need for beauty: -- Lessons from our keyboard -- Staring at a hand ax: our 400,000-year-old urge -- What Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast taught us -- 2: What is beautiful to us?: -- Circle and the cube: the shape of beauty -- New beautiful -- Going with the cognitive flow -- Masters of the new beautiful -- 3: Our eyes' sheer force: five studies: -- Curious case of Kensington High Street -- Golfers in red and goalies in black: how color changes the game -- Mustang that was really a bird -- Vitaminwater's sleight of hand -- Man who crushed the box -- Unthinking: the road ahead: -- 1: Looking back to our future -- 2: Eulogy and the six-inch nail: the startling power of expectations -- 3: Why wealthy runners limp: the new frugalistas -- 4: Cycling clown and wandering gorilla: our national attention deficit -- Summing up: -- Unthinking marketer's checklist -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- About the author.

ISBN

• 9780446564144 (hbk.)
• 0446564141 (hbk.)
• 9780446574273
• 0446574279

LCCN

2010017185

OCLC

• ocn548634238
• 548634238
• SCSB-1636019

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library