Useful books

This week I've been seraching for good books to get some fresh thoughts and ideas for the Wiklund case and for consumer behaviour overall. I found three good ones and I haven't read them far yet but after some pages and overviews I can share some ideas that they've given to mee.

Martin Lindstrom: Buyology - the truth and lies about why we buy

This book was one of the books presented to us on the first lectures. Basically it's a very interesting view to the whole marketing field focusing on the idea of neuromarketing. If we add the ability to scan the brain as a  marketing research tool to understand the actual brain simulations, how would everything change? Does sex actually sell and what impulses really make our brain go "I WANT THAT" ?
So far the book's been really surprising and made me reconsider the presumptions I have about what's effective marketing and what sells. The writer himself has worked his whole life with branding and marketing overall and has wide experience in consumer behaviour. The book is based on results of the largest neuromarketing study ever conducted so it's really something unprecedented and compeltely new, maybe the most revolutionizing new prospect there has been in marketing for quite a while. Read this, people!

Kit Yarrow: Decoding the new consumer mind - how and why we shop and buy

I found this gem from school's e-library and been reading it side by side with the previous one. I wanted to find something fresh and interesting and since this has been published this year it pretty much is as fresh as it gets. It focuses a lot on how the new information and technology based society is forming our habits as people and as consumers. How the whole brain funcion is trained and moulded into a competely different setting than what it was just 20 years ago, and most importantly, how can this be exploited in creating and marketing new products and services. The author presents for example five new psychological shifts in customers - how our technology use has changed our psychology:

1. Innovation optimism

2. Consumer empowerment

3. Faster ways of thinking

4. Symbol power

5. New ways of connecting

If our brain function and psychology is changing as dramatically as presented here, the marketing and the whole b2c-trade should change in phase with it.

Michael Solomon et al. : Consumer behaviour - A European perspective

This is my course book on one of the courses I'm having right now. Whereas the other two books are really innovative and focusing on new findings and ways of thinking, this is a really traditional one containing all the traditional main theories and facts behind consumer behaviour. After studying this book and the lecture course I'm sure I'll be a lot wiser about how we behave as customers and how the information can be used in marketing. A quick scan through the contents showed that this one has all the basics and hopefully we can use this during the Wiklund assignement for important background information.

I'll be writing more about these books and the ideas they've given me as I go on in the reading process!