Summary
Contents
Subject index
Understanding the Consumer brings together marketing theory and practice in a truly consumer-centric approach. It challenges the lip service usually paid to this concept and demonstrates that a fundamental understanding of the consumer is critical to the future of effective marketing. Drawing on cutting-edge developments in the literature it reconceptualizes how consumers respond and act in the marketplace with particular attention to: - relationships with suppliers, products and brands - their innovative, creative and resistant behaviour - the complexity and unpredictability of their consumption behaviour - their increasing need to get closer to production. The book challenges existing functionally driven marketing thinking and shows how a more holistic approach to the marketplace will drive better theory and practice. It combines a jargon-free approach to the subject with an illustration of the relevant theory using practical, topical examples from the marketplace as well as drawing on other business related disciplines including sociology and economics to support its arguments.
Whose Marketplace is it Anyway?
Whose Marketplace is it Anyway?
To be in the company of like-minded, life-styled consumers is to share the experience, as mass marketing ecstasy operates under the guise of individualism. You can have it your way, tailored to who you are. Be free. Be what you want to be, as long as you buy something – anything. Or, until the realization one day, that the longevity of belonging is compounded daily, revolving, slowly, enslaving the collective summation of one's life's work and hopes. This is good health in the United States of Free Trade Uber Alles. (Hand-Boniakowski, 2001)
Introduction
This chapter begins by again questioning why consumers would want or need to develop long-term relationships with companies. Examining a number of situations where the ...
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