Market-research

This book started with some basic management concepts and marketing concepts such as organizational structures to give you basic ideas on an organization. Then, in the latter chapters, the author introduced the concept of ideal market-based enterprise and brought in the ways to become a market-based enterprise. The Listen-Learn-Lead approach suggested by the author is practical and easy to understand. I love that approach personally since it would be useful for my future career.

As the author possess over 30 years executive experience, you can definitely share his experience in this book. As in this cyber year, the market trend always keep changing, thus being market-oriented is essential to maintain competitive. This book is worth to read if you want your organization to be market-oriented.

From Chris Macrae wcbn007@easynet.co.uk Join 100 marketing opinion leaders from 15 countries currently discussing this book's vital lessons for organisations with a marketing future. This is where we have got to as of March97... Which are your favourite books or other texts which mesh marketing and learning organisation principles together in such a way that a marketing practitioner will add "learning organisation" constructs to his/her tool kit without worrying whether other people would classify them as marketing work? Two votes for Vince Barabba's book "Meeting of the Minds" come from Tim Ambler ("excellent book and his approach has inspired some quite sophisticated market research in GM") and myself. Below, an abstracted historical summary of how and why marketing stopped working in many Western companies of the 70s/80s. Finally, my concluding questions are tabled......Words are directly abstracted from Barabba except some linking paragraphs of mine in parentheses: Page 43 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MARKETING CONCEPT The late 50s and the 1960s, a period of economic expansion, were the golden age of marketing. It was a period in which (US) companies like General Electric, Pilsbury, and Procter & Gamble were guided by executives who actively integrated marketing into every phase of the business. Peter Drucker writing at about the same time, likewise identified the central role of marketing and innovation. To him, marketing encompassed the whole business and meant more than selling products and services or creating a marketing department. "Marketing" he wrote "is so basic that ...it is not a specialised activity at all. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is from the customer's point of view." The marketing concept held the highground in management thinking for almost two decades, and these were great years for American business. Personal incomes and markets expanded dramatically between the 1950s and 1970." (Then marketing as organisation-wide learning and customer-oriented innovation process stopped in thw West... until the Japanese woke all would-be world class businesses up. The Japanese lapped up marketing as an inter-disciplinary concept with tools as TQM, Quality Function Deployment, Hoshin Planning, as recent revelations of knowledge-creation being an essentially Japanese corporate advantage (Nonaka et al, The Knowledge Creating Company), and target market costing as an organisation-wide process which the Japanese use (instead of accountants' measures) so that an informing consensus integrates all decisions for new product business development (Robin Cooper, When Lean Enterprises Collide)) (page 47) One example of a Japanese management technique now widely adopted in North America is Total Quality Management (TQM), a customer-focused philosophy and strategy that seeks continuous improvement in business processes through the application of analytical tools and teamwork. Quality is considered from the customer's viewpoint , and quality demands constant sensitivity to customer demands and perceptions to market information. According to one author's description of TQM , "The voice of the customer is integrated into each process and system in the organisation...(and) meeting and exceeding customer demands is the ultimate objective". Essentially, the many Japanese management techniques that found their way to North America and Europe in the 1980s shared two common understandings: first, that all business activities represent processes, and second, that these processes have only one purpose, to satisfy customers. The methodologies that underlie Japanese management techniques are at their core ways of fine-tuning and continually improving those processes to the point that they contain nothing that does not create value and satistaction for the customer. (BUT if you have for a generation of management lost the marketing concept, your organisation may need to unlearn and then do a lot of new learning just to get back to scratch. As Chris Argyris has explained - in Organisational Learning 2 - enormous commitment is needed to reverse short-term culture and short-termist measurements and the political structure these condition -all this at a time when companies really do need to reflect on today's extraordinary strategy change drivers. Is this too much hard work for many old board directors to (have the will to) get down too?...) page 37: "In its traditional form, the functionally organised enterprise, in which command and control emanates from the top, is ill suited to the demands of the modern marketing place. It separates decision making (at the top) from doing (within the functions). It links decision-makers and customers by means of a single, narrow, and inadequate channel - the marketing function. Worse still, it provides few opportunities to move knowledge and knowhow between the functions. allowing what we call organisational knowledge. We may find the best of both worlds if we redesign the decision-making process from the command-and-control tradition of the past so that it draws from and links the functional silos in which information and knowledge ultimately reside. This process will require trust between functions, the sharing of information and knowledge, and enterprise-wide knowledge creation. CONCLUDING QUESTIONS Three sets of questions and one speculation to conclude are: Q1) Apart from Japan, are all countries-headquartered companies starting from an equal handicap in this race to learn marketing organisation-wide? I don't think so. In the US quality prizes like Baldrige woke companies up to process methods and information exchanges, books like Barabba's get written, and "learning organisation" is increasingly a serious topic on many CEO's minds. I don't think it is yet in eg the UK, a country where our lack of appreciation of the intangi But maybe you'd like to vote on countries you know best? Q2) More importantly, if an organisation has built up two decades of inertias as marketing dumb and over-deparmentalised, what approaches do people suggest to help a company iteratively and urgently experiment with becoming a new marketing learning organisation? Q3) Would you agree that the great irony is that - with the new information era - we are entering the fastest wealth producing era mankind has known? But one in which countries, regions and companies will not all gain? The lion's share will go to those who direct value added learning with Unique Organisation Purpose aligned by the quality/trust of marketing relationships (whose feed-forward measurement is far removed from past performance transactions that accountants and old economists count on)? I would speculate that for many big Western organisations, the only chance of catching up with world class value adding networks will be to establish a virtual university of interdisciplinary management practices with a marketing soul. We know that the Japanese have some leading tools/approaches for this sort of curriculum, and to work any of them properly practitioners need to exchange experiences. Brand Chartering is an action learning approach they might also try out; there must be many other experimental approaches worth trying too. But perhaps most importantly, shouldn't we be constructing websites as experience-hubs in marketing learning organisation where practioners can : -download training modules from the internet on to company intranets? -exchange in e-mail groups with other practioners creative ideas on how to plant these interdisciplinary tools in their companies so that organisation-wide learning takes off? Chris Macrae, editor of Brand Chartering Handbook & MELNET www.brad.ac.uk/branding/ E-mail me at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk

I've just re-read this book and think more highly of it now than I did previously. Larry Downes & Chunka Mui define a "killer application" as "a new good or service that establishes an entirely new category and, by being first, dominates it, returning several hundred percent on the initial investment." As they explain, the primary forces at work in spawning today's "killer apps" are both technological and economic in nature. "The technology we are concerned with is the transformation of information into digital form, where it can be manipulated by computers and transmitted by networks." Digital strategies are needed to achieve market dominance.

The co-authors divide their book into three parts: Digital Strategy, Designing the Killer App, and Unleashing the Killer App. In Part I, there is a brief discussion of one "killer app" in the Middle Ages, the stirrup, which added mounted cavalry to the battle equation. The "lowly stirrup" played a singular role in rearranging the political, social, and economic structure of medieval Europe.

In The Lever of Riches, Joel Mokyr identifies countless other "killer apps" throughout history such as paved streets and sewerage disposal; the lever, wedge, and screw; the heavy plow and three-field system; the weight-driven mechanical clock; spectacles; the printing press; the steam engine; the telegraph; the bicycle; ...each of which also had a truly profound impact.

To repeat, Larry Downes & Chunka Mui concern themselves with the technology of transforming information into digital form. Thus in Part I, they examine the "killer app", explain what they call "the new economics", and then shift their attention to the nature of a digital strategy. They dully acknowledge the disruptive power of "killer apps" which can suddenly destroy the equilibrium of what appeared to be stable systems of commerce and government. For them, business change now originates with digital technology; more specifically, with "killer apps." Strategies are needed to manage (to the extent possible) their impact to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. These strategies must accommodate three new forces: digitization, globalization, and deregulation. The "dirty little secret" to which Gary Hamel has referred is that the strategy industry "doesn't have any theory of strategy creation." The success of any digital strategy may well be the result of what Hamel calls "lucky foresight." Downes & Mui seem to agree with Hamel while offering, in Part II, what they refer to as "a few rules of thumb." They suggest three stages of "killer app" design and carefully explain each. They identify 12 specific principles on which to base the design process. In Part III, they shift their attention to "Unleashing the Killer App" and correctly stress the importance of communication, one which "speaks with the language of ideas, scenarios, options, and what-ifs."

In Chapter 7, the reader's attention is directed to two major corporations, McDonald's and VEBA AG, which illustrate digital strategy in practice. These are, in effect, mini-case studies. It is important to point out, however, that effective digital strategies are not the sole province of major corporations such as these. A "killer app" can quickly increase or reduce the size of any company. Consider the fact that a single dry goods store in Kemmerer (Wyoming) can become the J.C. Penney Company which, in turn, now struggles (with mixed results) to compete successfully with a company whose own history can be traced back to the Walton 5&10 in Bentonville (Arkansas). Downes & Mui assert that "Developing digital strategy...requires components of both problem-pull and technology-push...operating together in a well-functioning organization [in which] the process becomes not only circular but indistinguishable...in a pragmatic, indeed opportunistic, response to the new digital environment."

In the final chapter of their brilliant analysis, Downes & Mui suggest that cyberspace "is fueled by free computing power and free bandwidth...and free software." Consequently, "the social conditions that resulted are raw, and the nature of the business climate, by necessity, less developed." As with The Golden Rule dry goods store (in 1902) and then the Walton 5&10 (in 1950), today's companies must seek out new areas of opportunity and start doing business there. "Those who make the transformation by developing a digital strategy are choosing to engage the frontier on its own terms, just as their counterparts from Europe did in settling the New World."

Larry Downes & Chunka Mui have outlined the process of digital strategy, explained the twelve design principles, and described the experiences of organizations that are transforming themselves so that they can unleash "killer apps." Which companies will conquer the "frontier", whatever and wherever it may be? Which companies will not? In the Digital Marketplace, we won't have to wait very long for the answers. Probably in what seems to be about five minutes. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point.

The stirrup in the Medieval Ages, the Model T automobile in the Industrial Age, and PCs, electronic funds transfer, word processors and Web search engines in the Information Age are all examples of "killer apps" - new goods or services that establish entirely new categories and reshape existing power structures.

"Like the Hindu god Shiva, they are both regenerative and destructive," explain consultants Larry Downes and Chunka Mui in their highly compelling digital strategy manual, "Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance" (1998 Harvard Business School Press). The book is chock full of case studies of companies who are either riding the Internet wave to fortune and fame - or have been sidelined and marginalised.

The new forces of our age are globalisation, digitisation and deregulation. Traditional corporate strategies are getting replaced by digital strategies, which are more dynamic, intuitive, and participatory.

The Internet (along with its intra-organisational manifestation, the Intranet) has firmly occupied centre stage in the global marketspace thanks to three fundamental laws: Moore's law, Metcalfe's law, and Coase's law. Moore's law maintains that processing power doubles every 18 months while costs hold constant. According to Metcalfe's law, the utility of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users.

And economist Ronald Coase observes that as markets become more efficient, there is an increasing organisational trend towards downsizing, outsourcing, and decentralisation ("The Law of Diminishing Firms"). Killer apps are now the result of these three principles operating together in cyberspace. To these three laws, the authors add one more: the Law of Disruption, accounting for the disruption caused by exponentially-changing technology on incrementally-changing social systems.

The Internet is taking every advantage of every new advance in communications, interface design, computer architecture and information sharing software via a combination of Moore's and Metcalfe's laws. The explosive growth of the multimedia Internet is redefining business-to-consumer and business-to-business services across the globe; for instance, it enables suppliers and distributors - and even prospective mates - to directly find one another across international borders, sidestepping many intermediaries.

"The Web is currently tearing apart the financial services and telecom industries, among others, inspiring civil wars there much as the steam engine did years ago," the authors explain.

Via killer apps, cutting edge companies in the Internet age are transforming their businesses from producers of commodity goods to providers of sophisticated services. Companies like Dell Computers, Cisco Systems, Federal Express, Charles Schwab and Amazon.com are successfully re-aligning relationships with and among consumers via Internet technologies and building unprecedented brand loyalty in cyberspace.

The Web is creating "shock waves in information components of every industry," so much so that digital technologies are not just enablers of change, but disrupters of current operating models.

Digital age strategies need not be the preserve only of IT companies - Nike, for instance, is progressively divorcing itself from production, distribution, advertising, and even design; most of these operations are being outsourced. "We decided we're a sports company, not just a shoe company," CEO Phil Knight has remarked. "What Nike has kept for itself is brand management, the relentless development of the Nike world view, the Nike lifestyle, and the Nike experience," the authors explain.

To be able to develop digital strategies, a company must improve its ability to spot, internalise, shape and exploit killer apps, the authors claim. Organisations have to be become more nimble, open, fun, and take on a new incarnation.

Traditional organisations need to focus on three key areas of change for digital strategy in the network age: re-shaping the organisational environment, building new connections with business partners and customers, and re-defining their core structure and strategy.

Re-shaping the business environment can take place via features like mass customisation, user empowerment, and online communities. For instance, Federal Express is reaping tens of millions of dollars of savings in customer service costs thanks to enhanced features on its Web site such as letting customers print their own airbills, complete with bar code.

Experimenting with digital strategies may even involve "cannibalisation" of one's own products and services, a fear shared by many print publications initially venturing online. The key, the authors claim, is to use the online channel as an entry point for higher-value services, such as searchable and customisable financial data feeds. Otherwise, a competitor may cannibalise your products. "Jumpstart new markets with the credibility and goodwill you already have," the authors urge.

Notable success stories in this regard include U.S. electronics parts distributor Marshall Industries, which seemingly cannibalised its own business by setting up a Web site which put its suppliers and buyers directly in touch with one another. But in effect, it created a new global channel - it now receives 2,000 inquiries a day from 52 countries via its Web site. Thus inspired, Marshall Industries is now getting into the Extranet services business for the electronics industry.

Examples of successful online personalisation services include PointCast, the Wall Street Journal's Personal Journal, Intuit's Quicken, and Hallmark Greeting Cards' online reminder service for special anniversaries.

"The closer you can get to activities about which the community feels passionate, the greater the potential value you can capture," the authors claim (much on the lines of John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong's earlier bestseller, "Net Gain"). Sites like PlumbNet and Barter Systems are tapping into "Do It Yourself" trends - the growing desire for people to take charge of activities themselves and save money.

Successful examples of virtual community building include online gaming, ESPN SportsZone's fantasy leagues, online dating services, and America Online's People Connection service and Buddy Lists. "Brand management in cyberspace requires real engagement with customers," the authors say. Customer service is being replaced by "customer intimacy."

Forming partnerships and building new organisational connections are key in the digital age. These can cover the full gamut from strategic alliances and joint ventures to equity stakes and outright ownership - well exemplified by Microsoft's buying out of WebTV, and its 25 percent stake in cable TV giant ComCast.

Managing innovation as portfolio management using risk analysis calls for new skills, leadership, and will, the authors explain. For instance, while it was in the era of first generation spreadsheets, Lotus spun off a separate company called Iris to develop the Notes product.

Another source of new ideas and fresh inspiration can come from hiring young people, and tapping into the skillsets and aptitudes of children (probably better addressed in other books like "Growing Up Digital" by Dan Tapscott).

Acquiring the killer app mindset requires a strong degree of technology alignment. "Organisations cannot unleash killer apps until they can harness their own business and technology expertise," the authors say.

For this, organisations need to invest in IT and skillset-building. This can be aided by fostering an e-mail culture and reliable tools for document sharing and collaboration. "It becomes impossible to determine where the business stops and the technology starts," the authors explain, citing examples like Amazon.com and Cisco.

Companies also need to constantly innovate. The online mall MCI Marketplace died a slow death because it became stale; cybermalls will need to continually add new features and create new shopping experiences on the Web.

"The organisation with the healthiest environment for identifying, nurturing and redefining killer apps, whether their own or those invented by others (perhaps for entirely different purposes), is the organisation that will translate its digital strategy into market dominance," the authors conclude.

In sum, this is a conceptually breathtaking overview of the context within which the Web paradigm is changing business the way we know it. An online companion and an online discussion group would have helped extend the shelf-life of this book.

The major principles of this module deal with ideas and methods to increase one's ability to focus on higher levels of information that began as low level mechanization concerned with bits and bytes and how they transform applications into working models. The whole scope of what and how these electronic machinated applications interface with a larger picture is understood as a disruption at best to harmonious interactions within the whole IT and corporate application structure. (Downes, Mui, 2003).

Between the middleware applications and the physical interfaces that bring us computing connectivity, there are numerous processing's, intermingled and costly, which brings us to today's computing networking.

It is the affordability equation, enhanced through Moore's implications and understanding of outcomes such as higher quality, less costly interfaces, and devices that help design interfaces, simply. The ease to operate, at blazing speeds, brought about by higher computing power, and its ideas of mass proliferation have its beginnings with Metcalfe's Law. The economics of sheer computing power, its application infrastructure, is in fact, a Coasean theory of that economics.

Because of the profundity of Moore's Law, and its ability to affect not only the realm of computing, but also industrial, automotive, and aerospace as well, that law, is the 'killer app'.

Killer apps are not just related to new application coded language transformed into cyberware, but ideas, equations, formulas, and entirely new directional thought patterns that lead to unfilled frontier process exploration. The round wheel opened the imagination and innovation of a pre-industrialized world. Watches, clocks, automobiles, gears, rollers, and most things round come from nature, our first architect, but the formula and prescience of the 'wheel', became the 'killer app' within the science of generations to come. The 'wheels' ability to survive as an innovation proves the point, that 'killer apps' must have profound and lasting disruptive affects of visionary quality to an industry or industries. (c)Lyle K'ang, 2003).

Good overview book for consumer market research, but weak in the areas of industrial and medical/pharmaceutical market research, where tactics and objectives are much different.

Coverage of traditional methods is sound and thorough, and the internet market research techniques tend to stick to the conversions from traditional methods. Viral marketing and monitoring are over-looked, probably because few people call such activities market research. Overall, the book is generally well-written.

Two criticisms: With time and budget such a large part of the entire market research field, the book has few numbers in that regard, making it seem less practical than it actually is. Second, the examples start at clearly defined objectives. While it discusses the importance of clear objectives, it conveys it in an academic and simplified manner, not addressing the analytics of turning a vague forecast or planning need into a clear study objective.

As a general market research and survey reference, we at Documus give it good marks.

The book is extensive. It will serve as a valuable reference for business people who do not specialize in research; but it is a must read for Marketing People.

Following the book you will be able to create and execute a complete marketing research program. I have used this book in a number of projects and the results were pleasing.

Do not read this book unless you intend to use it. It is a difficult book for people who have average business knowledge.

The book has very methodically explained the various aspects of MR. Problem methodology and questionnaire design has been dealt with exhaustively. Data analysis is also very good.

Overall, I would say this book is not the best. I have not thoroughly reviewed fieldworking textbooks, but I found this one to be a little dry, and I am not a fan of the author either. There is something about her voice that is irking. The only plus that I would give this book is that there are a lot of examples of different ways to write a fieldworking paper. As a person who has never written one, I found these helpful because I was able to compare my voice and style to those of the authors' students. If you can find this in another book, however, go with the other one. This book is just okay.

I have used this book for some time with a range of undergraduates at UC Berkeley. Several of my colleagues use it as well. It is a very helpful, practical introduction to real-world research, the most useful book we have found on the subject. It helps students and researchers understand the processes of interviewing, making field notes, and collecting and recording data. The style is very accessible. Students who have found it useful for other classes include those studying sociology, anthropology, fiction, advanced nonfiction, and ethnic studies.

Read in combination with some complex books of ethnography, including Clifford Geertz, for example, it can provide the structure to help students understand the concept of fieldwork.

I highly recommend taking a look at this one.

Americans buy more salsa than ketchup. This factoid illustrates well the fact that Latino culture and its products are becoming increasingly popular in today's American consumer sphere. In her book, Latinos Inc., The Making and Marketing of a People, Arlene Davila examines the processes and dynamics behind the marketing of Latino products and culture, and how the marketing practices associated with Latino culture are affecting the Latino population of America.

Davila frames the academic context into which this book fits. While there is a glut of marketing and advertising studies in general, ones pertaining specifically to Hispanics are noticeably lacking. She pompously generalizes the ones that do exist as "uncritical," stating that one after another they either assert Latino's "coming of age" or commodification in American society. It is in this framework that she fixes her more critical eye on the Latino marketing industry.

Davila does an excellent job of articulating the plight of Latino and other minority consumers. She details how advertising has marginalized Latinos and other minorities by relegating them to the status of "the other." This builds and reinforces racial hierarchies that serve to keep Latinos lock in an inferior status. While contemplating these divisions, Davila wonders aloud "whether the United States will ever truly be one nation." She emphasizes the oxymoron of a segmented and divided United States with her mantra of Latinos as a "nation within a nation."

Davila highlights the contradiction between the interests of advertisers and consumers in advertising. For advertisers, advertisements are a vehicle to make money. For consumers, they are a vehicle to represent themselves and have their voice heard by a larger audience. These interests often come into conflict with one another as prudent advertising sometimes calls for the misrepresentation or overgeneralization of Latino communities while prudent representation requires accuracy and destruction, not the building and reinforcement, of racial and ethnic stereotypes. Almost without fail, the interests of the advertising agencies win out, as they are the creators of the advertisements themselves.

Davila indeed has a sharply honed eye for criticism. In Latinos Inc. she is very adept at pointing out the wrongs of situations. By the end of the book, Davila has built a long list of these wrongs. However, she offers precious little in the way of solutions. For instance, in her lamentations about our divided nation, she points out what hasn't worked as a force uniting Latinos with the rest of the population (citizenship or consumership), but doesn't speculate about what could work to unit the entire population. Another example is her adamant denunciation of both advertiser's generalization and segmentation of the Latino population. She derides both of these advertising techniques and destructive and counter-productive for Latinos, yet offers nothing as an alternative to these approaches. She leaves the reader wondering if there is a happy median between generalization and segmentation on the representation spectrum, or of if the entire is invalid and an entirely different advertising paradigm is necessary. She sees bad advertising, but what is good advertising?

Davila's examination of the Latino marketing industry is Latino-specific, to be sure, but at times it could just as easily pertain to the advertising industry in general. As such, at these instances the book struggles to distinguish itself from the rest of the glut of advertising studies. For instance, she tries to that the Hispanic marketing industry is "uniquely revealing" because Hispanic advertising's need to "empathize, charm, appeal, or shock a potential consumer in thirty or sixty seconds entail a great deal of simplification and typification...bring to the surface the tropes, images, and discourses that have become widespread and generalized representations of Hispanidad." It seems that this observation can apply to any of the hundreds of generalized groups represented in advertising.

While Davila convincingly argues that the New York's Latino high diversity makes the city an appropriate focus of her study, readers may be left wondering if her study would not have been better served with a wider geographical focus. It is possible that Davila arrived at some erroneous conclusions based on this limited focus. She speaks of the political disenfranchisement of the Latino community, but in fact there are some unacknowledged segments of the Latino population outside of New York that wield considerable political influence. For instance, in 1998 in Texas, 20% of its U.S. House representatives and 19% of the representatives to its state house and are Latino (Marin, 1999 and State of Texas, 2001). George Bush enlisted the help of the Latino advertising agency Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar, & Associates to propel him to a landslide 1998 Texas gubernatorial and subsequent 2000 U.S. presidential victories (the agency helped Bush garner 49% of the Latino vote in Florida) (ABC News.com, 2001 and Hart, 2000). For comparison, Bush won 18% if the Latino vote in New York (ABC News.com, 2001). The Latino political climate of New York is not indicative of that elsewhere in the entire U.S. Nonetheless, Davilia relies heavily on examples from New York Lation political scene to back up her arguments. At the least, the counter evidence calls these arguments into question.

To Davila's credit, she successfully accomplishes her stated goal of examining the nuanced dynamics behind the Latino marketing industry. While informative and painstakingly researched, the book is neither entertaining nor exceptionally useful. Aside from the chapter on consumer focus group discussions, she doesn't do a good job of relating the very consumer-oriented subject, the dynamics and processes behind advertising practices, to the consumers themselves. This failed link leaves the book with very little relevance to anyone outside of the advertising industry.

Why are Latinos at the center of a pop-culture phenomenon in the United States? Arlene Davila argues it is not do to their rapid population growth, but the growth of their media image thanks to aggressive marketing and commercial advertising. Her second book to explore the commodification of Hispanic cultures, Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People, is a detailed analysis of the abundant images targeting Latino populations in the U.S., the worldviews of the executives who manufacture those images, and the clients who buy them. Davila seeks to explore the mechanics by which a population, situated in the midst of economic globalization, becomes a market.

Davila conducts her fieldwork in several New York City ad agencies managed by Latinos and whose principal interest is to target Latinos. Her technique includes interviews with executives and creatives, and participant observation at national marketing conventions. There is also some use of focus groups to examine the folk perceptions of these propagated images among individuals of different Hispanic nationalities.

The author questions in whose interest these commercials are being made, for ultimately they serve the ad client and not Latinidad. She concludes "the commercial representation of U.S. Latinos has sustained particular hierarchies of representation that are indicative of wider dynamics affecting contemporary Latino cultural politics" (p.20). Her work is sweeping in its scope, hence my review is limited to the construction of "Latino" and "Hispanic" as representative identities and linking it to the critiques she aims at the executives and creatives of the ad agencies. This not a book where audience response plays a large role, rather it is one that gives extensive coverage to the ad agencies themselves, and the knowledges they use to construct mass produced images.

The categories of "Hispanic" and "Latino" are invented and by definition presuppose some intrinsic difference, relative to Anglos. This intrinsic difference is what makes ethnic-specific marketing plausible and it is how ad agencies pitch their services to clients. Thus, the notion of a pan-Latino identity-that individuals from all Spanish speaking countries have a shared culture-originated in the United States from the Cuban intellectuals who so dominate the Latino advertising industry. Further complicating the matter, the category of "Latino" is constantly in flux, as is illustrated by a current trend towards ads that opt for whiter versions of Latinidad, reconfiguring Latino traditions within the borders of the American middle-class.

Davila shows there is a propensity for ads and TV programming to use unaccented, "good" Spanish, and never that increasingly common mixture of English vocabulary and Spanish language-Spanglish. Such observations form the cornerstone of Davila's critique: ad agency executives or creatives who claim to have made some sort of liberating political accomplishment are immediately compromised due to the manufactured nature of the category which supposedly indexes the population they are trying to represent.

While on the one hand, the book does speak to scholars of the broad genre of interdisciplinary studies, it is definitely aimed at Latino advertising executives and marketing insiders as well. In this text several biting critiques leveled at the preconceptions of the advertisers and their clients are present, and here I will address three of the most prominent. The first is that the growing influence of Hispanic music and food on American popular culture represents a "coming of age" (p.3) for Latino populations. Davila indicates that this equates economic empowerment with political enfranchisement without the transference of any actual power, only the illusion of the potential for that power.

Second is the belief that through marketing and advertising it is possible to right old wrongs by correcting the stereotypes of the past (e.g. the Frito Bandito). In fact, Davila argues, the stereotypes are either repackaged in a slightly permutated form or simply replaced with new kinds of stereotypes, rather than removed all together. They may be no longer dirty, lazy thieves, but are instead emotional, religious, and familial. This sort of lose-lose scenario is especially grim considering the effects it has on U.S. born Latinos, who are typically much more likely to absorb and internalize commercialized identities than are recent immigrants, thereby making themselves more responsive to future exposure to the same forms.

Third, she notes the overall failure of the advertising world relative to the truly great potential it has as a political tool, especially considering the many agency executives and creatives she met sympathetic to her agenda. For all their self-affirmations, they have not actually effected any positive changes and meanwhile, real minority access to media outlets is falling precipitously.

Latinos Inc. succeeds in broadening the discourse on race in the U.S. as well as interjecting anthropological methodology into a realm dominated by interdisciplinary scholars. This work illustrates the great promise and possibilities of media studies, a genre by no means lacking in interesting and prolific output, but one which is sorely in need of a coherent methodology that goes beyond simply reading the "texts" of popular culture. I am thinking here of figures such as Neil Postman, Michael Parenti, and John Fiske, all of whom are fascinating in their own right and with important things to say, yet their works do not have the rigor of Davila's

This book is a very useful, if broad, guidebook for entering into global markets - sort of an International Business 101. It covers all of the necessary bases for planning to take a business overseas. It's heavy on exambles from the Middle East, but will help anyone develop a market entry strategy on the highest level for any foreign country.

I believe The meaning of the international Market research of the future will be the transnational activities of the new civilization whose new thinking age change will be on the way the people will think about how the new generation will create the new way to think about the transformation of the new ideas to become a new deseigner of the begining of the new civilization and the new validation of the international market

Published just before the dot com era peaked, this book may be considered exquisitely bad timing by some. Thumbing through its pages reveals what now feels like a bygone era. The endless, uninterrupted climb upwards, with the first mover advantage imperative still driving the reader (presumably), coupled with Internet usage that at the time was doubling every quarter, and hence multiplying 16 fold every year.

Alas, though the author and the rest of the world did not know it at the time, those bandwidth figures were fake. Cobbled together by WorldCom to justify its stock price. But it fooled so many.

Still, some of the book's ideas may still come to fruition, just a few years later than expected.

I was really hoping that this book would give me some real insights into Asian consumer behavior. Perhaps I hoped too much. Like what the other reviewers mentioned, it lacked examples, particularly on the effects of the 97' crisis. I would be the first to admit that good consumer behaviour books are hard to come by, but I really expected more - what this book does is actually give you some background on the asian culture and fit in bits of consumer behaviour terms in between. A summary would probably be: Asians thinks more about status than self actualizing themselves; and of course less "individualist" whatever that means. No real pearl in this book.

As an experienced manager in Asian markets I see this book being not without its merits. However, it is based more on hear-say than actual management experiences in Asia! For the novice to Asia it gives a good overview of what might have shaped consumer behavior. It falls short of acknowledging that Asian consumers quickly assume new roles outside of their traditional attitudes, more geared towards Western-style consumer motivation. Market realities quickly outlive the authors' assumptions already! Maybe the authors try too hard to construct fundamental differences, where there aren't. Looking closer, much of that are rather local facets of doing business in a global marketplace.

This is a very interesting and informative book. The author really understands Asia. The author identifies that Asia is not a homogeneous market right from the start. It is vastly different from one region to the next. The author also understands that no one strategy can be applied to Asia. Strategies must be adapted as Asia is just too complex. This alone distinguishes the book from the rest. It does not rely on wholesale application of theories developed in the West on the situation in Asia. It saw what Asia truly is.

The book took great pains to explain why Asian consumer behaviour will be different from consumer behaviour in the West. It explored the many facets of culture like religion, language and others. The author explains that because of the differences in culture, the behaviour of Asians will also be different from the West.

Relevant examples were cited throughout the book. These explained the differences between Asian and Western consumer behaviour clearly. At the end of the book, there are also 3 case studies where the reader can think about the theories covered in the book and understand the issues in Asian consumer behaviour better. However, a weakness is that the case studies are all in a Japanese context.

I find this book too academic for one without any fundamental knowledge of consumer behaviour. This book will be appreciated by those who have some idea of consumer behaviour and is working in the marketing department for Asia. I believe this group of readers will find this book very informative and useful in their course of work.

I finally give up on finishing this book. It talk about strategic anticipation which sounded greate however it never said anything about how or what to do.

I hesitated to order this book, after seeing some of the reviews posted on this site. However, this has been an confirmation for me that these reviewers aren't qualified to review. This is a good, useful book-- I enjoyed it. I am a trustworthy source, and take my advice... this book is pretty good.

This wonderfully written book goes deep in strategic marketing research, and even broader. It talks about many important things having to do with market research and tells you exactly what you can do. I recommend this book to everyone. I was interested in reading the book after I saw that Clairmont College rated it as one of the top 50 business books of the year, and rightfully so.
The first three reviews I read disturbed me and I firmly believe that the reviewers did not read the book at all. Enjoy this great book.