Market-Driven Thinking: Achieving Contextual Intelligence [Hardcover]

Arch G. Woodside (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0750679018 | ISBN-13: 978-0750679015 | Publication Date: February 17, 2005

Market-Driven Thinking provides a useful mental model and tools for learning about how executives and customers think within marketplace contexts. When the need to learn about how executives and customer think is recognized, a solution is usually implemented automatically, with no thought given to the relative worth of alternative methods to learn fill the need. Thus, the "dominant logics" (most often implemented methods) to learn about thinking are written surveys and focus group interviews--two research methods that that almost always fail to provide valid and useful answers on how and why executives and customers think the way they do.

Through descriptive research, MDT examines the actual thinking and actions by executives and customers related to making marketplace decisions. The book aims to achieve three objectives:
* Increase the reader's knowledge of the unconscious and conscious thinking processes of participants marketplace contexts
* Provide research tools useful for revealing the unconscious and conscious thinking processes of executives and customers
* Provide in-depth examples of these research tools in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer contexts

This book asks how we actually go about thinking, examining this process and its influences within the context of B2B and B2C marketplaces in developed nations.

* Looks at thought and choice in both B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) contexts
* Provides models and research tools to reveal thinking processes in marketplace decisions, illustrated by case studies and examples
* Challenges traditional research methods such as surveys and focus groups

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Arch Woodside has written an important book that should be read by the academic and marketing research community. Woodside provides detailed evidence that a great deal of consumer and business decision making is subconsciously driven and often highly automatic. The heavy reliance on surveys and focused groups by today's researchers is likely to provide little real understanding and predictability of behavior. He describes alternative methods for probing the forces that drive the choice behavior of consumers and businesspeople."
-- Philip Kotler, Northwestern University

"Arch Woodside, one of the most prolific and highly-cited marketing professors, has written an in-depth book on in-depth marketing research. This book will not appeal to those who enjoy Who Moved my Cheese or the Five-minute Manager. Rather, it is a thinking-person's book. Woodside draws sensible conclusions from over 300 books and articles. He melds academic research and practical considerations, using interesting examples. For example, consider the title of Chapter 5: 'Advancing Understanding of Customers' Means-end Chains: Eric Drinks Twelve Cans of Beer and Talks to Girls.'"
-- J. Scott Armstrong, Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School

Book Description

New insight on B2B and B2C thinking

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann (February 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750679018
• ISBN-13: 978-0750679015
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,998,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Market Driven Thinking for Executives & Consultants, August 16, 2005

By 

Suresh C. Sood "frequent reader" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Market-Driven Thinking: Achieving Contextual Intelligence (Hardcover)

Whilst this book will be read by many market researchers and academics it maybe the one book that helps customer-focused executives gain competitive advantage through contextual intelligence. Woodside is admirably qualified as a Professor of Marketing at Boston College and Editor of the Journal of Business Research to write on this subject matter. His book like no other helps to focus on thinking about thinking in B2C & B2B marketing. Rarely do we find authors who intimately understand both these disciplines. The core proposition revolves around the contention that very little will be learnt from consumers through focus groups and questionnaires that you didn't already know. In fact we know it's no good asking a consumer their intentions towards purchases and product/service usages because what they tell you will inevitably not be what they turn out to do. Probably if only for the reason that they don't even remember their own reasons and beliefs. For most this thinking is automatic as Woodside reminds us and culturally imprinted during an early age.
Companies are spending millions on trying to look inside the minds of customers using brain electrodes and MRI but this text will help you get there faster and with considerably less dollars! The book includes in depth analyses of examples such as a Jewish couple buying a German Car; a parent of a teenage son buying Barq's root beer; moving to/from Finland; and Eric's heavy consumption of beer on a Friday night to talk to girls. Each of these help to illustrate the unconscious as well as the conscious thinking that takes place in the minds of customers when buying or consuming products.
Imagine the choice of sifting through the analysis of 1000 questionnaires or 25 in depth interviews. Much if not all of what you learn from the thick descriptions that you get from the in-depth interviews will apply to all your customers. Executive MBA students will find such thinking refreshing along with their bosses.
Woodside shares in this book an arsenal of tools and examples to help surface the unconscious thinking that has remained elusive for so long using the traditional blunt marketing instruments e.g. questionnaires. An electronic copy of the text is now available which will help consultants to readily use some of the instruments such as the forced metaphor elicitation technique (FMET).
I look forward to using this text for teaching on the next Executive MBA class as well as helping some of my consulting clients achieve a competitive advantage.