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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Consumer issues
"I wrote this book because I believe the road to financial freedom is a journey everyone can embark on. I wrote this book with you in mind. You, who perhaps have never been taught anything about how money works. You, who have been too intimidated to pick up and read a book about personal finance because you were too scared of the jargon. You, who want to #getyourmoneyright. I had you in mind when I wrote this book." – Mapalo Makhu If you are a millennial who is trying to figure out how money works, this book is for you. With simple, relatable and sometimes amusing stories about how to manage money on a day-to-day basis, you will learn how to change your mindset about money, get out of debt and stay debt-free, invest your money and, ultimately, live your best life. You’re Not Broke, You’re Pre-Rich will help you, the young professional, to think differently about money, while covering pertinent topics like black tax, savings, budgeting, emergency funds and financial scams, as well as estate and retirement planning (and why you should care right now!). It is the best class you never attended… in a book!
A revolution is taking place in the great marketplaces of the informal sector and it contains an unquantified scale and power as an economic engine and a way of life for the majority of our low income populations. The KasiNomic Revolution may still be a murmur in the streets, a grassroots economic groundswell, but it is the future of African economic activity. Kasi is the South African term for the township – a teeming conurbation of homes and businesses, entertainment venues and social meeting places. GG Alcock uses the term KasiNomics to describe the informal sectors of Africa, whether they are in the township, a rural marketplace, at a taxi rank or on a pavement in the shadow of skyscrapers. Brought up in a rural Zulu community, GG has learnt and shares the lessons of African culture, language, stick fighting, lifestyle and tribal politics, along with shared poverty and community, which have prepared him for accessing the great informal marketplaces of Africa. He is uniquely placed to uncover the extraordinary stories of kasi businesses which not only survive but excel, revealing a revolutionary entrepreneurship which is mostly invisible to the formal sector. KasiNomic Revolution is a story of kasi entrepreneurs on one side and, on the other, of great corporate successes and failures in the informal community. KasiNomic Revolution is at once a business book, and at the same time a deeply human book about the people and lives of rural and urban informal societies. KasiNomic Revolution is about the lessons of marketing, distribution, culture and modernity in an informal African world.
“Rebels And Rage is a critically important contribution to public discussion about #FeesMustFall”–Eusebius McKaiser Adam Habib, the most prominent and outspoken university official through the recent student protests, takes a characteristically frank view of the past three years on South Africa’s campuses in this new book. Habib charts the progress of the student protests that erupted on Wits University campus in late 2015 and raged for the better part of three years, drawing on his own intimate involvement and negotiation with the students, and also records university management and government responses to the events. He critically examines the student movement and individual student leaders who emerged under the banners #feesmustfall and #Rhodesmustfall, and debates how to achieve truly progressive social change in South Africa, on our campuses and off. This book is both an attempt at a historical account and a thoughtful reflection on the issues the protests kicked up, from the perspective not only of a high-ranking member of university management, but also Habib as political scientist with a background as an activist during the struggle against apartheid. Habib moves between reflecting on the events of the last three years on university campuses, and reimagining the future of South African higher education.
An essential guide for those dealing with the Cape Water Crisis and for general water saving in South and southern Africa, a notoriously water-scarce region. Three provinces in South Africa have been declared national disaster zones because of drought. The way we think about water needs to change, and fast. This is especially true for those of us who have running water and flush sanitation piped into our homes. For millions of South Africans, water is already a precious resource that costs toil to collect and fuel to heat. Our middle-class expectations that water will gush steaming from our dozens of indoor taps 24/7 are going to look as bizarre to future generations as the spectacle of Cleopatra bathing in asses’ milk. Our Roman-orgy relationship with water is over. This book will hopefully help to alleviate water panic and distress. A “can-do” compendium, it’s meant to be a guide, not prescriptive – not all solutions or tips are one-size-fits-all. Think of it as an ally in your fight to save water and part of your survival kit, along with the first-aid box; Valium for water-worriers.
Despite two-and-a-half decades of black majority rule after 1994, much of South African higher education in the area of humanities continues to embrace European models and paradigms. This is despite concepts such as Africanisation, indigenisation and decolonisation of the curriculum having become buzzwords, especially after the #MustFall campaigns, student-led protests from 2015. This book argues that, beyond the use of internally constructed strategies to foster curriculum transformation in South Africa, it is important to draw lessons from the curriculum transformation efforts of other African countries and African-American studies in the United States (US). The end of colonialism in Africa from the 1950s marked the most important era in curriculum transformation efforts in African higher education, evident in the rise of leading decolonial schools: the Ibadan School of History, the Dar es Salaam School of Political Economy and the Dakar School of Culture. These centres used rigorous research methods such as nationalist historiography and oral sources to challenge Eurocentric epistemologies. African-American studies emerged in the US from the 1920s to debunk notions of white superiority and challenge racist ideas and structures in international relations. The two important schools of this scholarship were the Atlanta School of Sociology and the Howard School of International Affairs.
What does consumption in the global south signify, and how are its complexities communicated in media discourses? Consumption, Media and the Global South presents original research examining key themes in the ways in which consumption in the global south - by elites, the middle classes, and the poor - is discursively constructed in media texts. With the global triumph of capitalist economies and neoliberal values, consumption is increasingly viewed by populations in the global south as both a right to which they are denied access, and once accessed as evidence of an improved life. The ways in which this debate plays out on the stage of the media is an important element of the picture. This book looks at the media representation of consumer culture in Africa, China, Brazil and India through case studies ranging from celebrity selfies, to travel websites, news reports and documentary film.
Susan Dobscha and the contributors in this Handbook provide a primer and resource for scholars and practitioners keen to develop or enhance their understanding of how gender permeates marketing decisions, consumer experiences, public policy initiatives, and market practices. This Handbook's main objective is to provide a roadmap through the complicated terrain of gender as it pertains to marketing and consumer behavior. The book also emphasizes that the study of gender is not restricted to certain theories, methods, or approaches. The unifying conclusion is that the study of gender is an important topic that has not received the attention it deserves within the marketing discipline; and attention to gender is crucial now more than ever. This book will give marketing scholars the guidance they need to incorporate the topic of gender into their research by highlighting the current conversations that are taking place in the field of marketing, and more importantly, by illuminating the gap in which more scholarship is necessary to increase our understanding of gender complexities.
Jackie Phamotse digs deep into the climate of law and policy in the social media landscape. After a David and Goliath social media legal battle that saw many take note tweeting about her, the result is a brace, thought-provoking and remarkably detailed social media guide and personal narrative. A first-hand approach on beating public humiliation and cyber victimization, Phamotse combines personal anecdotes, hard data and compelling research to cut through an unjust system governed by the rich and famous. The author directly addresses the question of power and obsession related to social media influencers. Written with equal doses of humor, compassion and wisdom, I Tweet What I Like is an inspiring call to action, celebrating diversity and human potential. I Tweet What I Like will inspire you!
Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Evaluating achievements, challenges and future avenues for research, this book explores how new dimensions of knowledge and practice contest, reshape and advance traditional understandings of sustainable consumption governance. By questioning existing academic discourse and advocating collective solutions, up-and-coming and established scholars help readers to understand diverse governance processes through a wide variety of topics. These range from consumption impacts, the circular and sharing economy, sustainable business models, consumer behaviour and work time, to understanding the role of new actors such as prosumers and city governments. The research agenda supports transformative system changes to a more sustainable society. Policy makers at international, national and local levels will benefit from the practical advice offered and forward-thinking policy suggestions. It will also be a timely read for scholars of sustainability studies, sociology of consumption, political economy and political ecology, human geography, wellbeing, environment studies and human ecology looking to gain a more well-rounded understanding of the topic.
Offering a novel view on morality in consumption, this book creatively examines how the seven deadly sins - pride, greed, lust, gluttony, envy, wrath, and sloth - are embodied in contemporary consumer society. Each of the seven chapters summarizes previous literature of the sins across disciplinary boundaries, and explores how consumption is likely to change in the future. The sins are presented as social, historical, cultural and political constructs, relying on the underlying assumptions of cultural consumer research. Each is elaborated on within particular consumption and marketing-related spheres, including advertising, retail environment, convenience food consumption, poverty, and ethical consumption. Consequently, the book provides a new way to understand contemporary consumer culture. Although beginning with the dark notions of sinfulness, the authors conclude with a hopeful tone for positive transformations in consumption. This fascinating book will be of significant interest to consumer researchers and post-graduate students studying the effects of consumption in social science disciplines, including marketing, business and sociology.
The field of material culture, while historically well established,
has recently enjoyed something of a renaissance. Methods once
dominated by Marxist- and commodity-oriented analyses and by the
study of objects as symbols are giving way to a more ethnographic
approach to artifacts. This orientation is the cornerstone of the
essays presented in "Material Cultures," A collection of case
studies which move from the domestic sphere to the global arena,
the volume includes examinations of the soundscape produced by home
radios, catalog shopping, the role of paper in the workplace, and
the relationship between the production and consumption of
Coca-Cola in Trinidad.
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Chinese advertising as an industry, a discourse and profession in China s search for modernity and cultural globalization. It compares and contrasts the advertising practices of Chinese advertising agencies and foreign advertising agencies, and Chinese brands and foreign brands, with a particular focus on the newest digital advertising practices in the post WTO era. Based on extensive interviews, participant observation, and a critical analysis of secondary data, Li offers an engaging analysis of the transformation of Chinese advertising in the past three decades in Post-Mao China. Drawing upon theories of political economy, media, and cultural studies, her analysis offers most significant insights in advertising and consumer culture as well as the economic, social, political, and cultural transformations in China. The book is essential for students and scholars of communication, media, cultural studies and international business, and all those interested in cultural globalization and China.
As the importance of corporate social responsibility grows, especially environmental responsibility, it is imperative to acknowledge the impact of the individual on a company's environmental performance. Given that individuals spend much of their day in the workplace, it is crucial to understand both their behaviours and the potential impact they can have on the company's environmental performance and the environment. Bringing together leading academics from various research fields, this Handbook examines the features and challenges within the area of employee pro-environmental behaviour. The Research Handbook on Employee Pro-Environmental Behaviour brings contributions that consolidate existing research in the field as well as adding new insights from organisational psychology, human resource management and social marketing. Drawing on studies from across the methodological spectrum, this Handbook covers a broad range of topics from the antecedents and consequences of employee pro-environmental behaviour to ways in which employers can encourage pro-environmental behaviour. This Handbook will be an invaluable tool for those engaged in research in employee environmental behaviour and sustainability. It will be especially useful for postgraduate students of environmental employee behaviour as well as environmental consultants and practitioners seeking to gain an understanding of employee behaviour.
Our seduction into beliefs in competition, scarcity, and acquisition are producing too many casualties. We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture. We think the free market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, more, more. Give it up. There is no such thing as customer satisfaction. We need a new narrative, a shift in our thinking and speaking. An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together. This satisfying way depends upon a neighborly covenant an agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood. The neighborly covenant has a different language than market-hype. It speaks instead in a sacred tongue. Authors Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture, with its constellations of empire and control. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitable a culture in which the social order produces enough for all. They ask you to consider this other kingdom. To participate in this modern exodus towards a modern community. To awaken its beginnings are all around us. An Other Kingdom outlines this journey to construct a future outside the systems world of solutions.
Now more than ever, we live in a society where we covet new and shiny things. Not only has consumption risen dramatically over the last 60 years, but we are damaging the environment at the same time. That is why buying quality and why Tara Button's Buy Me Once brand has such popular appeal. Tara Button has become a champion of a lifestyle called 'mindful curation' - a way of living in which we carefully choose each object in our lives, making sure we have the best, most classic, most pleasing and longest lasting - kettles, desks, pots & pans, scissors, coats and dresses, instead of surrounding ourselves with throwaway stuff and appliances with built-in obsolescence. Tara advocates a life that celebrates what lasts, what is classic and what really suits a person. There are 10 steps to master mindful curation and each is explained in this book, from understanding and using techniques to freeing yourself from external manipulations. Finding your purpose and priorities and identifying your core tastes and style. Learning how to let go of the superfluous and how to make wise choices going forwards. Mindful curation is a lifestyle choice that will make you happier, healthier and more fulfilled spiritual as well as helping save the planet.
Visual Branding pulls together analyses of logos, typeface, color, and spokes-characters to give a comprehensive account of the visual devices used in branding and advertising. The book places each avenue for visual branding within a rhetorical framework that explains what that device can accomplish for the brand. It lays out the available possibilities for constructing logos and distinguishes basic types along with examples of their use and evolution over time. Authors Edward McQuarrie and Barbara Phillips place visual branding within its historical context, covering the 120-year period since brand advertising first took modern form in the United States. Using copious real-life examples to illustrate how branding has evolved with the introduction of new technologies and opportunities, the book also critiques purely psychological perspectives on branding and explains how historical and rhetorical analyses can contribute new insights. This exploration of rhetoric as an alternative to economic and psychological perspectives in marketing, advertising, and consumer scholarship will be essential reading for students and scholars in graduate programs in marketing, advertising, and consumer psychology.
Comprehensive and accessible, this Companion offers a thorough investigation into both traditional and fresh topics in tourist behaviour and experience. Arranged chronologically, the chapters examine tourist experience from the very idea of a tourist visit to the aftermath of returning home. With contributions from leading experts and emerging scholars across the globe, this Companion establishes the importance of studying tourist behaviour. Innovative topics including packing and preparation, dreaming and longing for trips, and memory are explored in detail. The book incorporates a selection of illustrative key case studies to ensure that it is highly accessible and readable to a range of audiences, whilst ensuring academic rigour. It examines both positive and negative impacts of the tourist experience on tourists themselves and the communities and environments they visit. The concluding chapter includes a vision for how tourism and sustainable development goals can be integrated to maximise the benefits of tourist behaviour and experience. Students and researchers of tourism and sustainability will greatly benefit from the research directions and suggestions indicated in each chapter of the book. This timely Companion will also prove to be a valuable resource for stakeholders looking to improve and expand upon the tourist experience.
It's a new world online, where consumers can publish their writing and gain a public presence, even a mass audience. This book links together blogging, writing reviews for Yelp, and creating pinboards for Pinterest, all of which provide ordinary people the opportunity to display their tastes to strangers. Edward McQuarrie shows how the operation of taste in consumption has been changed by the Internet and offers a fresh perspective on why websites like Yelp and Pinterest have become so successful. Drawing on Bourdieu and Campbell to support his thesis, Edward McQuarrie uncovers what is new online by: * presenting a sociological perspective on what consumers do online and contrasting it to more familiar economic, psychological and ethnographic views * reinterpreting Bourdieu's idea of cultural capital to understand the success of fashion bloggers * showing how the meaning of taste and what it means to dress fashionably have changed with the Web * explaining why online reviews cannot be considered word-of-mouth and therefore cannot be understood using that idea * examining why Pinterest is so attractive to female consumers while relating Pinterest to Walter Benjamin's ideas about how mechanical reproduction changes the meaning of art. This book will be valuable to students and scholars interested in consumer research, marketing, and sociology, specifically those who seek an alternative to purely psychological and economic explanations for what consumers do online.
With the advent of liquid modernity, the society of producers is
transformed into a society of consumers. In this new consumer
society, individuals become simultaneously the promoters of
commodities and the commodities they promote. They are, at one and
the same time, the merchandise and the marketer, the goods and the
travelling salespeople. They all inhabit the same social space that
is customarily described by the term the market. The test they need to pass in order to acquire the social prizes they covet requires them to recast themselves as products capable of drawing attention to themselves. This subtle and pervasive transformation of consumers into commodities is the most important feature of the society of consumers. It is the hidden truth, the deepest and most closely guarded secret, of the consumer society in which we now live. In this new book Zygmunt Bauman examines the impact of
consumerist attitudes and patterns of conduct on various apparently
unconnected aspects of social life politics and democracy, social
divisions and stratification, communities and partnerships,
identity building, the production and use of knowledge, and value
preferences. The invasion and colonization of the web of human relations by the worldviews and behavioural patterns inspired and shaped by commodity markets, and the sources of resentment, dissent and occasional resistance to the occupying forces, are the central themes of this brilliant new book by one of the worlds most original and insightful social thinkers.
In today's world, numbers are in the ascendancy. Societies dominated by star ratings, scores, likes and lists are rapidly emerging, as data are collected on virtually every aspect of our lives. From annual university rankings, ratings agencies and fitness tracking technologies to our credit score and health status, everything and everybody is measured and evaluated. In this important new book, Steffen Mau offers a critical analysis of this increasingly pervasive phenomenon. While the original intention behind the drive to quantify may have been to build trust and transparency, Mau shows how metrics have in fact become a form of social conditioning. The ubiquitous language of ranking and scoring has changed profoundly our perception of value and status. What is more, through quantification, our capacity for competition and comparison has expanded significantly - we can now measure ourselves against others in practically every area. The rise of quantification has created and strengthened social hierarchies, transforming qualitative differences into quantitative inequalities that play a decisive role in shaping the life chances of individuals. This timely analysis of the pernicious impact of quantification will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, as well as anyone concerned by the cult of numbers and its impact on our lives and societies today.
'I'm 79 years old. So why on earth should I concern myself with speaking about youth?' This is the question with which renowned French philosopher Alain Badiou begins his passionate plea to the young. Today young people, at least in the West, are on the brink of a new world. With the decline of old traditions, they now face more choices than ever before. Yet powerful forces are pushing them in dangerous directions, into the vortex of consumerism or into reactive forms of traditionalism. This is a time when young people must be particularly attentive to the signs of the new and have the courage to venture forth and find out what they're capable of, without being constrained by the old prejudices and hierarchical ideas of the past. And if the aim of philosophy is to corrupt youth, as Socrates was accused of doing, this can mean only one thing: to help young people see that they don't have to go down the paths already mapped out for them, that they are not just condemned to obey social customs, that they can create something new and propose a different direction as regards the true life.
A sophisticated and subversive guide on how to make a difference ... one day at a time. You watch the news every night. You turn off your television set, disturbed by what you've seen and wondering what, if anything, you can do to make a difference. This is the book you need to get started. You may think that the issues which confront us are so huge, so complicated, so difficult to deal with that it's hard to believe anything we can do will have a meaningful impact but Michael Norton will prove you wrong. A lot of people doing a lot of little things could have a huge impact. This book has an idea-a-day for changing the world. Most are quite simple, can be done from home, and will not take much time. You can make a start whenever you like. Just open the book at today's date, read, enjoy, be inspired to action - and do something!
Drawing on the expertise of leading marketing scholars, this book provides managers and researchers with insights into the fundamentals of customer centricity and how firms can develop it. Customer centricity is not just about segmentation or short-term marketing tactics. Rather, it represents an organization-wide philosophy that focuses on the systematic and continuous alignment of the firm's internal architecture, strategy, capabilities, and offerings with external customers. This philosophy means that to be truly customer-centric, firms need to make multilevel transformations in internal architecture and organizational design, including leadership, metrics, incentives, structure, processes, and systems. These reorganizations are often accompanied by reshaped relational strategies, such as customer loyalty programs and marketing channel strategies that make customer centricity a reality. These changes also need to be backed by reconfigurations of brand and technological capabilities, as manifested in healthy customer-centric brands and in technology systems and skills that enable customer centricity at scale. The contributors to this book provide current thinking and cutting-edge research to further scholars' understanding of this key concept in marketing. Academics teaching or researching customer centricity, consultants implementing customer centricity and managers directly implementing customer centricity in their organizations will come to rely on the Handbook on Customer Centricity. Marketing associations, industry associations and local and university libraries will find the insights within offer critical reflection on the key features of customer centricity and the detailed roadmap to achieve it.
China's rapid economic growth has attracted much international attention in recent years, partly due to the potential purchasing power of the largest population in the world. This timely book examines general patterns of Chinese household demand for a variety of consumer goods such as food, durables, housing and health care and investigates the impact of economic and social factors on household consumption. China's Consumer Revolution focuses on comparisons between different consumer groups, such as rural versus urban and rich versus poor. Special attention is given to the impact of the newly affluent consumers, the so-called 'new rich'. This book also compares China with other countries in terms of household demand for consumer goods and sheds light on the prospects for international trade in this area. Drawing upon newly released household surveys, this book is the first of its kind and it will be of interest to both academic researchers and business advisors.
The FET College Series is designed to meet the needs of students and lecturers of the National Certificate Vocational qualification. For the student: Easy-to-understand language; Real-life examples; A "Key Word" feature for important subject words; A "Dictionary" feature for difficult words; A "Think about it" feature helps develop critical, creative and independent thinking; Workplace-oriented activities; and Chapter summaries that are useful for exam revision. For the lecturer: Chapter summaries that are cross-referenced to the text; Clearly identified outcomes and assessment standards; Assessment tasks and activities are aligned to the outcomes and assessment standards; and A CD Lecturer's Guide with model answers to assessments in the Student's Book, additional assessments with model answers and general reference material on teaching outcomes-based education. |
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