My Top Five Review of 2010

2010

In the year that Amazon made my first book, Consumer.ology, one of its top ten best business books of 2010, I thought it would be good to compile my own top five list, with a consumer behaviour slant, of course.

One note: it's possible some of the books I mention were originally released prior to 2010. So this is based on my experience of having encountered them in that year.

Best Book of 2010

I've read several great books this year, including Nancy Duarte's Resonate and The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo, both great books on presenting. But my choice goes to Derren Brown's Confessions of a Conjurer. It's a curious book to read, darting off at tangents around the book's central theme of him performing a card trick, but for anyone interested in consumers he absolutely nails the role of the unconscious mind.

Best Film of 2010

Up in the Air (starring George Clooney) was one of those rare films that, having watched it, I could have easily have watched it immediately all over again. I think it was probably the dry humour and corporate backdrop that make this so enjoyable, but there is also a psychological theme bubbling constantly below the surface (like framing redundancy positively).

Best Brand of 2010

It would be easy to go with a brand that has made a big splash, but I'm looking at this differently. Ultimately brands are working best when they make themselves a habit; an unthinking, unquestioned automatic choice. An experience that we turn to without hesitation and without considering for a moment that a better alternative might exist. So I name Amazon as my brand of the year: they've made buying numerous items so easy that, if they have it, I'm buying it from them.

Best Customer Service of 2010

Customer service is a subject close to my heart. Frequently it occurs in such a way that you can take it for granted and that's fine (it's also one of the reasons that most customer satisfaction surveys are pointless, since they attempt to raise these unconscious experiences into consciousness but don't consider the context in which they take place). When I called Asda Mobile (a cell phone network operator) my expectations were low - I had what I believed was a fairly technical query and I don't associate Asda (part of Walmart) with any great level of expertise or customer service, just low prices. The phone menus were short, the answering is prompt (none of this, "We're experiencing unusually high demand..." rubbish that means they've alienated more customers than they anticipated) and the expertise immediately apparent. All this from a company that will sell you a mobile phone for £10 with £5 call credit!

Best Country of 2010

To be fair I haven't visited all the countries of the world in 2010 (not even very many of them) but of those that I have visited Brazil wins. I know it is a country that is working with major poverty issues, but the people I met were all delightfully friendly. On top of which there is a real thirst for knowledge and a tangible drive for progress. In developed countries the greater stakes of risking what you have can make organisations dogmatic and resistent to new ideas: we run the risk of being left behind by large countries like Brazil that have resources, resourceful people and a real hunger to succeed.

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© 2010 Philip Graves Consumer Behaviour Research Resource. All rights reserved.