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Mass Affluence: Seven New Rules of Marketing to Today's Consumer by Robert Morris

Mass Affluence: Seven New Rules of Marketing to Today's Consumer
Paul Nunes and Brian Johnson
Harvard Business School Press

Nunes and Johnson help to increase our understanding of an especially powerful trend in contemporary marketing: creating or increasing demand for customized products or services which have been mass produced primarily for affluent consumers. This is a complicated subject in that, as recent research clearly indicates, many of these same products and services also appeal to less affluent consumers. This is precisely what Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske discuss in Trading Up: The New American Luxury in which they refer to ³products and services which possess higher levels of quality, taste, and [key word] aspiration than [other] goods in the [same] category but are not so expensive as to be out of reach...[trading up to products and services which] sell at much higher prices than conventional goods and in much higher volumes than traditional luxury goods and, as a result, have soared into previously uncharted territory high above the familiar price-volume demand curve." According to Nunes and Johnson, what is needed is ³an approach that considers the facts about mass affluence and delivers a comprehensive view of how companies can change their marketing strategies to capture the value created from greater consumer affluence. That is why we wrote this book; that¹s what we¹re attempting to provide.² Indeed they do, and with discipline and eloquence. Their material is carefully organized within four Parts: The New Rules of Positioning, The New Rules of Designing Offerings, The New Rules of Customer Reach, and then a final section which responds to the question ³What¹s Next?² Then in their Epilogue, Nunes and Johnson share their observations and suggestions with regard to ³Reenvisioning an Industry² (i.e. the jewelry and watch business), applying to it the ³seven new rules of mass marketing² previously introduced and discussed in the first chapter. New realities in each competitive marketplace do indeed require different (if not ³new²) strategies by which to respond to them. Nunes and Johnson offer several in this book, anchoring each within a context of relevant information and appropriate examples. Well-done!