Objective Prosperity
This is not a book of simple answers to all of the world's problems. There are certainly enough “expert opinions” on the planet to go around. Instead, this book provides a method for you to arrive at your own answers not driven by upcoming elections and TV ratings. Throughout the text, there will be a number of explanations, recommendations, and examples to identify solutions to improve your own prosperity and to evaluate the policies that seek to improve the economy around you.
You Are Not Alone
This book is different than my previous 39 books and research reports. Rather than topics in marketing and economics, this book contains lessons of life beginning with my 20 hour birth as a still-born baby and many minutes without oxygen. It describes lessons learned from child labor on a farm, how to start a career, and how to get a good education without spending much money or incurring student debt.
While receiving a Ph.D. at Northwestern University, I also learned the contribution of Bayesian statistics to the question, “Does God exist?” The answer changed the direction of my life. So did teaching 65,000 students at Ohio State in addition to many more students at Stanford and universities in Canada and Africa and over 3,000 executive seminars. Years of research and teaching in 39 countries on six continents and my publications also led to serving on boards of public and private companies.
One of those boards led to a new phase in my teaching career—tutor for hundreds of men receiving their General Education Degree (GED) in a federal prison. You will find lessons learned from that Y2K experience and the decades that followed in my newest book. You may be pleased to know that it is also my shortest book, one that can be read in a few hours but perhaps with lessons that last many years.
Saving America
Roger’s Recent Book – Saving America
This book describes how small and medium-sized firms grow large, creating jobs for the economy while building fortunes for families and investors. It analyzes key reasons for the success of stellar entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Sam Walton and Les Wexner, female entrepreneurs such as Sarah Blakely and Cheryl Krueger, and small firms just beginning pathways to fortunes. The book defines three key concepts that fuel entrepreneurial growth and profits, and shows why entrepreneurs are more important to reducing poverty and
creating middle-class prosperity and employment than large public corporations, government programs or the Federal Reserve.
Brands That Rock
How do you build brands that rock—creating high profits, increased market share and customers who are such “fans” their friends to the concert for your brand? You will find answers here, with plenty of practical applications learned from legendary Rock and Roll super-stars, including the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, and Elton John. Why are the strategies of Walmart like those of KISS? How is the success of branding superstar Victoria’s Secret built on attributes like both Madonna and Neil Diamond? You will learn that here, including a valuable table showing how to convert customers into fans. If you like rock and roll, “get down” with Brands that Rock!
Consumer Behavior
This book is an encyclopedia of knowledge why customers buy and how to get them to buy from you. Found in businesses and universities in multiple languages throughout the world, tens of thousands of students and business analysts have used this book to master principles how to research and understand consumer behavior and behavioral economics. Using words and diagrams, the Consumer Decision Process (CDP) model analyzes problem (need) recognition, search (including traditional and digital media), evaluation of alternatives, choice or purchase processes, post-purchase evaluation and divestment. A comprehensive approach to understanding what causes customer behavior—knowledge as important for industrial marketers and non-profit organizations (B-2-B) as organizations primarily selling to consumers. All customer behavior starts with consumer behavior.
From Mind to Market: Reinventing the Retail Supply Chain
This best-selling, ground-breaking book describes how to convert supply chains into demand chains—starting with the minds of consumers. The innovative process introduced in this book has been used by major retail chains—in both print and audio versions– to educate managers how to re-construct and re-invent supplier partnerships, resulting in increased market share, greater productivity and higher profits. The book includes chapters explaining how to shift marketing functions to their most efficient level, how to focus on the most profitable market segments and how to optimize the critically-important logistics function. Includes introduction by Les Wexner, Chairman and Founder of Limited Brands.
Customers Rule! Why the E-Commerce Honeymoon is over and where Winning Businesses Go From Here
What really works with e-commerce and what does not? This is a seminal analysis of how bricks-and-mortar businesses use digital methods to increase profits and enlarge market share. Using metrics from catalog and web-based marketing, this book defines problems such as “the last mile of logistics” and how to overcome them. “One of the few authors to get it right,” was the comment of one reviewer comparing this book to others in the e-commerce honeymoon forecasting that e-commerce would dominate all businesses. This book includes a succinct, but clear description of why consumer behavior is the ultimate determinant of success of digital marketing methods and the dangers of chasing the trend, but ignoring the substance of customer-dominated marketing.
From the Edge of the World: Global Lessons for Personal and Professional Prosperity
“Roger Blackwell has always been a no-nonsense professor and businessman who tells it like it is and this is his format for a no-nonsense look at how the world really works.” —Dave Thomas, founder, Wendy’s International. Those words echo true today as much as when they were written. This book is a travelogue for business leaders and economists—and more fun to read! The book explains why Dutch principles have created prosperity for three hundred years—even at firms such as Walmart. The chapter on Singapore explains why it is one of the most successful economies in the world, with per capital GDP $10,000 higher than the United States. The book Why Nations Fail (see “recommended books”) includes recent data about Botswana, described in From the Edge of the World as the fastest growing economy in the world for nearly fifty years. You will learn why some people prosper and others do not, with principles you can apply to your own career or organization.
Consumer Driven Healthcare
The United States does not have a health care system; it has a sickness care system and now the system itself is sick. The costs of health care drain over 17% of goods and services produced in the U.S., 50% more than other industrialized nations. With benefit costs now over $30,000 per employee and increasing rapidly, this crisis not only threatens American jobs, but the ability of U.S. companies to compete in the global marketplace. Consumer Driven Health Care is informative and valuable reading for executives who want to know more about reducing the high costs of health care, consumers unhappy with the growing proportion of their paychecks going to health insurance premiums and co-pays, and health care providers and policy makers looking for a detailed, easy-to-understand explanation of ""America’s Multi-Trillion Dollar Crisis.""
