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Title: The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do
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Manufacturer: Broadway
List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $7.51
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| Customer Reviews: |
| The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Broadway Outstaanding |
| A truly outstanding book with grand insights into the human being and the different cultures. |
| The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Broadway Irritating! |
The tile said The Culture Code, an ingenious way to understand why people around the world live and buy as they do. Sounded good, or so I thought.
Clotaire Rapaille takes a one-sided view of American culture in this book. The way the French do things is sophisticated and intelligent. Americans are seen as childish, puritanical, and fat. He tells us fat is an American culture code for checking out of the rat race. Money is the American code for proof.
I like the French. I do. I'm British and I hold no grudge about that invasion back in 1066. It's all water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned. But this book can only annoy an American audience (of which I am now one). The book doesn't give much practical advice on how to do business with Americans. His revelations are obvious to any American. The code for America is dream. America is optimistic. What a revelation! Europe is pessimistic. It seems too simplistic. Americans connect love and food. America is either prudish or vulgar when it comes to sex. The French apparently have a much more balanced attitude. There might be some truth to this but the book reeks of pomposity.
Here is the sort of thing he writes:
"Americans end a meal by saying, `I'm full.' The French end a meal by saying, `That was delicious.'"
You get the idea. We feed like animals, they dine. However, there is something to this. Restaurants generally give you more food than you need to satisfy your hunger.
But we do need to be sensitive to cultural mores. Culture is neither static nor homogeneous. And that is America's strength. America is dynamic and unclassifiable. Almost anything you can say about it can be true. And what is an American? There are quite a few French-Americans.
But the need for such a book is apparent. We do need to do our homework. The Chevy Nova (won't go) wasn't a good name in the Spanish-speaking market. The decision to name the car for that market was "off code."
I'm not an emotional person but my copy satisfyingly went in the trash.
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| The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Broadway Not what I thought --- BETTER! |
I think, as someone who is taking a job overseas this year, I was looking for something to help with the culture shock. What Culture Code gave me was a look into the fundamental differences in the way we look at the same things. I was inspired... surprised... and have shared it with others. Enjoy!
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| The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Broadway culturally exposed |
| Using base methodology of "image conceptualization, recognition, evaluation" as his technique to evaluate and understand cultural phenomena Rapaille has fairly accurately observed and assessed what drives the American culture in its life style choices and buying habits. As one who lived as an expatriate, I can agree that is often easier for an "outsider" to more truthfully assess a culture than one of its own. Rapaille has understood and exposed a lot of what it means to be American, for better or worse. |
| The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Broadway If other cultures interest you |
| You'll find this book very interesting if you enjoy reading about other cultures. It's easy reading and you'll find out how other cultures live and how they buy. For instance, Americans buy automobiles according to how the vehicle makes them feel and Germans buy automobiles with engineering in mind.....Great for conversation. |
| The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Broadway Product Description |
Why are people around the world so very different? What makes us live, buy, even love as we do? The answers are in the codes. In The Culture Code, internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world.
Rapaille’s breakthrough notion is that we acquire a silent system of codes as we grow up within our culture. These codes—the Culture Code—are what make us American, or German, or French, and they invisibly shape how we behave in our personal lives, even when we are completely unaware of our motives. What’s more, we can learn to crack the codes that guide our actions and achieve new understanding of why we do the things we do.
Rapaille has used the Culture Code to help Chrysler build the PT Cruiser—the most successful American car launch in recent memory. He has used it to help Procter & Gamble design its advertising campaign for Folger’s coffee – one of the longest lasting and most successful campaigns in the annals of advertising. He has used it to help companies as diverse as GE, AT&T, Boeing, Honda, Kellogg, and L’Oréal improve their bottom line at home and overseas. And now, in The Culture Code, he uses it to reveal why Americans act distinctly like Americans, and what makes us different from the world around us.
In The Culture Code, Dr. Rapaille decodes two dozen of our most fundamental archetypes—ranging from sex to money to health to America itself—to give us “a new set of glasses” with which to view our actions and motivations. Why are we so often disillusioned by love? Why is fat a solution rather than a problem? Why do we reject the notion of perfection? Why is fast food in our lives to stay? The answers are in the Codes.
Understanding the Codes gives us unprecedented freedom over our lives. It lets us do business in dramatically new ways. And it finally explains why people around the world really are different, and reveals the hidden clues to understanding us all. |
