Book Review #1 "The X and Y of Buy"
I recently signed up with publisher Thomas Nelson to review books for free! Its a great deal, you get a free book, and all you have to do is blog about it and post a review of the book on a retail website. I love Amazon, so I post on there. Here is my first review, on "The X and Y of Buy" by Elizabeth Pace. I wish I could have posted a more positive review, but I had to be honest.... sorry!
I tend to gravitate to books on sales (Why We Buy, The Call of the Mall, etc.), thus was immediately intrigued upon being recommended “The X and Y of Buy.” Overall, I found it an interesting read, though seriously flawed in many respects. In order to highlight the positives, there is a need to point out the negatives.
Cons:
- Consistent usage of gender stereotypes. This bothered me, though I anticipated some of this (look at the title of the book), but was still surprised by how consistently the author painted character traits/ differing personalities solely by gender differentiation. The author also supported such stereotypes using scientific research, oftentimes without citations of any sort. Considering all the statements the author suggests are scientific fact, one would expect a footnote section ten times larger than the five pages that exist. And those footnotes would be from accredited scientific journals.
- Sales book or neuro-psychology primer? Consistent with my first con, the book is advertised as a book on marketing and sales, there is nowhere near enough on those subjects and way too much neuro-psychology. I looked several times at the author biography to double-check if they had a PhD in Biology or Neuro-psych with all the “scientific research” they include to back up their points. I would have gleaned more information were personal stories/ experiences were noted and shared. As other reviewers have noted, after a while you are left with the sense that anyone with access to Google could have written much of the book.
Pros:
- After acknowledging the cons listed above, I looked for insightful nuggets to take away from my experience. It was refreshing to read the author’s descriptions of how people think/ process information differently, and the impact those differences have on sales and marketing. (Again, cognitively shifting the emphases for such differences away from gender and towards personality types).
- The “taking it to the street” practical applications were interesting (again…). These sections were what I was hoping the entirety of the book would be about. If in a time crunch, just skip the body of the chapters and read these summaries.
If you take the material with a grain of salt (or several) and feel free to disagree with the author when they make those blanket generalizations, there is information in the book that can help you learn more about how people think.
Cons:
- Consistent usage of gender stereotypes. This bothered me, though I anticipated some of this (look at the title of the book), but was still surprised by how consistently the author painted character traits/ differing personalities solely by gender differentiation. The author also supported such stereotypes using scientific research, oftentimes without citations of any sort. Considering all the statements the author suggests are scientific fact, one would expect a footnote section ten times larger than the five pages that exist. And those footnotes would be from accredited scientific journals.
- Sales book or neuro-psychology primer? Consistent with my first con, the book is advertised as a book on marketing and sales, there is nowhere near enough on those subjects and way too much neuro-psychology. I looked several times at the author biography to double-check if they had a PhD in Biology or Neuro-psych with all the “scientific research” they include to back up their points. I would have gleaned more information were personal stories/ experiences were noted and shared. As other reviewers have noted, after a while you are left with the sense that anyone with access to Google could have written much of the book.
Pros:
- After acknowledging the cons listed above, I looked for insightful nuggets to take away from my experience. It was refreshing to read the author’s descriptions of how people think/ process information differently, and the impact those differences have on sales and marketing. (Again, cognitively shifting the emphases for such differences away from gender and towards personality types).
- The “taking it to the street” practical applications were interesting (again…). These sections were what I was hoping the entirety of the book would be about. If in a time crunch, just skip the body of the chapters and read these summaries.
If you take the material with a grain of salt (or several) and feel free to disagree with the author when they make those blanket generalizations, there is information in the book that can help you learn more about how people think.
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