Excellence isn’t about meeting the spec, it’s about setting the spec. It defines what the consumer sees as quality right this minute, and tomorrow, if you’re good, you’ll reset that expectation again
I see contemporary violence as a kind of sardonic response to the promise of consumer fulfilment in America.
To be able to design for the plus-sized consumer, for me, that's just beyond. It's a dream.
There is no substitute for an ecstatic consumer.
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
The only leverage the manufacturer can apply to the retailer is his relationship with the consumer. And the main element in profit growth is going to have to lie in making his brand more valuable to the retailer, through its being more valuable to the consumer. And that means his brand must be unique, it must have no adequate direct substitutes - because it is in this, after all, that value lies.
If the government was as afraid of disturbing the consumer as it is of disturbing business, this would be some democracy.
Who gets the risks? The risks are given to the consumer, the unsuspecting consumer and the poor work force. And who gets the benefits? The benefits are only for the corporations, for the money makers.
Government interference with the economic process represents a substitution of political for consumer objectives.
In the last century the practice of medicine has become no more than an adjunct to the pharmaceutical industry and the other aspects of the huge, powerful and immensely profitable health care industry. Medicine is no longer an independent profession. Doctors have become nothing more than a link connecting the pharmaceutical industry to the consumer.
In war, the army is not merely a pure consumer, but a negative producer.
What should a brand leader advertise?Brand leadership, of course. Leadership is the single most important motivating factor in consumer behavior.
I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It's done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.
Before long it will be the animals who do the dieting so that the ultimate consumer does not have to.
Regulation has gone astray. . . . Either because they have become captives of regulated industries or captains of outmoded administrative agencies, regulators all too often encourage or approve unreasonably high prices, inadequate service, and anticompetitive behavior. The cost of this regulation is always passed on to the consumer. And that cost is astronomical.
The crisis in Europe has affected the U. S. economy by acting as a drag on our exports, weighing on business and consumer confidence, and pressuring U. S. financial markets and institutions.
I'm part of the consumer culture. I was part of the baby boom generation. I have a car when I shouldn't, a couple of computers; I can't be anti-consumerist in that sense.
The power of consumer goods. . . has been engendered by the so-called liberal and progressive demands of freedom, and, by appropriating them, has emptied them of their meaning, and changed their nature.
I'll tell you what the fair tax does, it empowers the consumer and it lets people have their whole paycheck and it takes the power out of the hands of Congress and puts it in the hands of the consumer. That's power to the people.
It is easier to disrupt consumer finance. It is much harder to disrupt institutional finance, Wall Street. It is very heavily regulated, and because it is institutional finance, you are dealing with incumbents.