Connecting With Consumers: Welcome (Back)

I know what you're thinking - do we really need another new marketing website?  Don't answer that question until you hear my explanation.  I already had a 'Connecting With Consumers' up and running at a website created by my local shaman and filled with interesting content by yours truly.  Imagine my chagrin when I visited the site the other day and found that it had crashed, with all content mysteriously vanished.  My shaman assisted me in locating the database and the content is still there, but the backup restore only restored the crashed version, so to Blogger I have come.  I've been able to salvage much content, so periodically, I will republish a modified version of some of my earlier posts from the original website, which included topics such as the following:

• teen influencers
• the Internet can be bad for you
• who do you trust on social media?
• the Klout score: a new influencer metric
• is it 'viral' or is it spreadable?
• if you can touch it, you'll pay more for it
• etc.

If you were a regular visitor to the website, welcome back, and if you weren't, hopefully you will become a regular here.  This site is not intended as a one-way monologue - that is exactly the type of marketing I regularly rail against - so this is a place for your content as well as my own.  Anything goes as long as it pertains to new marketing approaches, social media, marketing communications, and consumer behavior.  That's a lot.  If you want to know about great restaurants in Paris (and Beyond), this isn't the place; instead, you should visit my enormously popular blog, if I say so myself, Paris Restaurants and Beyond , written under my pseudonym, Mortstiff.

Who is AJ Kimmel?

Does anybody really know anybody?  No.  But that doesn't stop me from describing my credentials for maintaining this site as, not so humbly, a self-dubbed expert.  As a long-standing social psychologist and marketing professor at the French grande ecole ESCP Europe, I have published numerous research papers, book chapters, magazine articles, and academic books.  I've served as a visiting professor at Université Paris IX-Dauphine (Paris) and ESSEC Business School (Cergy-Pontoise, France), and have lectured on a short-term basis at TEC de Monterrey (Mexico), Universidad de San Andrés (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Turku School of Economics (Finland), and the University of Vaasa (Finland).

This website is intended to serve as a place for me to elaborate on the content of my last published book, Connecting With Consumers: Marketing for New Marketplace Realities (Oxford University Press, 2010), my soon-to-be-published book (November 2012), Psychological Foundations of Marketing (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2013), and the one in development, tentatively titled, People and Products: Design, Function, and Behavior.  It's been said that writing academic books is like tossing rose petals into the Grand Canyon, where they disappear soundlessly into the void.  But that quote pre-dates the Internet.  More about the books, and what people are saying about them, in a forthcoming post.

Just the Facts:
Born:  Baltimore, Maryland (USA)
Current Location:  Paris, France
Previous Locations:  Baltimore, Philadelphia, Bethlehem (PA), Boston
Nationalities:  American / French
LinkedIn 
Facebook: Aj Kimmel
Twitter: @parisrests
Occupations:  Marketing professor, author, restaurant critic, musician (guitar, some piano: jazz/blues, bossa nova, alternative)

This site will kick in on a regular basis sometime in September.  My shaman has suggested that I visit the canyons and deserts of the American southwest for physical and spiritual healing, as well as plenty of connecting with consumers-type inspiration.  So that should keep me occupied for the next couple of weeks.

It's good to be back.