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Likeonomics: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust, Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action

ISBN: 978-1-118-13753-6
224 pages
June 2012
US $24.95 Add to Cart

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Business & Finance


May 08, 2012
Hoboken, NJ

Likeability Has Become Today's New Currency

A candidate loses an election to someone with less experience, a shopper buys a more expensive brand, a job seeker loses a job to someone less qualified, an underdog company beats out big competitors on a deal. Why?

More than logic, the mysterious force of likeability determines our decisions from who we vote for, to who we hire, to what companies we do business with whether it’s Wal-Mart or Apple.

In LIKEONOMICS: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust, Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action, Rohit Bhargava argues that likeability has become today’s new currency, and he shows how any individual or organization can harness its power to build relationships, influence and win.

From Rockefeller’s 1915 image transformation from detached billionaire to legendary philanthropist, to Costco’s growth strategy based on unselfishness, Bhargava uncovers scores of entertaining stories of both likeable leaders (Oprah, Nelson Mandela) and leaders who succeed despite seeming to appear unlikeable (Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison).

Scouring studies from behavioral economics and psychology, Bhargava explores such fascinating topics as:

  • Why unexpected honesty about an inconvenient truth may be the strategy that will win this year’s election
  • How Occupy Wall Street is just one example of today’s Believability crisis
  • Why today’s new challenge is how to inspire or motivate people to believe
  • Why so many million dollar deals start on the golf course
  • What gets people to trust some organizations and individuals over others
  • Why faking likeability to sell junk won’t work
  • Why research proves we all need to be liked even if we say we don’t need to.
  • Why being likeable isn’t the same thing as being liked or being nice
  • Why networking has little to do with relationships
  • The story of why the term ROI was created in the 1970s and why likeability changes how we should measure and think about value (without a spreadsheet)

What explains these diverse phenomena are Truth, Relevance, Unselfishness, Simplicity and Timing (TRUST). With these 5 key principles that determine likeability, we can better understand why people behave the way they do so we can earn trust, inspire action and wield influence.

Spanning geopolitics to economics, and from the halls of power to our own everyday lives, LIKEONOMICS identifies today’s new currency and its power to change our fortunes.