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Profiting from diversity

This edited book developed from a guest-editorship of the Journal of Brand Management for a special issue on personality and branding. The editor contributed five chapters to the book plus the introduction; 3 chapters address design issues. This book, accessible to general and business audiences, presents for the first time the issue of diversity within the design process and consumer choice, defining the benefits of diversity across a range of activities and organisations including on and offline design industries (see chapter 7, 9 and 10). The book provides public awareness (other than a conference paper) of the evidenced case that most free web design software is anchored in a masculine design paradigm, neglecting elements favoured by female audiences. The chapters also focus on processes to maximise the impact of designs on audiences of men and women and on the obstacles to achieving these; mostly relating to organisational behaviours and the pull of the ‘homogeneity principle’ in driving personal preferences and collective tastes (recruiting within their own mould). The other authors in the book come from the design, marketing, advertising, HR and HE industries (the latter including Professor Blythe of Westminster and Dr Gunn of Staffordshire University) and the success of the book led to a follow-up commission from Palgrave-Macmillan for a second book, ‘Lessons on Profiting from Diversity’. Contributors come from Europe and the US with an article by the author on Diversity and Web design and invited contributions from Dr Ian Dodds (former head, HR, ICI) and Thomas Jordan (ex Chairman & Chief Creative Officer, HY Connect Chicago & Milwaukee), arguing on the inappropriateness of most targeted advertising for females who constitute 80% of purchasers. The chapter on digital ‘communication and older groups – an Anglo-French perspective’ was subsequently revised and published in the Journal of International Consumer Marketing (2013).