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1 Introduction

Business’s greatest customer opportunities and risks are
determined by how well customers are managed through
economic cycles. Despite the fact that 65% of a business’s
existence is managing customers in hyper-competitive
economic transitions, it is predominated by reactionary
approaches and guesswork.

Whether it is how consumers change their buying behav-
iors or how businesses change their spending behavior
through economic cycles and transitions, they both are pre-
dictable and addressable.

This book focuses on the unique business knowledge,
skills, and underlying disciplines to enable any business to
optimally address these distinct customer opportunities,
challenges, and risks created as customers’ transition through
economic cycles.

For the past decade, many industrialized nations have
experienced strong growth with an unprecedented availabil-
ity of financial resources. This fueled excess expenditures
bordering on decadence. It was a sharp contrast to the Great
Depression, the biggest crisis experienced by the world
economy. Boom and bust are extremes in the continuum of
economic cycles and each generates specific consumer
behaviors.