John Butman is co-author of the best-selling book Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods and How Companies Create Them, the authoritative guide to today's incredibly demanding consumers and some of the new luxury leaders—such as Victoria's Secret and BMW—that brilliantly cater to them. Based on exhaustive quantitative and qualitative research, the book explores the drivers behind this powerful phenomenon and offers insights and methods to help audiences understand and take advantage of it.

In addition to Trading Up, Butman is the co-author of several other books and articles on emerging consumer behavior, fundamental market trends, and how companies respond to them. These books include the classic Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing and Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New Consumer, which further explores the huge shifts in consumer spending and consumption patterns. The forthcoming American Dreamers: Living with Abundance in the Fourth Wave of Wealth shows that even the wealthiest of the world's consumers are driven by the need for value, experience, and emotional content through goods.

Butman has helped companies and organizations around the world to understand today's market so they can make deeper connections between their brands and consumers. He works closely with American Express Publishing on their annual Luxury Summit conferences and is an adviser to BzzAgent, the pioneering word-of-mouth marketing company. He has spoken with groups throughout the United States and Canada, including Starwood, Dow Chemical, TRW, PWCGlobal, New York University, PDMA, American Express, and dozens more.

As an expert in how consumers think and behave—and the social and personal factors that underlie their actions— John Butman can help audiences think differently about innovation, marketing, brands, and consumer engagement. He talks about products and services as a social language, the characteristics of emotional content, how consumers crave dynamic consumption experiences, how values come to be embedded in products and services, and the qualities of "transcendent" brands. Butman approaches his subject by telling stories about consumers, companies, and brands, and combines them with extensive supporting data, as well as historical and philosophical perspective. A witty, entertaining speaker, Butman packs his talks with informative and practical insights. He is an ideal choice to open or close any major business event.