Riddikulus! Consumer Reflections on the Harry Potter Phenomenon

Harry Potter is one of the most amazing consumer crazes of recent years (Blake 2002). So much so, that there can't be a single person anywhere who hasn't heard of 'the boy who lived' and the best-selling books that bear his name (Rowling 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003). To date, five books in the seven-book series have been published and approximately 250 million copies have been sold worldwide (Brown 2002). This places the boy wizard third on the all-time bestsellers list, after The Bible (2.5 billion copies sold) and The Thoughts of Chairman Mao (800 million)