Marketing Management – A Contemporary Perspective

Citation

Wilke, R. (2012), "Marketing Management – A Contemporary Perspective", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 46 No. 1/2, pp. 306-308. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090561211189347

This marketing education book is designed for undergraduate and graduate levels, and for practitioners

The book gives a comprehensive understanding of the process of how to decide a marketing strategy, how to choose marketing mix, and how to make sure that the strategy is implemented. The authors are highly recognized researchers with publications in top journals, and industry consultants. The book successfully and refreshingly presents a comprehensive theoretical framework of marketing with a strong practical orientation. The book covers business‐to‐consumer marketing as well as business‐to‐business marketing, service marketing and international marketing. Below is a very brief presentation of each of the chapters.

Chapter 1 defines the market, introduces the marketing concept and explains the structure of the book. The definition of the market is quite brief, but in most other marketing books the definition does not exist.

Chapter 2 is about company strategic objectives at different levels. Research approaches to strategy success are reviewed, and it is argued that marketing strategy should play a role at the highest strategic level.

Chapter 3 is about defining the initial strategic situation of a company. The chapter presents different ways of how to interpret or define the micro‐ and macro‐environment, e.g. early warning systems, PEST, value chain analysis and SWOT.

Chapter 4 is about how to formulate and evaluate potential strategies. It discusses whether to focus on core‐ or additional benefits, growth strategies and relationships, etc. Finally the strategic game board and portfolio techniques are presented. This chapter seems to have all the important and relevant questions, including discussions for understanding the complexity of strategy. But the structure of the chapter is based on questions, which could be challenging for beginners.

Chapter 5 is about product decisions. It is a very extensive and adequate chapter where product decisions are discussed in different situations, from innovation management, over decisions about existing products and product mix, to brand management. The idea of creating value for customers is central in this chapter.

Chapter 6 is about how to make price‐decisions in relation to existing products, new products, portfolio, and product lines. Price changes and price differentiation are discussed, and it is explained how market structures influence price‐decisions. The chapter has a quite comprehensive review of theoretical foundations of pricing, from traditional microeconomics to behavioral pricing. But as many other general marketing textbooks, it does not really succeed in explaining theoretical rivalry – or complementarities between microeconomic and behavioral pricing. Nonetheless, the chapter has many important discussions with important research references.

Chapter 7 is about sales decisions. Based on current practice the chapter starts with a presentation of the internal and external entities of companies that normally are not included in traditional marketing textbooks. It is explained how design and structure of the sales system, the internal and external sales entities of a company form the sales channels, and relationship with sales partners. There is a transactions‐cost based discussion about decisions between direct and indirect sales. Concerning channel depth and width, special attention is given to management of channels conflicts and key accounts. Finally, design of selling activities with special attention on personal selling is discussed.

Chapter 8 is about communication decisions. Decisions about communication objects, target groups, budget and media, design of communication, and pre‐ and post tests are discussed. This chapter includes a discussion about corporate identity. While interesting it would have been relevant, given the focus of the textbook, to debate whether corporate identity risk setting up barriers to receive important market information (e.g. criticism).

Chapter 9 is about customer relationship management, with special attention on customer satisfaction and loyalty. It is discussed how loyalty can be achieved through, for example, customer club and cards, and there is a brief discussion of complaint handling related to customer recovery. The chapter has a good and critical review of research on the interaction between satisfaction and loyalty.

Chapter 10 presents types of private and public organizational buyers. This chapter includes special attention on business‐to‐business marketing, with focus on organizational buying decisions, buying centers, purchasing situations and business types.

Chapter 11 is a about services marketing, and how this differs from product marketing, such as intangibility, perishability and inseperability etc. Methods for managing and measuring services quality are presented, including a discussion on the expanded marketing mix. The chapter also includes an extensive review of the research on retailing. This is quite a lot compared to most other marketing textbooks, but as most marketing scholars often are end‐customers in retail‐shops it provides them with an opportunity to reflect on well‐known marketing in situations from their daily lives. The chapter includes detailed discussions of private vs. manufacturer‐brand labels, floor space‐management and even about store atmosphere, all with good references to research.

Chapter 12 is about international marketing. It discusses the implications of different environmental conditions across markets globally. Based upon a review of theories of internationalization, differences in buying behavior across cultures, attractiveness and accessibility of markets, and designs of international market development strategies are discussed. Finally the chapter discusses the standardization versus differentiation elements of the marketing mix. The chapter has good cases from across the world, and illustrations, tables and figures make it understandable.

Chapter 13 present different organizational designs and structures, from functional organizations to customer‐focused business units. Different management coordination systems are debated, from product management to key‐account and customer segment management.

Chapter 14 is about marketing information systems, and it includes an introduction to different technologies, from simple customer databases to sophisticated data‐warehouse systems with networked computers. The chapter discusses data types and other requirements for a marketing information system.

Chapter 15 is a short presentation of methods for planning and controlling marketing activities. It discusses different decision processes, and shows analytical methods for marketing control, such as the ABC analysis. Finally, cost and profitability tools are discussed.

Chapter 16 includes a quite comprehensive discussion of relevant HRM issues to support implementation of marketing and sales strategy. It is about how to design a personal management system, and defines what employee competences that are needed, how to recruit the right employee, how to educate, train, motivate and appraise personnel. It includes a quite extensive and interesting debate on how to recruit and educate marketing and sales people.

The final chapter 17 discusses how market orientation refers to organizational culture, structure and processes. It explains how values, norms and artifacts can create orientation towards customers and competitors. The chapter reviews the research on market orientation and how it manifests itself in different functional departments such as HR, IT, accounting/finance etc. Even CEO backgrounds are discussed in relation to market orientation. This review introduces a very interesting and relevant discussion into marketing, yet would have benefited from an even deeper discussion.

One of the most important parts of the book is the heavy focus on implementation. The book dedicates the whole last part 4 to marketing implementation. This is typically a neglected area which is given little emphasis in educational marketing books, and this is probably one of the main reasons why marketing solutions often are very challenging to implement.

Each chapter is supported by additional theoretical issues in the appendix, so that the reader can focus on applying these principles in real life settings exemplified by business cases. Each chapter concludes with a case, and a larger case concludes each of the textbook's four parts. The cases are international, from Europe, North America and Asia. In addition the book gives access to an Online Learning Center that provides a range of supporting resources including essay questions, mini cases and self‐test multiple‐choice support. The On‐Line Center also supports lecturers with teaching material such as lecture slides etc.

This book gives a new perspective on marketing and it can be highly recommended for marketing students and managers.