Kellogg on Marketing (CD-ROM)

What we have here is one of the volumes which comprise a series produced by faculty members at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. It was superbly edited by Dawn Iacobucci who wrote the Introduction. Sidney J. Levy (to whom this book is dedicated) wrote the Foreword and Philip Kotler the Preface. I feel obligated to suggest at the outset that none of the volumes in this series is an "easy read." On the contrary, each requires but will generously reward a careful consideration of its content which, in this volume, is carefully organized within three Sections:

I (Chapters 1-6) Strategy: Thinking About the Customer and the Marketplace
II (Chapters 7-9) Intelligence: Learning About the Customer and the Marketplace
III (Chapters 10-13) Implementation: Managing the Marketplace

There are several reasons why I hold this book in such high regard. Here are three. First, the contributors cover almost every possible aspect of the general subject of marketing but, to their credit, focus much more attention on practical and effective applications than on general theories and concepts. Throughout the narrative, there are all manner of reader-friendly devices which help to correlate and synthesize key ideas such as charts, graphs, and check-lists which summarize key points in each of the 17 chapters, thereby facilitating and expediting periodic review of those points later.

Also, the contributors provide a number of valuable insights of general interest and practical value. Here are two representative examples:

"Firms that are operationally excellent are not primarily product or service innovators, nor do they cultivate deep, one-to-one relationships with customers. Instead, they provide middle-of-the-market products that can appeal to the mass of consumers in a category by offering the best price with the least inconvenience....Firms that adopt a product leadership orientation focus on developing new and better products, often making their own products obsolete. In so doing, they must address three challenges. One is to foster creativity, knowing how and where to look for it and how to recognize it. Another challenge is to get products to market expeditiously. And product leadership implies being the first to present the latest technology or the best new service to the marketplace." Chapter 1, "Segmentation and Marketing," Brian Sternthal and Alice M. Tybout, excerpted from pages 23-24

"The key principle in services marketing and management is to remember that 'people,' both the customers and the service providers, are much more intricately involved in the marketplace exchange than for the relatively simple purchaser of most goods. Keeping in mind this customer-service provider dyad helps the marketing manager gain empathy for the customer experience, hopefully with the goal of designing service delivery systems that provide opportunities for inherently high-quality interactions, and that accommodate modifications, either for still higher quality customization requested, or in recovery to reattain high-quality provision." Chapter 14, "Services marketing and Customer Service," Dawn Iacobucci, excerpted from page 328.

Finally, most of those who read this book will have about as much information, observations, counsel, and guidance as they could possibly need to create or increase demand for what they take to market. Obviously, only a fool would attempt to apply all of the strategies and tactics which the contributors provide in such generous abundance. It remains for each reader to select with great care whatever is most relevant to her or his own organization's specific needs and objectives...and then to apply effectively whatever is most appropriate to the given objectives and available resources. Fragmented and isolated marketing initiatives can quickly accumulate as substantial costs. If guided and informed by a rigorous and prudent selection of what is most relevant in this book, however, allocation of whatever resources may be required should be viewed as an investment.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Kellogg on Integrated Marketing co-edited by Iacobucci and Bobby Calder as well as Kellogg on Branding co-edited by Alice Tybout and Tim Calkins.

I also recommend Theodore Levitt's The Marketing Imagination (which includes his classic HBR article, "Marketing Myopia"), Barbara Bund's The Outside-In Corporation, Kenneth E. Clow and Donald Baack's Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications (Second Edition), George E. Belch's Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, P. R. Smith and Jonathan Taylor's Marketing Communications: An Integrated Approach, and Noel Capon and co-authors' Total Integrated Marketing: Breaking the Bounds of the Function.