Marketing: Best Practices

Rating:
Summary: The best of two worlds
Review: This book combines the knowledge of excellent scholars of marketing in a clear and structured format which is accessible to undergraduates. In addition, the cases and other teaching materials provide excellent support.

Rating:
Summary: Disorganized and loosely written
Review: This book is so concentrated on harnessing the knowledge of 17 marketing experts that they forgot to hire an expert writer to make it easy to understand for the student. They talk around many definitions without clearly defining the object of study. Case studies are haphazzardly thrown at the reader and important concepts are vaguely described and with uneccessary complexity. I hope next time they write a book one of their experts is a writer. I feel like I am back in World Literature reading something from the Middle Ages only this time I can't go on the internet for an interpretation.

Rating:
Summary: Very loosely written and unorganized
Review: This book promises to bring to us the best and the brightest in marketing by drawing on the knowledge of 17 experts. Unfortunately, they have proven a law in economics known as the law of diminishing returns. As additional units of a variable resource (marketing experts) are applied to a fixed resource (this book),at some point, the returns that can be attributed to the variable resource will decline. This is precisely what has happened. This book is written in a haphazzard format throwing definitions and case studies at the student in a loosely written hard to understand format. Many of the definitions seem to talk around the object of study instead of clearly defining it. I have talked with many students and they all have the same sentiments. Before you rate my review, I suggest that you read one chapter from this book and you will find that I have been very kind towards the author/authors. I would prefer to read a marketing text book from just 1 marketing expert that knows how to write a textbook. This is marketing not world literature. I am an A business student and I shouldn't need to struggle to understand the concepts in this book. The best example I can think of would be the chapter on consumer behavior. VALS is glazed over with little insight on the value of this highly reputed psychographic study. Check out the section on alternative evaluation in the same chapter. Compensatory and noncompensatory models of consumer alternative evaluation are quickly thrown out to the reader with a few vague examples. Even after taking calculus I am amazed at the complexity with which these authors present a simple subject like marketing. You are probably purchasing this book because it is required reading for your marketing class. There must have been some kickbacks somewhere to push this book. Next time they write a marketing book I hope that one of their experts is a writer.