About the book

Description
Over the past twenty years or so, marketing has become one of the most popular and exciting disciplines in most business schools and universities. The reasons for this lie in the fact that we are all consumers. Understanding how the exchanges between sellers and buyers operate, and understanding what motivates people to buy, are subjects which all of us can relate to.

Perhaps less creditably, marketing has been seen as a kind of magic wand for making businesses succeed: many company directors seem to think that bringing in a top-class marketer will make customers flock in. In fact, marketers are not magicians, and merely drafting in someone with marketing expertise will not make any difference to a firm’s success unless it is backed up with a real concern for, and understanding of, customer needs.

The intention of this book is to explain the received wisdom about marketing, and at the same time provide the counter-arguments which moderate the debate. Principles & Practice of Marketing examines what marketing will and will not do, and seeks to strike a balance between academic thinking and practical experience. It is an ideal introduction for students new to marketing and to business generally, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level. The author writes in an engaging, student-friendly style and he provides a wealth of interesting and relevant real world examples to show students how practice and theory overlap.

Principles & Practice of Marketing is a full-service text both for lecturers and for their students. It provides the most comprehensive set of ancillary material to make learning marketing a pleasure.

Benefits

• Uses the 7 P approach to marketing as a baseline but shows the limits of theoretical pigeon-holing throughout by highlighting critical and alternate theories
• Emphasis on how marketing is applied in the real world; SME coverage will make this immediately relevant for many students
• Focus on marketing successes and failures shows how marketers can learn effectively from other companies’ mistakes
• Chapter-opening case study setting the scene, revisited at the end of the chapter
• Longer case at the end of each chapter. Companies include L’Oreal, McKinsey, Elf Acquitaine, P&O Ferries, Claims Direct, Richer Sounds, the marketing of the Euro, IMG Sports, Procter & Gamble, TXU Energy, Norbert Dentressangle, Pronuptia, Volkswagen, OPODO, Paradores de Espana
• Chapter boxes on e-marketing and on global issues
• Four-colour text with a wealth of product, service and topic illustrations
• Full, competitive, value-added website for lecturers and students, and packaged with Web CT
• Wide range of European, South African, Asian and Australasian examples and case studies
• Deliberately provocative Talking Points in each chapter to stimulate argument and class discussion
• Contributions from other disciplines, eg economics and psychology, so often overlooked in other texts
• Signposts which illustrate learning objectives, reprised at the end of each chapter
• Strong communications coverage, often neglected in other texts yet it’s the area students are most familiar with and wish to work in.