Marketing: The Basics. Written by David and Goliath?

The book starts with a single page summary; an appetizer, which contains the main topics of marketing of which a firm must be aware nowadays, and a complementary few words about the authors. The following part is an introduction where the reader faces the core problems which marketing has after the second millennium, such as buzz, bifurcation of buying habits, neuromarketing, supplier change by mouse clicking, foreign competition on home (and global) market, rapidly changing communication systems, in short: the new trends. And here is the part my title comes from: the demonstration of the excellence of the authors. Karl Moore gets half a page, and Niketh Pareek gets two lines. The readers could have the feeling that there is a typical master and follower situation, where the repressed wrote, and the name read only. We do not know how they divided the workload, but I personally would like to know more about Niketh too, because the book they have been written was really amusing to read. For example on every fifth page can we find some hidden humorous phrase, which keeps our attention, for example “Telling old war stories prepares the troops for old battles”; “like United Biscuits, which to no one's surprise makes biscuits”; “Selling shoes it seems is more profitable than distributing narcotics (certainly is safer).”; “This is illogical, Spock.” or “a pleasant chat about the football (US or the rest‐of‐the‐world type)”. The cooperation between the authors was successful anyhow. The structure of the book is interesting, and does not follow the usual steps of introducing marketing, what is for me a little bit illogical, but not very disturbing.

Therefore I suggest this should be read as a first marketing‐related book for students as a first introductory book, for entrepreneurs who are planning to start their own business, or for young academics, who studied marketing in their own native language, but want to come to know the basic international paraphrases too.

Reading further in the first chapter we can get a picture about the management's role, different states of demand, and orientations or concepts. I personally would make the difference between need‐want‐demand stages sharper, which is not easily to see at first look for a beginner whom I think the book is written for. There are some short descriptions of market segmentation and research, target market, and marketing mix, divided into 5Ps.

Knowing what management means the reader sees the questions of strategic planning. The examples of practice are very helpful and actual during the whole book. As mission statement the authors cite the one of the Skype, for example. As core problem there are the main risks described, just as how to fight them using the company's competitive advantages. The first figure is the BCG matrix used for evaluation purposes. The second is of course the PLC (classic four‐part‐version), which highlights the characteristics of products (technology driven) and markets (time driven). These two are the “compulsory ones” on the list of figures, the following ones are not so important compared to these two.

Continuing the idea of importance, the third chapter summarizes the product and placement. It is not a usual thing in marketing‐related books, and I personally would not rally these dissimilar topics, but really they are just in a common chapter, but have their own sub‐chapters. The discussion contains the customer value hierarchy (core‐expected‐augmented levels) and the product mix. Also the inventory turnover rate, ROI and ROC are discussed here, just as the possible product‐mix strategies, and naturally the concept of self‐cannibalisation. The placement‐part starts with the concept of marketing channel, which transforms the supply chain into a value network for the company. Thereafter the two concepts are used just as identical. The details describe the levels of the channels, the organization and their typology. Also here can we find an actual and practical part: what is a channel conflict, and how to build up these channels.

The pricing methods open with setting up a marketing objective. For this part I could imagine some good figures, to convert the mathematical description into easier understandable graphs. Since the possible target group of the book may not have experience in the mathematics, it seems to be an optimal solution. By the objectives it is not a big problem, by the way, but determining the demand and supply or types of costs would be beatific, even when it is an easy‐to‐look‐through version of explanation to read. Price‐elasticity or especially variable, fixed, and total costs would be, for example, good topics to explain for persons with lower visualization talents. Microeconomy, or management lessons usually interpret learning curve effect or pricing methods by the way of graphs. Although the topics are explained by formulae, a half‐a‐page figure speaks better than two pages of text explanation.

In the case of promotion mix we can see a grouping of five types: advertising, sales promotion, PR, personal selling, and direct marketing – classic style. The communication causes more and more trouble for the firms today. The short introduction describes these problems on a good way. But also here can we find some deceptive bugs, for example the hierarchy of effects model, which traces six stages a consumer goes through before a purchase, is detailed only in five steps. The reader searches the sixth trace desperate, but without effect. Quite frustrating, and unfortunately it is not the only bad example. It starts on the 89th page. Is it the supervisor's mistake, or just time pressure that caused it? Or may be it is caused by the shortage of the pages as some parts had to be cut? The content of the chapter is a good one, it drafts shortly the market equilibrium, the push and pull strategies, as the old developments, and describes the news also, the buzz for example. Here is the first table published, which gives an excellent overview of a promotional tool kit.

Chapter six is titled “People”, as a final part of the marketing mix. It deals with managing salespeople, direct marketers and support staff. Management means here structuring, sizing, recruiting, selecting training, motivating, evaluating it. This part also includes the description of the selling process. Who wants to train himself into a salesperson will find the main barriers and challenges for this type of job, just like the participants in a buying center. The same is appropriate for the direct marketing: useful for practice.

The next step is the STP. Here we can find the must‐characteristics of a market segment, and the major ways of segmenting consumer markets, such as geographic, demographic, gender, income, life‐cycle, and what I personally liked most to read: the psychographic. Targeting is an average part, while positioning is excellent! In this section are really good examples available, the readers can learn how to differentiate products, using competitive advantage and what strategies are to follow for the success of business. (The only negative thing belonging here is the spelling: “MacDonalds” for example.) The authors suited a short explanation of brands here, which is an interesting approach, because this topic fits to the product, or maybe to value chain better. Why consumers pay a higher price for a branded product? This question remains unanswered almost to the end of the book.

The chapter titled “Market research” starts with a short analysis of consumer behavior followed by some models, divided for cultural, social and personal factors. Next the major topic is the research methodologies. The description of the quantitative methods is a little bit too dry for the people the book is positioned for (mentioned as an example at the STP), but statistics is a dry matter anyhow. Qualitative methods are easily to understand compared to the previous part, especially when it comes to the future: neuromarketing. A very tasty word, and a good explanation of huge possibilities, but it also warns of the dangers of Orwell's 1984.

The final part analyzes the global village as it is: possibilities and threats. The topic covers the opportunities of entering a foreign market, from indirect export to foreign direct investment and the ways of adopting the marketing program. The last figure makes the reader unhappy, since it shows the axis X and Y, but not the figure self. I wrote a big question mark into it. Although the differences of national cultures (individualism vs collectivism, masculine vs feminine, high vs low power distance, weak vs strong uncertainty avoidance) are interesting and the expansion strategies are described well, the missing figure and the missing dot at the end of the last sentence shows dispatch and shortage of attention by the overviewers.

At the end of all chapters can we find conclusions, summary, some critical questions, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary. The contents and list of illustrations are at the beginning; a totalized glossary and the index at the end. All of these are well organized and precise. The best of these parts are the suggestions for further reading, where each book is described with two to three sentences. The suggested books are very different kinds of authors or topics. Some of them have the judgment of “a good airplane book”. This book is more than that: it needs more flights to come through. I would wait for the second edition, where the bad spelling and other disappointing bugs are fixed. What reason still to read it? Who reads it can come to know, why BK almost disappeared from the stores some years ago …

… and more: What is marketing? (But only the basics.) I think it is enough.