Customer Reviews

Digital Marketing Strategy: Text and Cases

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was required for the course that I took, and a major disapointment. Number one is content - far too theoretical and academic to be useful for a small business owner. If you go to school to get a degree and you do not require much usefulness from what you learn, then you may like this book. If you look for relevance and applicability, look elsewhere. Number two is price - on the day publishers of college textbooks acquire some ethical principles and stop charging $85 for a book that has two hundred pages and costs $3 to print, and the student has no other choice than buy it, we will live in a better world. Until then, I urge instructors to select books from publishers who do not try to goldmine students.

When I was in b-school I really learned to like well-written cases. Of course they aren't real life, but they do serve to illustrate certain points in a way that requires creative interpretation and solution rather than simple problem solving. Prof. Glen Urban does a fine job of pairing up really interesting chapters on the issues of marketing in the digital age with cases that focus in on the points he is trying to make.

This is NOT a book on building a web business or developing a web strategy for your business. Rather, it is a book for Marketing Managers to help them think through the implications for their efforts in the age of the Internet. Prof. Urban focuses on something he calls a Trust relationship, which involves giving the customer loads of information, innovation, and choice. He compares that to the standard low-price relationship he calls Push marketing. All of this culminates in the chapter and case on Citibank's online efforts.

It isn't required that you agree with every point the author makes to derive a lot of benefit from the book. I think it would make a very nice text for a marketing course that focuses on the implications of the web, Internet, and computers for segmenting the market, product positioning, product introduction, communicating with customers, pricing and distribution channel, and the idea of a Trust Relationship with customers. All good stuff that needs to be thought about.