Customer Reviews

Industrial Marketing Strategy

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Frederick Webster's 3rd ed. of Industrial Marketing Strategy offers a comprehensive review of business-to-business marketing. This is an excellent overview for the business executive and the general marketing practitioner. The sections on buying behavior and buyer-seller relationships are a good review of those processes that influence customers to buy. The book is a rational academic review of the marketing process. Unfortunately, Webster, like most books on the subject, does not address the irrational aspects of the industrial customer's behavior. All-in-all this is still the most comprehensive single volume review of industrial marketing currently available. Warren D. Smith, CPC. Venture Marketing Inc. ventmktinc@aol.com

I have read this book many times for many years. I mean the 3rd edition.
I can only state this:
1. Style: descriptive, non authoritative, academic. My concern is that the practitioner might never get too far reading due to the writing style.
2. Content: For today, the book is outdated. Webster made a major revision of the theoretical literature during the 70s-80s to write this book. One wishes that another academician as thorough as F. Webster could write an updated version. The indexed content of the book is comprehensive and complete. That is, the practitioner will find all the topics necessary to manage his/her department.
3. The cons: by the time it was written, very little research was available on industrial segmentation, value-based pricing, B2B branding and of course, industrial communicational marketing.
4. The pros: reader might find the Sales Force, Company inter relation and Industrial Customer Behaviour the best chapters of the book. Yet, I strongly advice to complement the Sales Force content with Jim Hlavacek's and John Coe's insights.

Claudio Saavedra, MBA., PhD
Professor of Industrial Marketing
Santiago - Chile
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