The last time I checked, Amazon and its online partner Borders sell more than 38,000 different books on the general subject of marketing. Presumably this number will continue to increase as organizations become more actively involved with marketing initiatives to create or increase demand for what they offer.
What we have here is one of the volumes which comprise a series produced by faculty members at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University or on faculties elsewhere. It was edited by Dawn Iacobucci and Bobby Calder; Don E. Schultz provides the Foreword, "Evolving Marketing and Marketing Communications into the Twenty-First Century."
I feel obligated to suggest at the outset that none of the volumes in this series is an "easy read." On the contrary, each requires but will generously reward a careful consideration of its contents which, in this volume, are carefully organized within 14 chapters which range from "Overview of Kellogg on Integrated Marketing" (Iacobucci and Calder) to "Reflections on a Great Marketing Organization" (Stephen Burnett). Long ago, I concluded that if marketing's primary purpose is to create or increase demand for whatever is offered, and, that all marketing initiatives should be "integrated" in the sense that they are comprehensive, cohesive, and cost- effective. Moreover, that everyone within a given enterprise should be directly involved in (or at least supportive of) those initiatives.
Perhaps it would be helpful to those who read this brief commentary if I were to provide a representative selection of brief quotations which suggest the range and depth of issues addressed and insights shared.
"For marketing a relationship to be developed, a brand must behave in a way that is consistent with the brand and that leads to a reaction from the customer that establishes a pattern of behavior. For example, A sports television network, such as ESPN, wants to engage in relationship marketing. The network could advertise that it is your sports partner. They team up with you to give you sports coverage wherever and whenever you want it. Is there a marketing relationship in what we have described? We think not. With whom is the customer having a relationship? There is no experience to define a relationship. Nor is there any behavior flowing from that experience for the consumer to react to." Andrew J. Razeghi and Bobby J. Calder, "Using Interaction Maps to Create Brand Experiences and Relationships." (page 52)
"The impetus for thinking about WOM [word of mouth] or buzz from a strategic point of view originated with the work of Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarfeld...almost 50 years ago. In their book, Personal Influence, they contrasted the power of consumer-to-consumer contacts with that of advertising and other types of mass communication and postulated that the process operated through a `two-step flow.' Certain individuals, termed influentials, took in information and passed it on to others with whom they were in contact. The key idea was that influentials were influential because of their links to a community of other people who would not otherwise be exposed to or absorb the information....Gradually, the notion was added that as information `diffuses' through a community, consumers pass through stages from just being aware of the information initially to finally being persuade to adopt a product." Maria Flores Letelier, Charles Spinoza, and Bobby J. Calder, "Strategies for Viral Marketing." (page 90)
Sub-segmentation "takes place after targeting a brand at a market segment and acquiring a database of customers. It divides a market segment into further subgroups. The marketing manager must have marketing plans for each sub-segment, because all sub-segments are customers. Other direct marketeers use the term customer segmentation or market segmentation to describe this activity, but the term sub-segmentation is less ambiguous (even the term customer can mean different things to different marketers)....There are two kinds of customized sub-segmentations, depending on the data-mining methodology used to find the sub-segments. First, there are `unsupervised learning methods' (obvious splits, clustering, latent class analysis). This approach yields segments of people who are similar to each other on some customer attributes....The second type of customized sub-segmentation is based on supervised learning methods like Chi-Squared Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) and bump hunting. These approaches yield segments using a set of `predictor' variables that have similar values of some dependent variable, such as long-term value (LTV), attrition, and so forth." Edward C. Malthouse, "Database Sub-Segmentation." (pages 165 and 166)
I realize that these three brief excerpts are taken out of context, as would be any others shared in this commentary. However, what I hope I have indicated is that those who have contributed to this volume have given a great deal of careful, indeed thought to the scope and depth of the subject each discusses; moreover, they rely upon a specific nomenclature when sharing their observations and insights, a nomenclature which should be familiar to senior-level executives who are responsible for formulating, implementing, and then managing a sophisticated marketing program.
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Kellogg on Branding co-edited by Alice Trybout and Tim Calkins, Kellogg on Marketing edited by Dawn Iacobucci, and Kellogg on Strategy co-authored by Daniel Dranove and Sonia Marciano
I also highly recommend Theodore Levitt's The Marketing Imagination (which includes his classic HBR article, "Marketing Myopia"), Kenneth E. Clow and Donald Baack's Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications (Second Edition), George E. Belch's Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, P. R. Smith and Jonathan Taylor's Marketing Communications: An Integrated Approach, and Noel Capon and co-authors' Total Integrated Marketing: Breaking the Bounds of the Function.
