Customer Reviews

Marketing Mistakes and Successes, 7th Edition

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I took a few technology marketing courses in grad school, and became moderately interested in the process. When I saw "Marketing Mistakes" (1976) for sale at a thrift shop, I snapped it up.

This is actually interesting stuff for anyone interested in the growth and death of businesses, not just for marketing majors.

The eleven case studies describe how a retailer (e.g., Montgomery Ward, which finally augered in last year, and Korvette, a discount chain I barely recollect), product (Du Pont's Corfam, an artificial leather), or grand old toy company (A.C. Gilbert) became moribund or outright crashed and burned.

There was a lot of nostalgia value in these for me. The names and histories evoked memories of advertising campaigns and jingles. Particularly poignant: The terrible last years of A.C. Gilbert, the august maker of chemistry sets and erector sets. They diluted the company name and ruined its reputation by expanding into girl's toys, infant's toys, and cheap discount-market items. Their decline was amazingly swift.

There are lots of lessons here for budding business folk, and for others an opportunity to understand why your favorite stores and products sometimes disappear.

If I were a Professor in Marketing, I would pick this as a textbook, or at least a reference book for cases studies, because of its 1) extensive covering of 22 real life big name cases on six major topics (wars between giants, change/crises, competitive uncertainties, management mistakes, notable successes, and entrepreneurship) 2) sufficient details and figures on individual cases 3) intelligent questions and exercises in the end of each case/chapter 4)analytical "What can be learnt?" sections in the end of each case/chapter, and a whole independent chapter in the end of the book.

However, as a professional who had read countless marketing books, I must say that there are some better alternatives, insight and writing skill wise, that help readers to learn more from other people's mistakes. In that respect, I would like to recommend "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters by Merrill Rick Chapman" and "Will Your Next Mistake Be Fatal?: Avoiding the Chain of Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Organization by Robert Mittelstaedt".

Remark: This book is at least 85% identical with the author's another work "Management Mistakes and Successes" and so you only should pick either one or them.

This book is a great read. Very interesting articles about different famous companies. I recommend it even if you're not a student.

The book was easy to read, used it for business cases that we had to analyze.

This is a really great read for any marketer who wants to learn from past mistakes and successes. The scenarios are open for interpretation by the reader so it also makes an excellent case studies book.

I am an undergrad. student and am not too familiar with the business concepts, but this book is engaging even if I am not fully educated with business terminologies. The cases mentioned, as well as the analysis is definitely helpful because it is one way to understand these real-life companies, such as how Carly Fiorina came to H-P and was later ousted; the competition between Toy-R-Us and Walmart are all worth reading over. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in business.

I needed to get for classes but this book would also make easy reading for the businessperson. What better way to learn than from other's mistakes. Even large corporations are not exempt from big blunders. Also reviews cases of great company turn arounds.

Highly recommend

I did not think this book was that useful in that it does not reach any techniques but rather it allows you to glean ideas from mistakes that companies have made. It presents different cases from the real world but coming from a background of no marketing experience, I did not find this technique all that useful.

This is a great book, however, author's use of "difficult" language makes it a hard reading for students. The point of this book should entirely be to emphasize on facts, rather than to showcase author's verbal capabilities.

Product arrived promptly and condition was as described. I would buy from this seller again.