Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Recommended!, January 18, 2002
Lindstrom draws on speeches he's given in worldwide and textbook basics to craft an informative and refreshing marketing text. Highlighting the primary tools and techniques used by marketing professionals, he encourages companies to think about the true value of a clicks and mortar approach. Since it's cheaper to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one, companies should use all of the resources at their disposal - including marketing - in building long-term clicks and mortar relationships. Beyond the customer-value sermon, Lindstrom offers a systemic review of clicks and mortar concepts that have been very useful for me and which I can heartily recommend to beginners, who quickly will find their copies of this book glowing with highlighter yellow, as well as marketing veterans, who will enjoy and learn from the book's fresh take on familiar topics.
|
|
|
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book, a must for any marketing bookself, May 28, 2001
By A Customer
This book is ostensibly, about the world's most controversial marriage. No, not a celebrity power wedding, but the union of offline and online business. It seems not so long since books like this were urging businesses to flock to the web, but now the brakes are on. A new business model has risen from the ashes of the dotcoms: the marriage of bricks-and-mortar to the internet. Lindstrom whips readers through a potted history of the retail industry - the shopping evolution, as he terms it. A paragraph on the 1950s, half a page on the 1960s, a couple of case studies, a paragraph each on the 1980s and 1990s, and whammo, by page 10 we are into the age of the internet. But if detail is lacking, Lindstrom's argument is strong. By tracing the evolution of retail in this way he sets the scene for the e-tailing hype storm, pinpointing Christmas 1999 as the key test. 'The 2000 holiday season told a graphic tale,' he writes. 'More than 90 per cent of e-tailers closed down in the period up to January, 2001.' Each of the chapters in Clicks, Bricks and Brands is followed by a summary of the main points covered - useful for revision - and action points. For example, the action points at the end of The Power Shift (Chapter One), exhort the reader to do a SWOT analysis of their own and competitors' businesses. 'Summarise your business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Determine what threats your offline or online store is facing from your competitors and what features would be most likely to lure your customers to your competitor.' This is before we get into the substance of the book - the meat and potatoes of clicks and mortar. Even if it all seems a bit Cleo magazine (does your boyfriend really love you?), the self-analysis you will have accumulated by the end of the book should be formidable. The innumerable case studies are breezy, informative, well-written and succinct. By Chapter Five we are right down into the central proposition - that the best chance of success in the coming paradigm is the combination of clicks and mortar enterprises. The good news, though, is that the onus need not be carried by any single business. There are lots of case studies of partnerships involving an online service and bricks-and-mortar outfits. For example: 'When Drugstore.com teamed up with Rite Aid, Drugstore.com suddenly gained 3500 distribution centres around the US. 'Rite Aid, on the other hand, gained access to Drugstore. com's online databases and web presence.' This book points the way for enterprises on the threshold of web presence. Lindstrom brings analysis, insight and market skill to an area that inspires fear in many, pointing out along the way that this fear could be a costly indulgence. He sets out a straightforward path to overcoming many of the obstacles that might otherwise lead 21st-century enterprises to the scrap heap. Simply Spot On!
|
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Strong general overview!, January 18, 2002
A concise overview on clicks and mortar principles is provided by the book. Despite the condensed nature of its content, many illustrative examples are given throughout the chapters. It serves well as a great introduction for readers who are planning to establish a clicks and mortar program.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Title and Content go together (Finally...)
If the whole dotcom, online, e-commerce, broadband, WAP, interactive, etailing, one-to-one, digital scenario is still a bit fuzzy, Martin Lindstrom's book might be of help...
Read more
Published on May 28, 2001
|
|
by Martin Lindstrom
by Martin Lindstrom
