Knowledge‐Based Marketing: The 21st Century Competitive Edge

Citation

Karpati, L. (2005), "Knowledge‐Based Marketing: The 21st Century Competitive Edge", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 39 No. 1/2, pp. 231-234. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560510572106

Choice of topic

The author chose an interesting topic for his book, since knowledge can guarantee an advantage for an expert or company. Therefore, maintaining and developing knowledge could mean a privileged position for its holder. It can maintain a long (or not so long)‐lasting position even in the field of business that offers one a competitive advantage.

Applying specific knowledge in the field of marketing has nearly always proved to be positive for companies, and will certainly also be effective in the future. Awareness in this field can be a guarantee of future marketing success.

Based on these thoughts, Professor Ian Chaston's book discusses an exciting topic and the reviewer, no wonder, also started reading the book with great enthusiasm. Perhaps with too much enthusiasm, however, since after its first reading he felt some disappointment. After the second reading it occurred to him it was probably the way of thinking of the reviewer that was to blame rather than the book. “Waiting for a miracle” may sometimes result in such a feeling. In the end the reviewer realised that the book actually gives a correct review of knowledge management and its utilization in marketing, and it also flashes up some new ideas that can be identified as the “patented” ideas of the author. In the given field, however, the book cannot be considered to present a breakthrough, rather a fairly correct overview with some “raisins in the cake”.

The main topics covered in the book

The book is based on the philosophy that “knowledge will get more and more important for marketing in the future”. All the important questions of marketing are looked at through the glasses of knowledge management, but this view seems often somewhat exaggerated.

The book covers some issues in the utilization of knowledge in quite different areas, such as:

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  the role of knowledge in the reporting system of a company;

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  exploring the internal knowledge base;

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  auditing the knowledge base;

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  the development of the knowledge base;

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  the effect of knowledge in innovation process;

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  using knowledge in pricing;

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  using knowledge in channel policy; and

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  using knowledge in costumer relations, etc.

This sample of topics shows the basic line of the book, and it certainly demonstrates the endeavour of the author “to push raisins into each cake on the table”, although not all the cakes are necessarily produced by the same recipe.

In the first part of the book the author intensively deals with questions of e‐business. He seems to put an equals sign in those chapters between e‐business and knowledge management issues, simply based on the fact that both areas use information technology on a large‐scale – although the author never states it in the book. In the second half of the book this “forced parallelism” disappears, and knowledge management appears in the text as a pure theoretical term.

Briefly summarizing this part of the review, it can be established that the author stresses the importance of knowledge in all fields of marketing and values the role of knowledge. E‐business and knowledge management are interwoven in the first part of the book, but in the second part e‐business is hardly mentioned.

Strengths and weaknesses of the book

The main message of the book and its main strength is the importance of knowledge in all aspects of business life and marketing. The reviewer thinks that anybody who reads the book carefully will gain new ideas regarding knowledge management and an appetite to raise his or her company's internal knowledge base to a higher level.

Another strength of the book is the credit given by the author to other authors' publications in this area, including an extensive review of the existing literature of the last decade. The strong academic background of the author can be easily discovered by the extensive references made to various experts throughout the chapters, as an honour to important authors in the given areas. In certain cases this type of book composition is somewhat disturbing since it is not an easy task for the reader to identify the author's original view among the large number of references. As a result, the reader has to concentrate heavily on the text in order to make this distinction himself/herself.

The third strength of the book is a good set of practical examples and smaller case studies found in all chapters. This proves to be very useful, since the rest of the book is strongly theoretical in nature. With this solution, practical applications of the theoretical statements can be followed: even the theory can be understood much better with a so‐called “parallel reading”.

The weaknesses of the book are not numerous, but some are certainly worth mentioning. As the reviewer mentioned before, in the first chapters the author could not decide what to give most emphasis to: e‐business or knowledge management. The winner is the latter: e‐business issues are not emphasized in the second half of the book. The question arises as to why these two areas are mixed. Certainly a lot of similarities can be found between them, but if it is true, why are e‐business issues not stressed in the later chapters? As a result, the reader cannot escape the thought that the author wanted to give way to fashion somewhat. The reviewer finds the so‐called “theoretical part” of the book quite valuable, but e‐business could have been given less attention.

Another weakness of the book according to the reviewer is that the author applies the questions of knowledge management to practically all aspects of marketing, and occasionally this seems to be quite a “forced” approach. The endeavour of the author, namely to emphasize the importance of knowledge in marketing, can be welcomed, but applying it in every case may not be easily justified. To put it simply: somewhat less “forced theory” could have proved more helpful and authentic. It is especially in the chapter dealing with pricing and distribution that the author seems to be not very “talkative” – the incorporation of knowledge management issues into it is not quite relevant. If the author wants to write about pricing and distribution policy, then more content might have been incorporated into the chapter. Otherwise, this part could have been left out.

Finally, the reviewer has to mention one area which the author did not deal with at all. This is the question of information security. If a reader applies the knowledge management methods suggested by the book in an individual company, a very valuable database can certainly be created there. If not enough attention is paid to safeguard this information base, valuable intangible property may leak out into unauthorized hands, especially to competitors. It is known from the practice of information technology that data is mostly stored on computers, especially on the intranet, which is highly vulnerable. The author does not mention this possible threat for the company when discussing the application of an up‐to‐date knowledge management system. One can assume that users are always friendly and bona fide, but in today's world, unfortunately, this is not always the case. Protecting value is very important, and the book should have drawn our attention to it.

The value of the book for the profession

The real value of the book is in stressing the importance of knowledge management for the marketing efforts of a company. This book encourages marketing managers to create an up‐to‐date knowledge base and use it more effectively. The value of the book for academia is twofold:

1. 1.

   it offers a professional review of the relevant literature of the last decade; and

2. 2.

   it offers some new theoretical approaches, enriching our view of the role of knowledge management in marketing.

For the student this book is not an easy evening's reading. Therefore, it is recommended primarily for master‐level students who are already acquainted with the basics of marketing, as well as for PhD students, especially those who are inclined towards theoretical questions.

For the practitioner, the most important value is its main message: knowledge management in marketing is very important for the long‐term success of a company, and therefore more resources have to be mobilized in this field. Furthermore, the book contains numerous important practical examples, and marketing managers may also profit from those positive cases.

A final word for the potential reader

The reviewer considers the book of Ian Chaston especially important for those experts – both from academia and business – who are capable enough to pick up the real novelties, especially from some theoretical chapters of the second half of the book. Practical cases contain an important set of information, and they are valuable for nearly everybody.

The most important message, however, is the importance of knowledge management in marketing and business in general, which could be the cornerstone of the long‐lasting success of a company. The book is therefore recommended to marketing theory enthusiasts and those who want to apply theory in practice in the new information age.