Information Marketing

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2001), "Information Marketing", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 9, pp. 468-476. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.9.468.8

Jennifer Rowley is a well‐known writer in the field of management and information, and, as readers will know from books like The Electronic Library and Organizing Knowledge, she has a gift for explaining things well for busy practitioners and students. She has a further gift – that of bringing management and information together in exciting ways, reflecting the continual invasion of the information and knowledge field by new practice, and the growing inter‐relationships between effective management in libraries and information services and general management practice. Information Marketing, then, comes as no surprise: I knew I would enjoy it and did, learnt a lot from it (because it packages things well), and know that professionals, in libraries and academic work, will find it useful. It will go onto many reading lists wherever people want to have a short, readable, realistic, and topical book on information marketing. Rowley is Head of the School of Management and Social Sciences, Edge Hill University College, in England.

There are no surprises – a sign of how well the book targets its topics and its market. The shape of the book is clear, attractive, and logical. There is the interface between marketing and information work, with businesslike discussions of marketing and the information marketplace (with its growing numbers of customers, stakeholders, and consortia). As we go along, there are summary boxes with key facts and “reflect” activities, showing its educational intentions (good for students and for CPD at their various levels). Rowley rightly examines “customers” – how we segment and target them, their decision‐making behaviours, customer relationship management (CRM and the service encounter are now successfully fused). Convincingly we see how marketing approaches (such as Zeithaml’s SERVQUAL performance criteria) can be – and have been – applied to library and information services. Three short case studies help this along.

Then the information product, examined from a marketing perspective – the core benefits, the product life‐cycle – as well as from an information perspective (for example its quality). Branding and corporate identity play an increasingly important part in information product design and development, sales and distribution, and the ways in which the messages are communicated (marketing communications, advertising, promotion and PR) are increasingly important for cost‐conscious and income‐generating information services. An excellent chapter summarising pricing options (Rowley has written extensively and well on this elsewhere, and references are given here), and with a flourish on market research, strategy and planning, we are done. For each chapter there is a useful and up‐to‐date reading list. This is a very useful book following its own advice about being an information product which buyers, when told, want to buy. Hope a paperback comes out soon, because I can see many students buying it. Libraries too, for practice, CPD, and general professional interest. The marketing expert will find it rather too obvious, but it is not for them: they will not come looking for it.