Marketing Revolution

Citation

Mitchell, R.B. (2007), "Marketing Revolution", International Marketing Review, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 242-243. https://doi.org/10.1108/02651330710741848

This book is nicely written, easy to follow and moves the reader from the changing sociology of the consumer, the ever moving landscape of competition, strategic planning, customer service, corporate culture, and finally to implementation. The editors have clearly documented each stage of their process with examples to illustrate their point and provide the reader with a sense of a solid foundation for the approach they are espousing.

The book has 12 chapters. The first chapter entitled “Why revolutionize marketing” delves into the changing role and attitude of today's consumers and seeks to establish the foundation for the remaining chapters. With Chapter 1 setting the tone, the editors launch into a discussion of competition; measuring the effectiveness of marketing; customer satisfaction; aligning the marketing function with the corporate agenda; and, the beginnings of the marketing revolution. Amazingly, they have accomplished the aforementioned in 22 pages. Chapters 3 addresses: customer insight; customer retention; and, the “new” customer. Finally, the authors pose the question: “Why are changing population demographics being ignored by marketer and why do marketers need better customer insights?” Moving to the next chapter, the authors highlight strategic planning followed by the next chapter addressing segmentation. The next step by the authors, Chapter 6 discusses branding and how to live the brand. Chapter 7 takes the reader back to the customer and customer relationship management followed by Chapter 8 that talks about customer insight to customer action. Chapter 9 moves the reader into operational analytics setting the stage for Chapter 10 that addresses data mining methodology and marketing resource management. Finally, Chapter 11 considers today's marketers and provides, in the authors' opinion eight key steps to accomplish a “revolutionary change.” Chapter 12 contains a number of case studies for the reader to consider.

After reading the full text and reviewing the cases presented by the authors, the reviewer is not quite sure of the book's purpose. On the one hand, the book might be used to open the eyes of traditional CEO's, EVP's and/or directors of marketing providing them with perhaps a sense that there are alternative approaches. As an example, the book tends to challenge senior executives to consider the importance of marketing, changing sociology and in‐depth understanding of the customer. In that regard, the authors have succeeded. But the reviewer questions the “innovativeness” of the thinking since those companies that are serious about marketing have been addressing those changes for sometime. Yet, the book is more of a tease than it is fully substantive. An approach that might have been considered is the more classical “Integrated Marketing Communications” wherein product, price, distribution, sales, communication and packaging work synergistically as one unit. One can develop an overview in 20 or so pages. However, one cannot drill down to the base and build a full, thorough understanding of a subject in those 20 pages. The book clearly cannot be used in the classroom in that it does not provide the reader with sufficient depth, definitions, questions or a firm comprehension of the full marketing process. Perhaps the authors might consider adding cases for analysis and/or a clearer understanding of the marketing process. Students might be able to use the book as supplemental reading, perhaps in graduate school, but only once they have a full in‐depth background of marketing.

After giving considerable thought to this book one needs to wonder if this is IBM's revolutionary approach to marketing since a large number of cases and research used to support many of the concepts were IBM related. Is the purpose of the book to advance IBM's consultancy business? If it is true that the book is being used to advance IBM's marketing revolution consulting business, then the reviewer applauds IBM for its innovativeness, imagination and marketing tactic. What then have we learned and how can we employ the ideas/thoughts contained in the book and its concept. “We are only limited by our imagination.”