Marketing is a field that is evolving all the time and
often at a very dramatic rate. Witness, for example, the
changes taking place in advertising. Media are rapidly
fragmenting with a multitude of television and radio
channels trying to reach consumers, many of whom
are moving more of their leisure time to the Internet
and their mobile phones. This presents real challenges
for both the media owner and the advertiser trying to
catch up with an ever more elusive audience.
This book is about marketing in the modern world.
Marketing is a real-life, exciting activity that everyone
is exposed to on a daily basis. Therefore, with its
emphasis on including a vast array of marketing applications
and examples, this new edition aims to bring
this reality to life for the reader. In all there are a total
of 76 new inserts detailing issues of marketing practice.
A special effort has been made to include
marketing topics that fit within the realm of the
modern student. Therefore, for example, the book
includes features on the Apple iPod, promotional messaging,
tattooing, male grooming, MTV, Madonna,
Diesel and Sony PlayStation, to name but a few.
The range of features achieves other objectives as
well. The e-Marketing vignettes point to up-to-the
minute trends that may change aspects of marketing
practice in the future. Interactive television, weblogs,
RFID tags and web analytics are cases in point. Care
has also been taken to ensure a wide geographic
spread. As well as the UK and Ireland, there are features
on companies and brands from Finland,
Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, The
Netherlands and the USA. Additional examples are
included throughout the text from companies in the
rest of Europe and around the world. The vignettes
also feature many smaller firms, such as Naty
(Sweden), Fopp (UK), Riverford (UK) and Lily
O’Brien’s (Ireland), as well as the better-known
global organizations such as Boeing, Nokia,
Manchester United and Singapore Airlines. The structure of the book
Despite the pace of change, the fundamentals of marketing
remain the same. Therefore this book retains
its original goal of focusing on these fundamentals.
While most of the existing marketing principles textbooks
have become ever longer and more detailed,
this book aims to be concise, returning to and examining
the core foundations of marketing. For this
reason it will appeal, in particular, to instructors who
teach ‘Introduction to Marketing’ as a half-year
course or one-semester module.
We have removed the separate sections of the last
edition and now have 12 chapters that broadly equate
with the marketing planning framework shown in
Figure 1. The early chapters deal with understanding
the nature of customers and markets—the starting
point of any marketing activity. We then move on to discuss the marketing mix for both products and services.
And we close by pulling all of this together
within a detailed discussion of marketing planning
and strategy.
2006 McGraw-Hill Education Europe