Book Review Marketing Management: First European Edition

Book Review
Marketing Management: First European Edition
P. Kotler, K. Lane Keller, M. Brady, M. R. V. Goodman, and T. Hansen
ISBN 9780273718567
Submitted
By
Fathimathul Irfana C.
Reg. No. MDATDCM102
Enrollment No. 1980647
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT

INTRODUCTION
Humans stand out from other living beings by their peculiar nature of brain activities. Through
the evolution they continuously utelise the power of thinking to ease and comfort day-to-day life.
To give an immediate example, consider how people travel from one point to another. Earlier, we
used our foot to travel killometers. Soon we realized one can exploit animals such as horses and
donkeys for the purpose. After the discovery of wheels, the style of traveling took a leap! Now,
we can literally fly at an unbelievable speed. A lot had happened when the cave men became the
modern people. The life style is now more structured, and we worry about social and
economical stabilities. We have learned a lot! We make energy from the nucleus of atoms, and
we talk about black holes. Medical field has made unbelievable advancements. What about
economics? The story of economics is not different from other aspects. Let’s focus on one of the
important branches of economic studies, i.e., Marketing! In some ways marketing is as old as
civilization itself. Selling/buying activities were established long ago. Of course these traders
would not have called their activities marketing and their activities may seem far removed from
someone ordering airline tickets via a website.
The concept of marketing that we now see has more to do with developments during the
industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. This was a period of rapid social change
driven by technological and scientific innovation ( BBC history website is an excellent source to
look at). One result was that for the first time the production of goods was separated from their
consumption. Mass production, developing transport infrastructure and growing mass media
meant that producers needed to, and could develop more sophisticated ways of managing the
distribution of goods.
The world of marketing began to change during the 1990s. A product or service was created and
instantly a brand was developed. Companies began to realize they could focus on selling more
high-quality products and build a better brand for them. This resulted in companies experiencing
an improvement in their margins, but also expanded their reputation. It also increased the
awareness of the brand they had created. Some companies with a private label were able to
improve their market share by more than 49 percent (wikipedia).

With the evolution of the web, websites started being an essential tool for commercialization.
During the late 1990s, simple company websites that were text-based began to flourish. They
were initially utilized to provide information about a company’s products or services. As the
number of websites increased and it became harder to attract the attention on visitors who arrived
on the internet, it no longer became good enough to just have a website. You needed to
implement online marketing strategies to stand out from the crowd.
Marketing management is an ever growing field of study, that require a serious attention. Here, I
review one of the outstanding text books on marketing management. “Marketing Management”
by P. Kotler, K. Lane Keller, M. Brady, M. R. V. Goodman, and T. Hansen. The book is
comprehensive, current, and engaging. The review report is presented as follows: I, we briefly
introduce the authors followed by a fairly detailed description of some general aspects presented
in the text including important ideas and concepts in the field of marketing. I will try to
summarize the book before presenting my personal view points.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Philip Kotler is the S. C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the
Kellogg School of Management. He has been honored as one of the world's leading marketing
thinkers. He received his M.A. degree in economics (1953) from the University of Chicago and
his Ph.D. degree in economics (1956) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.)
and has received honorary degrees from twenty-one foreign universities. He is the author of over
57 books and over one hundred and fifty articles. He has been a consultant to IBM, General
Electric, Sony, AT&T, Bank of America, Merck, Motorola, Ford, and others. The Financial
Times included him in its list of the top 10 business thinkers.
Kotler is known for popularizing the definition of the marketing mix. Besides, he helped to
create the field of social marketing that focuses on helping individuals and groups modify their
behaviors toward healthier and safer living styles. He also created the concept of "demarketing"
to aid in the task of reducing the level of demand. He also developed the concepts of
"prosumers," "atmospherics," and "societal marketing." He is regarded as, "The Father of
Modern Marketing" by many scholars. His three major contributions to the field of marketing
and management are; First, he has done more than any other writer or scholar to promote the
importance of marketing, transforming it from a peripheral activity, bolted on to the more
"important" work of production. Second, he continued a trend started by Peter Drucker, shifting
emphasis away from price and distribution to a greater focus on meeting customers' needs and on
the benefits received from a product or service. Third, he has broadened the concept of
marketing from more selling to a general process of communication and exchange and has
shown how marketing can be extended and applied to charities, museums, performing arts
organizations, political parties, and many other non-commercial situations.
He has been Chairman of the College of Marketing of the Institute of Management Sciences, a
Director of the American Marketing Association, a Trustee of the Marketing Science Institute, a
Director of the MAC Group, a member of the Yankelovich Advisory Board, and a member of the
Copernicus Advisory Board. He was a member of the Board of Governors of the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago and a member of the Advisory Board of the Drucker Foundation. He has