Kotler On Marketing

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If you had to chose one person who more than any other has contributed to the literature on marketing, it would have to be Philip Kotler. This is the 15th book in a glittering academic and writing career that started in the early sixties and includes Marketing Management, voted by the Financial Times as one of the 50 best business books ever. More than any other individual, Kotler is responsible for making the "marketing paradigm" (the idea that you prosper by "managing demand") ascendant not only in business, but also in politics, human relationships and art. So when Kotler speaks, the world should listen. This book addresses the problems of how to market in a globalised ultra-competitive world where technology is developing at a pace even technologists can't keep up with. ed firmly at marketing practitioners, the book s to turn the vagaries of the latest marketing thinking and the often bafflingly complex implications of new technology into hard nosed, actionable marketing practice. It's a tough brief but he carries it off with deep in and great panache. Advice on marketing is usually a graveyard when it comes to literary style and innovative thought because it is so easy to get bogged down in details. But Kotler brilliantly manages to do the nitty gritty stuff while retaining a critical overview. For instance in the chapter on "Designing The Marketing Mix" he rightly suggests that two more "Ps" ought to be added to the 4 ps , (product, price, place and promotion) which constitute the fundamentals of the marketing managers job; those are Politics and Public Opinion. But he never gets too intoxicated with his own wisdom. "The issue is not whether there should be four six or ten Ps, so much as what is most helpful in designing marketing strategy," he says quite sensibly. Even if you know everything there is to know about marketing, this book will shed fresh light on it. And if, like the rest of us, you don't know everything, it would be hard to find a better place to start learning. --Alex Benady