A business book looks at marketing as a tool to expedite company growth.
In this work, Patterson (Marketing Metrics in Action, 2008, etc.) centers her argument on the metaphor of marketing as a wheel driving a business, with key elements (customer insights, segmentation, operations) serving as the spokes. The volume covers each element in its own chapter, explaining why the component matters, offering examples of successful implementation, and demonstrating how it can have a noticeable effect on sales. The author makes an effective case for marketing’s importance within the corporate structure (“Marketing’s primary responsibility is to help the company accelerate growth, create value, and improve performance for the sole purpose of acquiring and retaining profitable customers”) and presents specific examples that give readers concrete ideas for their own implementation. The chapter on customer insights, for instance, includes nearly two dozen questions marketers should be able to answer (“Are there protected niches we can exploit and unique ways we can counter threats?”) while the one on innovation presents the cautionary tale of a videophone that failed in the 1990s, in contrast to the success of similar products in the 2010s. Each chapter concludes with a bulleted list of key takeaways and commentary to guide readers’ application of the material to their own circumstances. The book, while well written, does contain a fair amount of business jargon. The decision to treat “marketing” as a proper noun in these pages (which Patterson makes a lengthy case for) gives the text a quirkiness that may not appeal to all readers, and the wheel metaphor, while strong, is sometimes overdone (“Your axle will be well lubricated and ready to drive you forward”). But on the whole, the industry argot does not obscure the work’s many solid insights, which are based on Patterson’s professional experience and academic research. (A full list of citations appears at the end.) Both novice and veteran marketers should find the volume of use in developing corporate strategy.
A longtime advocate for marketing makes a thoughtful case for its importance in all businesses.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9710086-2-5
Page Count: 207
Publisher: Violetear Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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