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Ten Deadly Marketing Sins
Book

Ten Deadly Marketing Sins

Signs and Solutions

Philip Kotler
Wiley, 2004
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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Well Structured

Recommendation

Increasingly, management is holding marketing departments responsible for making expensive mistakes and not contributing to profits. What’s worse, marketers do not seem able to reverse the tide. That’s where professor Philip Kotler’s concise handbook becomes valuable. Kotler presents commonsense solutions to these problems by describing his version of the 10 deadliest marketing sins and how to atone for them. He cites specific examples to drive home his points. This breezy, easy book is devoted to giving marketing practitioners advice that enables them to regain the high ground and lift marketing back into prominence in the corporate hierarchy. If you want to market your products, your department and your career, getAbstract.com suggests inviting Prof. Kotler over for this little chat.

Summary

Marketing Department: Take the Credit or Get the Blame

As companies become more complex, global and competitive, marketing departments are being blamed for events both inside and outside their control. In some firms, marketing departments only control promotions and advertising. At other companies, corporate strategists, operations officers and even the treasurer have assumed marketing responsibilities or oversight. As a result, marketing gets blamed for more failures than it actually causes.

That's unfortunate. Once, companies viewed their marketing departments as founts of corporate brand strategies with specific responsibilities for price, placement, promotion and product. But while management often gets better profit-loss pictures from other departments, marketing expenses cannot be tied directly to increasing profits. Marketing faces ever greater challenges in supporting national brand-building projects, increasing customer loyalty and building product differentiation, while also containing expenses.

To break this cycle, focus your marketing department on creating and launching new products that are bought, not sold. To regain its original position...

About the Author

Philip Kotler is the S.C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the author of many books on marketing.

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