Market-Based Management (5th Edition)

This unique book is built around a performance orientation and the belief that real learning occurs only with the application of knowledge. It emphasizes market-based management–with a focus on the linkages between marketing strategy and profitability, and provides a systematic method for learners to evaluate the profit impact of a marketing strategy.

Coverage that goes beyond marketing fundamentals features a three-fold integration of market-driven strategy, customer satisfaction, and profitable growth–giving readers the tools and techniques for delivering higher levels of customer satisfaction, marketing productivity and profitability. A special effort was made to include more coverage of customer loyalty marketing, performance metrics, customer relationship marketing, and brand and product line strategies.

For anyone interested in strategic marketing.

Hats of to Roger Best for coming up with a book that's truly different. The approach is refreshingly down-to-earth, almost nerdy, including a lot of frameworks for financial or qualitative analysis that would be useful to any marketing manager in his or her daily life. Although it can be used as an introductory marketing textbook, you'll find a lot of material here that you don't find in Kotler and Kotler-clones, so I also recommend it to people who've had an intro marketing course, and who want to move beyond the basics. Likewise, this would be a great book for practicing marketing managers who've been out in the field a couple of years, and want to brush up on the basics, without wading through the usual definitions and useless frameworks in other intro textbooks.

The entire book is in black and white, lacking the usual fancy graphics, and it is only about half the length of other textbooks. I actually find that refreshing, and it is an extension the substance-over-hype approach behind this book.