amj Australasian Marketing Journal - ANZMAC

Book Reviews
In this review the second edition of the Schiffman et al. textbook
designed for the Australian market is examined; then the
wider issue of what should be in the consumer behaviour
curriculum is considered.
The textbook
This book is rather longer than the 7th US edition on which it
is based and contains a substantial amount of interesting
material that relates to Australia (and some on the larger Asia-
Pacific region). Lecturers can also obtain an instructor s
manual and PowerPoint slides on disk. The Chapter headings
show a familiar form and cover most of the material that we
would expect in a US book that defines the subject matter in
terms of decision-making, psychological process and social
structure. It also covers ethics, public policy, organisational
buying and social marketing. Compared with other texts, it
lacks material on behaviour in the store, investor behaviour,
use of the Internet and mathematical models. Relationship
marketing is scarcely treated (in the context of organisational
buying) and customer retention is not covered.
The layout of the book is clear and uses a limited amount of
colour. The level is introductory. The writing is direct and
easy to follow. The approach is descriptive and links
consumer behaviour to marketing (and market research) in a
seamless manner. I particularly liked the way in which measuring
instruments were introduced in both the book and
slides; these gave substance to the topic under discussion and
could be used in class exercises. One weakness in presentation
was that numbers in tables could have been reduced
consistently to two effective digits.
Regionalisation
The regionalisation of the text was generally well accomplished.
After the introduction, each chapter had at least one
case study; these were contributed by academics from universities
in the Asia-Pacific region. One of these, on the
Australian sex industry by Jennifer Beckman-Wong, would
never have been found in a straight US text. The advertising
that was used was largely regional and the brands that were
cited went well beyond Vegemite and Telstra though I thought
that the Australian and New Zealand wine brands could have
78 Australasian Marketing Journal 9 (1), 2001
Consumer Behaviour
(2nd Edition) Prentice Hall Australia
Leon Schiffman, David Bednall, Elizabeth Cowley, Aron O Cass, Judith Watson, & Leslie Kanuk (2001)
been mentioned more in the examples. Demographic data
were reported for Australia from the 1991 census. Here I think
that more attention to trends would have helped the presentation
and allowed inference to the present day. The crosscultural
treatment was interesting and there was a valiant
attempt to compare the value structures of Japanese and
Australian students. However, I tried in vain to find brute
facts about population sizes in the Asia-Pacific region.
I am not entirely convinced by the need to regionalise textbooks.
In Australia, such books are mostly US line extensions;
there is an indigenous product (Craig-Lees, Joy and
Brown 1995) but this is beginning to look dated. One effect of
adapting US books is delay — the US version came out a year
earlier and the consumer behaviour subject matter, as opposed
to the illustrations, did not look particularly fresh in the Asia-
Pacific version. For example, a fuller treatment of the Internet
might be expected in a book published in 2001. Also, we may
not like it but US brands and culture are well known and
widely appreciated by the young, particularly in Australia.
Japanese and Australian students probably know more about
the American way of life than they do about each other s
culture. I could see Japanese students preferring the US text
to the Australian one. Regionalisation of textbooks works best
for the social and cultural material and here I think Schiffman
et al. did a good job. The best case for regionalisation can be
made for foundation texts, such as this one, but, as treatments
become more demanding, the issues start to transcend cultural
specificity. Uncles (1998) has published a thoughtful
commentary on brand management in the Asia-Pacific region,
which bears on some of these issues.
Missing topics
I have mentioned some fields that were not covered; there was
also some more specific work which might have been
mentioned. Good research done by academics in Australia on
retail atmospherics (Areni and Kim 1993, Donovan et al.
1994) was absent, and advertising was scarcely treated (the
1987 Rossiter and Percy was cited, not the 1996 version).
Also, the enthusiasm for the Juster scale at Massey University
and the University of South Australia might have been repaid
by a treatment of this measure of purchase likelihood, partic-