Gurus On Marketing

Peter’s on marketing and marketing issues
The themes covered in ‘Thriving On Chaos’ include ‘creating niches’
and ‘differentiating commodities’; providing quality as perceived by
the customer; providing superior service; achieving total customer
responsiveness; becoming obsessed with listening to customers;
turning manufacturing into a marketing weapon; making sales and
service forces into heroes.
Customers and marketing occupy half his book. Marketing issues
include differentiation – he makes the point that:
‘… differentiation only happens when the customer understands
the difference’; quality as perceived by customers; providing service
excellence – ‘Consider every customer to be a potential lifelong
customer.’ and ‘Attend especially to the intangible attributes of
the product and service; achieve total customer responsiveness
and create a partnership relationship with suppliers’ – ‘Adversarial
relations with suppliers, distributors (and all members of the distribution
channel), and ultimate end users must be quickly replaced
with partnership relations.’; adopt an international perspective –
examine joint ventures and alliance opportunities; stand out from
the growing crowd of competitors; listen to your customers and
those who are at the coalface; integrate manufacturing with
marketing – ‘make manufacturing or operations a – or the – prime
marketing tool.’ Focus on sales staff and sales training.
The rest of the book is adapted to ‘enablers’, the things companies
must do, such as management style and structure, to achieve superior
performance.
In my view this book is ‘a must read’ for marketing students and marketing
practitioners.
The customer theme is incorporated on his next book ‘The Pursuit of
WOW!’
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GURUS ON MARKETING