Summary of key material – aspects of book
The book of marketing cases Understanding Marketing: A European Casebook – is a collection of short practical marketing cases related to European companies and their environment. The Community of European Management Schools Interfaculty Group on Marketing has responded in this way to a great demand for European marketing cases in business schools and firms involved in European marketing.
The authors of cases are scholars from various European universities and schools, the book contains cases from a variety of environments and business activities. There are cases from countries with highly developed markets and marketing structures as well as from Central European countries undergoing transition of their market structures.
The choice of cases is also rich, covering the large scope of marketing activities and areas included. It covers the principal areas such as:
strategic marketing;
international marketing;
business to business marketing;
product and branding strategies;
distribution and pricing strategies;
communication strategies; and
marketing research.
The listed issues of marketing are concisely but reasonably combined and provide very good starting points for class discussion and further analysis. As for the marketed products, the cases include commonly marketed products such as beverages, cosmetics, as well as special products and services.
In general, the book offers a mixed variety of short case studies representing some of the marketing problems and approaches of European firms in a modern changing environment.
Strengths and weaknesses of text
I see the main strengths of the book in:
representative choice of marketing problems and areas;
great variety of firms environments and approaches;
unique coordination and guidance of all included cases to provide a common basis for discussion and comparative studies;
conciseness of cases with following additional information resources;
interesting content of cases even for non instructed readers;
challenging insights into firms marketing problems and strategies; and
inciting questions and hints following the description of cases.
As for the weaker points of the book I would mention only a few:
- (1)
Due to the conciseness of the cases it was not possible to include more relevant information input as the basis for subsequent discussion.
- (2)
Because of the same reason it was not possible to include in some cases the important relevant problems and issues as e.g. the problem of security of data in case of Petrobank homebanking, and issues of specific environment in emerging markets.
- (3)
There are a few errors and misunderstandings as:
Page 96, end of second paragraph – “by a the various”.
Page 103, 3rd paragraph – “it is doesn’t look”.
Page 140, second paragraph – there is an incorrect statement – “Slovakia is raising tariffs to protect its own beer industry” – because of still existing customs union between Czech republic and Slovakia there are no import tariffs imposed on the part of Slovakia for Czech beers, instead of it there are import quotas limiting the importation of Czech beer.
Page 200, 3rd paragraph – “Migros‐Genossenschats‐Bund” instead of Migros‐Genoussenschafs‐Bund.
Compared with the strong points of the book the weak ones are only of marginal importance.
Values to marketing, academics, students and for practitioners
Marketing science and theory like every science and theory needs to have a solid background of relevant practical evidence and real life cases. Especially European marketing with a great variety of cultural, economic, legal and political environment provides a fairly good stuff for comparative studies in marketing. From this point of view I highly appreciate and welcome the book.
Academics and students will have a very good tool, sources of information, and the basis for further research and discussion. The book is also a very good guide, and the source of information as well as the basis for comparisons for the practitioners in marketing and business in general.
As a conclusion I may only express my congratulation to the authors, and to the editors for the publication of the book.
