This book of 17 chapters comprises six parts: introduction and overview; theglobal marketing environment; analysing and targeting global market opportunities; global marketing strategy; creating global marketing programmes; managing the global marketing programme. Part II includes a welcome chapter on “information technology environment” that enhances considerably this section of the book.
The Preface tells us that the origins of this book can be traced to the publication in 1974 of Keegan’s Multinational Marketing Management. It also tells us that “this edition not only continues the path‐breaking tradition of this book but also represents a completely new approach to the discussion of global marketing issues”. Furthermore, we are told that there is “an attempt to lend a distinctly European perspective to global marketing”. However, the structure of the book is essentially identical to any other major international/global marketing textbook, and in terms of “differentiation”, the book does not succeed in communicating clearly the “completely new approach”. Second, from a publisher’s perspective, there may be a desire to take a textbook that has been a major success in the USA, and with some product adaptation and rebranding, develop a textbook that will meet the requirements of the European market. In this respect, the book is excellent for European students, especially those in Continental Europe, as there are many references to European companies. On the other hand, surely the essence of global marketing is that practitioners and students need to abandon regional focus, and instead look much further afield for opportunities and insights.
Although this book compares very favourably with most other textbooks of this type, and includes references to useful Web‐sites, as well as case studies, the book disappoints precisely because in Chapter 1 the authors touch upon the vital importance of stakeholder value. In so doing, they identify the opportunity to present a global marketing textbook that is very different from the numerous other offerings presently available. By making stakeholder value the lynchpin for the entire book, a quite different structure is suggested and the cases could analyse the extent to which businesses thrived or suffered as a consequence of their commitment or neglect of stakeholder value.
In this regard, Chapter 1 opens with the affirmation that “we live in a global marketplace”. This is reinforced by inviting us to consider our immediate environment as we read the book: is the computer on our desk a “low‐priced PC clone from Taiwan or perhaps a Macintosh designed in the United States andmanufactured in Ireland … the coffee you are sipping is from Latin America or Africa … Your sweater could be from the latest fashion from Italy’s Benetton … Welcome to the new millennium. Yesterday’s marketing fantasy has become today’s reality: the world has turned into a global village”. But needless to say, others have different questions. Is our expensive US‐branded lap‐top that was until recently made in the EU now made in Eastern Europe by a rapidly internationalising Taiwanese subcontractor? What are the prospects for the thousands paid off as shareholder‐oriented multinationals decide to focus upon higher value‐added activities? Are our US designed branded sports shoes made in distant Asian factories where young, mainly female employees work in horrendous conditions?
Today, the very arrival of the global village has not delivered the expected Utopia. Instead, for many global corporations, it has ushered in a nightmare in which they are the targets of an increasing number of protesters. Seattle, Prague, London, Genoa is the backlash to the global village. The biggest challenge confronting so many of the most successful global giants is that they have belatedly recognised the importance of stakeholder value. A global marketing textbook that addresses this concept will genuinely “break new ground”, and contribute to perhaps the critical issue that will in future years confront today’s students of global marketing.
