Jakarta (JP): In an interview last month, the editor of Business Marketing magazine asked Philip Kotler -- we all know he is a marketing guru -- how he could be ""married"" to marketing for such a long time, 38 years. Kotler replied easily: ""The marketplace is endlessly fascinating. The stories read like a novel. There is a never-ending stream of new companies arising to serve the market in a new way. I know that I wouldn't get the same kick out of researching and teaching accountancy.""
From year to year, decade to decade, marketing is constantly changing. And when it changes, there always emerges new players, new strategies, new consumers and, of course, new ""stories"". It is this fact that always makes Kotler feel challenged and gives him the strength to ""wrestle"" with marketing. These changes have also motivated this Kellogg professor to untiringly explore, find and develop new ideas for the promotion of this field of science.
Still fresh in mind is Kotler's long exploration, which started in the early 1960s, when he began approaching marketing from a managerial point ofview. Then, in the 1970s, he started to direct marketing toward a more scientific approach through the use of a modeling concept in the decision-making process. Up to now, he extends the scope of handling marketing, which does not only include products and services but also other importantissues, such as people, places, ideas, experiences and organizations.
This book serves as a summary of Kotler's ideas during his long exploration of the marketing world. The book's contents were taken from papers of his presented at various seminars and lectures over the past 20 years. In this book, Kotler analyzes various issues which cover a wide range of topics, from brand building, marketing intelligence, marketing mix and targeting to electronic marketing. All of this is packed into four segments of analysis: strategic marketing, tactical marketing, administrative marketing and transformational marketing.
This book is interesting because its subjects are fairly different from the genre of his previous books. If we analyze Kotler's previous books, we will find two categories. The first category contains books written with a textbook approach, which gives a ""serious"" impression and a scientific style of presentation. Grouped in the second category are books whose contents are an application of the strategic marketing model he developed into various objects, such as products, services, people, nations, organizations, places and ideas. Books classified in the second category are Kotler's favorite, including Marketing Place, Strategic Marketing for Educational Institutions, Marketing Nations, and Museum Strategies and Marketing, which was published last year. These books can only be ""comfortable"" reading materials in lecture rooms or libraries.
His latest book is somewhat distinctive. It is relatively less serious inits presentation and has a stronger practical nuance compared to his previous books. Here, Kotler presents more writing on marketing tricks compared to marketing theories. Kotler also reveals marketing issues in a wider and more distinct scope in a format which is relatively short and easy to understand. This more practical format is easy to understand, because, as he has already said, the materials were the reflection of his activities and experiences during a period of 20 years as a lecturer and a consultant for a number of major companies in the world, such as Shell, AT&T, IBM, Ford and GE.
This book is interesting because -- again different from his previous book genre -- he analyzes various new and up-to-the-minute themes in various fields from database marketing, relationship marketing, high-tech marketing, global marketing, to marketing on the Internet. In his analysis on marketing on the Internet, for example, he critically discusses various issues on changing consumer buying behavior and how a company handles the changes to win a pitch. In his analysis on marketing mix, Kotler again critically uncovers the 4P (product, price, place, promotion) principles ofJerome McCarty, which he adjusts to various latest developments. He, for example, stresses the need for marketers to make the 4Cs (customer value, cost to the customer, convenience, communication) as a platform to run the 4P strategy.
Indeed, this book is not as scientific or serious as Kotler's previous books, but I am sure it can provide a provocative insight because of the great variety of issues and ideas presented by the world's most renowned marketing guru. Yuswohadi
