Managing Marketing in the 21st Century is about understanding how to develop market strategy, implement market offers, and manage the marketing process. This is not a book that attempts to describe all there is to know about marketing, but focuses on what the prospective manager needs to know. Managing Marketing in the 21st Century differs from other senior undergraduate and introductory graduate marketing texts. The author takes a position on what he believes is a better or worse course of action for marketers. Marketing is an applied field; the author believes he should provide guidance for good marketing practice.

Furthermore, Managing Marketing in the 21st Century focuses on the manager, not just the marketer. For readers committed to a career in marketing (and we hope there are many), this book forms a solid foundation as you study marketing further and deeper. But the vast majority of you will not work in marketing departments, but will instead become senior executives, general managers, CFOs, and CEOs. This book is also for you because a solid understanding and appreciationfor marketing is central to virtually every important decision senior managers make. This may be the only marketing course many of you will take, so Managing Marketing in the 21st Century provides what every general manager and senior executive must know about marketing. Marketing activity lies at the core of leading and managing a business, by providing the focus for interfacing with customers. Marketing is also the source of insight about customers and market forces (complementors, competitors, supply chain, publics), external forces, and the business environment in general. Marketing is concerned with the firm’s long-run relationships with customers as well as shortrun sales activity. Marketing must be a major organizational thrust, not just a responsibility assigned to a single functional department. For this reason, Managing Marketing in the 21st Century emphasizes the role of marketing in creating value for customers — leading directly to the creation of value for other In addition to a general upgrade, the 5th edition of MM21C introduces some genuinely new ideas into marketing that, we believe, will be significantly beneficial for marketing practitioners:

■ Customer insight. In previous editions, we addressed customer insight in a single chapter; in the fifth edition we separate insight into consumers (Chapter 3) from insight into organization customers — business, government, not-for-profit institutions (Chapter 4).

■ Market entities. We reject the view that market insight should focus only on the 3Cs — customers, company, competitors:

– Customers should be treated as a separate category. These are the entities to which the firm offers value in seeking revenues.

– Supply chain, publics, and complementors are important market entities whose actions may have a profound impact on the firm’s ability to achieve its objectives.

– Complementors are especially important. We devote an entire chapter to this topic.

■ Marketing mix. Paralleling the 3Cs, marketing is often defined as the 4Ps — product, promotion, place, price. In this formulation, product is often a grab bag for all value the firm offers to customers. We depart from conventional thinking in three ways:

– First, we affirmatively accept that the term product encompasses the value the firm offers customers. Thus, the firm may offer value in the form of a tangible (physical) good or as an intangible service.

– Second, the firm may provide customers with additional value in the form of support services.

– Third, we prefer to use the term distribution, rather than force-fit a P into place. Hence, the 4Ps become PSPDP — Product, Support Services, Promotion, Distribution, Price.

The material within these covers comprises two separate sets of items:

■ All the typical contents of a textbook — words, tables, figures — that you associate with a regular book. You purchased these items at a highly advantageous price — much lower than competitor books from traditional publishers. We hope you find the price/value relationship to your advantage. 
■ Complimentary access to additional learning materials. These materials comprise video interviews, specially produced documents, and links to publicly available content. You did not purchase this access; it is provided to you separately at no charge. All such items are noted in the book by four-digit alphanumeric codes and are easily accessed at www.axcessvids.com from your personal computer, tablet, or smartphone.