Marketing: Connecting with Customers - Softcover

Gilbert D. Harrell, Ph.D., is Professor of Marketing, Eli Broad College of Business and Graduate School of Management, Michigan State University. In 2000, Dr. Harrell received a Michigan State University Librarian Computing and Technology Award in recognition of scholarly contributions. He also received the 1997 John D. and Dortha J. Withrow Endowed Teacher/Scholar Award, the 1996 Phi Chi Theta Professor of the Year Award, and the 1995 Gold Key National Honor Society Award for teaching excellence at Michigan State University. His teaching, research, and consulting activities focus on sustainable competitive advantage, building business value, consumer satisfaction, sales management, strategic planning, and relationship marketing. Dr. Harrell's publications have appeared in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Long Range Planning, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Affairs, Journal of Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Journal of Retailing, Business Topics, Journal of Logistics Information Management, Journal of Health Care Marketing, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and others. Dr. Harrell's doctorate degree is from Pennsylvania State University, where he was elected to the Phi Kappa Phi Honorary and the American Marketing Association Consortium. Both his bachelor's and Master's degrees are from Michigan State University.

Dr. Harrell is founder of Harrell & Associates, Inc., a professional consulting group, which specializes in service for strategic marketing management, visioning processes, communication strategies, sales management, and executive strategy development. His firm has helped implement the strategic marketing planning systems for several Fortune 500 companies.

How do you get connected? Compare two shopping experiences. In the first, you visit a large bookstore, look at the books, and choose one or two to purchase. You also look at some music CDs in the store and ask for help from the friendly employees. Then you stop for a cup of coffee at the store's cafe. In the second shopping experience, you go to a bookstore and are met by a personal shopping assistant, who greets you by name and asks if you would like some help. Based on your previous purchases, she has some suggestions. You listen but decide that none of them are really what you want now. Then the personal shopping assistant tells you that she knows what people in the area have bought. Are you interested? If so, you listen; otherwise, you start moving toward other aisles. As you go along, your personal shopping assistant silently follows. When you stop at a particular subject and pull a book off the shelf, she is ready with recommendations of similar books—no matter how specialized the topic. And she is just as helpful in the CD section. When you go to other stores, another specialized personal assistant will be ready to help.

Which experience do you prefer? By now you have probably guessed that the first visit is to a traditional store—a marketplace. The second is a visit to the Internet—a marketspace. You have a choice about where to shop, and millions of consumers are making that choice daily. Businesses also buy in either the marketplace or the marketspace—everything from computers and paper to steel and jet aircraft. They, too, must decide where to shop. Consider these shopping scenarios from the perspective of a company or nonprofit organization that is developing a strategy to reach purchasers with its goods and services. What is the best way to create a lasting base of loyal customers? You must connect with customers, or your strategy will fail. If you do connect—really connect—your company or organization will thrive. But developing a winning strategy is complex. Both marketplace and marketspace are in constant fluctuation. Everything about your business may change at any time—the products and services offered, the prices charged, distribution, the locations where sales take place, promotions, and information about your customers and competitors. Chances are you will need traditional marketing tools as well as new technologies to get a jump on the competition. That's what Marketing: Connecting with Customers is all about.

Everyone knows about the Internet revolution. And every principles of marketing textbook says that the Internet is changing the face of marketing. But our organizing theme is "connecting with customers," and it will give you a better sense of how this change is influencing business actions. You will learn from hundreds of examples how organizations are winning customers around the world—some through innovative applications of traditional marketing tools, some with marketing's newest technology, and some through a unique blend of both.

The connecting with customers theme provides valuable insight into the dynamic world of marketing. Perhaps no other concept better expresses how marketing is changing and will change in the years ahead. The Internet is not the only thing driving change, but it has taken customer relationship management to new heights. Well into the future, customer relationship management will be a major force in marketing. Successful organizations will create the greatest customer satisfaction loyalty possible in creative environments, and they will do this ethically and globally, while recognizing customer diversity. Connecting with customers will be the common thread among the top performers in the coming years. Here is how that theme is featured in the text:

CONNECTING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY
Technology's effect on marketing is featured seamlessly in every chapter. Chapter 1 introduces the use of the Internet in such areas as scanning, communication, distribution, and research. Internet connections to more than 150 leading-edge companies are provided in opening stories and are highlighted in text examples, boxed examples, and cases.

CONNECTING THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS
Relationship marketing is a growing trend, and for good reason. By its very nature, a relationship requires a solid, lasting connection. Relationship marketing is introduced early in the book to emphasize the tremendous importance of satisfied, loyal customers. Meaningful relationships with customers happen when all employees within the organization develop the sensitivity, agility, and desire to satisfy customers' needs and wants. The ways to connect through relationships is emphasized throughout the book.

CONNECTING WITH DIVERSITY
Diversity among organizations and customers is a source of enormous economic strength and opportunity for marketers. Understanding diversity is needed by all marketers, even those who do not specifically target diverse segments. Clearly, progressive companies are moving toward a better understanding of the similarities and differences among various populations. Each chapter has a diversity box, a diversity heading, or both. In addition, diversity is the subject of several chapter-opening vignettes.

We live in a world in which the international theme is increasingly recognized as important in all aspects of business. Marketing nearly always takes place in the international arena, so the global connection is woven into numerous principles and examples. You will find headings and references on this subject throughout. Our book is different from others because it covers this material within every chapter, rather than separately.

Ethics are critical in all aspects of business, but particularly in marketing, because decisions in this area can affect many groups of people in very different ways. Marketers often face ethical issues. Every chapter of this book identifies ethical dilemmas marketers encounter. In each situation material is provided to help you think about the implications of marketing decisions and resolve inconsistencies. Real-life situations are discussed, and outcomes are identified.

The second edition of Marketing: Connecting with Customers builds on the foundation of the first edition but extends the customer relationship theme. The third chapter, "The Global Marketing Environment and E-Commerce," provides a framework for talking about e-commerce and the Internet later in the text. For example, we completely revamped chapter 10 to show how the Internet has transformed supply chain management.

We have added a new Bricks or Clicks feature at the end of every chapter to show how companies are embracing—or shunning—the Internet in their efforts to connect with customers. This feature lets us discuss such topics as Web-enabled customer-relationship management at Eastman Chemical Company, Web site visitor analysis through the eLuminate program at Coremetrics, business-to-business marketing at Covisint, and the changing face of intellectual property at Yet2.com.

New vignettes and examples are provided throughout the text to show you how companies—right now—are connecting with customers. These companies range from well-known e-commerce firms, such as eBay, Yahoo!, and Palm Pilot, to lesser-known EnronOnline, an energy company, and Cave, which provides an automatic virtual environment.

A successful marketing course has many challenges. Students demand a lively presentation with up-to-the-minute examples, technology provides an enormous amount of material that can be integrated into the course, and there is less time to prepare for all of it. Prentice Hall has been conducting research into the most effective ways to deliver ancillary materials and suggestions on the most useful materials to provide to the teaching package for Marketing: Connecting with Customers. Your suggestions are most appreciated and will help improve these materials further.

Note: Many of the supplements listed below are available in different formats. Print versions are available through your local PH representative along with 3.5" diskette versions. You can also download many of these materials from our Web site, www.prenhall.com/harrell . See below for a more detailed description of the Web resources, which have been developed to support the marketing course.

It might sound like piano lessons, but it's not. It's more Jimi Hendrix. A complete experience in which students are sucked into a fully interactive movie via a CD-ROM that runs like a TV mini-series. Actors. Lights. Storylines. Student Interaction. Throughout the book, students will follow the exploits of "CANGO," a fictional e-commerce start up. They'll watch (and help) as CANGO launches an IPO, goes global, and handles a myriad of problems. And they'll have fun doing it. The Mastering Marketing CD-ROM is available shrink-wrapped with the text at a small additional charge.

This helpful teaching resource contains chapter overviews, annotated outlines, class exercises, relevant stories and examples to help in class preparation, discussion notes for in-text company cases, and answers to end-of-chapter questions and exercises. The manual also contains a complete listing of all the ancillary teaching resources available for this course along with an overview of the myPHLIP Web site.

Prepared by Gil Harrell, this study guide provides students an overview of each chapter, summarizing the major topics and concepts, and strengthens understanding through situational exercises involving cases, chapter highlights, and quizzes. This guide is also available as an online version.

The Test Item File, prepared by Gil Harrell, contains more than 1,400 items, including multiple choice, true-false, and essay questions. These questions are graded for difficulty and page references to the text are included. The questions are available in a Test Item File booklet and through the PH Custom Test program (in Windows and Mac versions).

A set of PowerPoint slides is available to adopters. The PowerPoint 4.0 files include over 175 slides and present complete lectures, transitional notes from one slide to the next, and selected key text figures (with accompanying note slides).

The first set of acetates includes hard copy of the PowerPoint slides (for those who prefer to use an overhead projector in class) along with a selection of key graphics from the text.

A complete set of acetates of recent ads, both domestic and international, is available. Over 75 ads have been collected, together with teaching notes for each one.

A full video library is available to adopters. Over forty segments, focusing on major concepts in marketing, showcase a variety of companies from Nike to Starbucks. These videos are accompanied by written video cases that can be downloaded from the Web site. A custom selection of these print video cases can also be packaged with each student copy of the text at no additional charge (customer value pack). The video segments range in length from 8 to 15 minutes and include up-to-the-minute "inside" stories of companies around the world.

Both professors and students can visit the Web site for Marketing: Connecting with Customers! Go to www.prenhall.com/harrell . The interactive portal contains chapter objectives and faculty resources. Study guide questions for each chapter can be assigned, and students can e-mail results—complete with a grade report—directly to instructors. On the faculty side, the PowerPoint slides, Instructor's Manual, and other resources may be accessed.