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In the book Improve Your Marketing to Grow Your Business published by Wharton School Publishing, Hunter Hastings shares his insights on the functioning of globalized economies and the evolution of marketing strategies to fit the electronic age. The author employs real life examples and shares his invaluable marketing experience accumulated under diverse business environments, making the book a rich and interesting torrent of knowledge.

Introduction The author emphasizes the importance of integrating the power of information technology (IT) with marketing by illustrating how companies the world over have used IT to optimize supply side functions like manufacturing and logistics. He compares various supply side and demand side functions to better understand the unique factors influencing growth on the demand side. He adds that accumulating customer insights would help build a better knowledge base and help companies be more innovative in their approach. He reiterates how technology in the form of enterprise marketing management software could help amass critical data needed to create more targeted marketing programs and effectively reach more potential customers. With technology becoming more affordable and widespread, anyone with limited resources can have quick access to massive amounts of data. Hence, for any organization to capitalize on this data and stand out from the crowd, the key factor is to learn to analyze the data and interpret it as useful knowledge at a faster pace compared to the competition (pxxi). It is critical for any organization to use information to its advantage by fusing it as a key component of its everyday operation including marketing. By incorporating IT into marketing, an organization can transform the marketing function from a mere cost-consuming art to a well-organized science that guarantees return on investment (pxxiii).

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Preface Restructuring marketing processes, increasing focus on consumer insights, incorporating technology and developing marketing metrics to measure growth are the four factors that the author considers to be important in developing a new approach towards marketing. Target retail chain has mastered its marketing strategy and enjoys solid brand loyalty from its customers, in spite of not offering the cheapest prices. It also creates a better brand image by compensating its employees better. Targets unconventional yet clear marketing plan caters to a hip and trendy target audience by offering better in-store experience, trendier products and whimsical advertising (Arlen 2001). It also lays a lot of emphasis on customer feedback. With the advent of globalization, lesser developed nations have definitely been affected in more ways than one. Information explosion through the Internet has made consumers very well aware of these aspects of an organizations business. Concerns over big corporations impact on the environment are also being raised by several organizations with fervent followers in increasing numbers. Hence, corporate social responsibility (CSR) certainly does play a major role in shaping up the image of an organization in the publics purview. For instance, a corporation sponsoring a rural school in a Third World nation could build an image of a friendly and caring organization, thereby simplifying the process of entering into a new market. In a world where brand consciousness is becoming increasingly important, these finer aspects have started to affect consumers perception of an organization and ultimately their buying decision. Hence, the new mindset to marketing should definitely take CSR, environment consciousness and globalization into account while framing its marketing programs.

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Chapter 1 New marketing capability is all about the potential to improve demand side functioning and thereby driving the growth of an organization. The author mentions that the demand side has to catch up with the supply side that has reached optimum operational efficiency through the use of technology and performance metrics. He views innovation and customer insights to be cornerstones of developing new marketing capabilities. Insights are generated by acquiring and processing customer data; these insights in turn are used by the demand side to carry out innovative marketing processes. The careful and consistent adoption of these simple principles can indeed guide an organization to reach new marketing standards. Hastings demonstrates a recent shift in viewing marketing as a full-fledged science, by comparing the old school view and the new age perspective of marketing. Previously marketing programs would usually be carried out on a product-by-product basis. However, nowadays marketing is more of an integrated exercise that sells the brand to the customer rather than just the product. This is another noticeable shift in the marketing processes that is worth mentioning. For instance, let us consider marketing two MP3 players such as Apples Ipod and Microsofts Zune. The marketing programs and advertisements do not merely compare the products head to head, but in fact portray a battle between Apple vs. Microsoft brands. The fast fashion retailer, Zara relies on constant exchange of information among its store managers, customers, designers, market experts, warehouse managers and distributors (Ferdows, Lewis & Machuca 2004). This cuts down red tape and ensures that Zara is always ahead when it comes to possessing the right information in all aspects including customer preferences, fashion trends and logistical requirements.

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Marketing has shifted from a supplementary function to a core capability responsible for the growth of an organization. In a contemporary organization, Hastings considers acquiring assets such as intellectual property, human resources, brand reputation and healthy customer relationship to be the key factors towards sustaining growth. In the end, all these indispensible assets are directly or indirectly managed by the marketing function in an organization. Building brand equity will ultimately help a company financially succeed and improve shareholder value on the long run, as demonstrated by many successful companies in the past. The author tries to explain the bigger picture by illustrating an end-to-end marketing model which explains how customer insights, marketing data, ad campaign, companys strategy and building brand equity are all interrelated.

Chapter 2 Enterprise systems are more cross-functional in nature as they integrate aspects such as customer preferences and brand building into an interwoven mechanism. For instance, a search engine like Google customizes the users environment and ads displayed as per the end-users preferences and behavior. The Internet has largely empowered customers to become the drivers of marketing. For instance, companies like NetFlix enable customers to watch what movies and TV shows they want, rather than the program guide telling them what to watch. There is a quite a remarkable difference between enterprise marketing solutions and point solutions since the former gives complete control to the customer to directly interact with company and influence the products being marketed, while the latter merely facilitates information exchange on an impersonal level. Adaptive marketing enables marketers to customize their plans and products based on customer preference. The data pertaining to customers needs, likes and dislikes are obtained by

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based customer behaviors that are profiled accordingly. This method transfers power to the consumer, as opposed to the conventional way of business where the marketers sell products that businesses produce irrespective of consumer opinion. More CEOs and CFOs have to seriously consider adopting adaptive marketing for all their products and services, even if it means forgoing a few short-term financial gains. Marketing instrumentation can be embedded into software, thereby helping companies to get feedback in the form of customer behavior. For example, Microsoft Windows asks customers if they would like to report a bug when a software program malfunctions. The customers response data can be used to measure how much users trust Microsofts support and products.

Chapter 3 Marketers also need to come up with new ways differentiate between useful and non-useful customer insights, as only valuable customer insights would contribute to innovation. Companies also need to design metrics to ensure that the insights are effectively interpreted and translated into innovation that leads to growth. Customer insights offer a valuable window into what the customer wants, in essence what the customer finds as unique and better. Although books such as Kotler and Kellers Marketing Management are timeless and considered be the definitive guides to marketing, Hastings work does usher in new age concepts in extensive depth that are more relevant to todays dynamic climate powered by ecommerce. Online shopping has become quite commonplace in peoples lives and Amazon.com is one the pioneers of online shopping. Amazons popularity is backed by its reliability and ease of use. Moment of Truth Core insight moment of truth Description The user can buy almost anything with a click of a mouse. The intuitive interface and credit

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card safety encourages people to shop with confidence. The product reviews are also quite Purchase moment of truth trustworthy compared to other online vendors. Amazon.com lets it users return products that are either faulty or not meet the promised expectation. The pricing is also quite Usage moment of truth competitive. Users trust the authenticity of the products listed going by the credibility that Amazon has built over the years. The company is also easy to deal with when it comes to warranty issues. The six connects helps humans to be more creative by methodically sharpening their insights and practically improving their ability to innovate. In essence, it conveys the message that any welltrained personnel can be innovative and insightful, when provided with the right data and training. IBM has designed a telemedicine medical system called Personal Care Connect (PCC) which helps caregivers to remotely monitor patients and provide advice based on the remotely acquired heath reports (Blount et. al 2007) Chapter 4 Kimberly-Clark, in spite of owning some of the most trusted mass market brands, did not stop innovating even after reaching a growth barrier. Instead of remaining stale, the company decided to adopt insight-driven transformation by identifying and gathering key insights from its customers. It assessed the risks of implementing the insights and also set up metrics to measure the financial outcomes of new innovations, which eventually made the company surpass its past success. New age marketing is more of a methodical science based on knowledge management,

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which is why design plays a vital role in its success. However, until recently marketing was viewed as an art which was left to whims and fancies of individual marketers; this is the reason behind marketing literature ignoring the importance of design. Open innovation is phenomenon that empowers anyone to be creative and come up with solutions. For instance, new products now launch blogs and forums where like-minded people interact and do the brainstorming for companies. MySpace, Facebook and other such social networks are open innovation forums that attract people and give them the space to share knowledge and insights.

Chapter 5 New metrics to measure customer engagement are required to gauge to what extent customers are engaged by a companys marketing campaign, since earlier measures such as brand awareness were inconclusive at best. Brand experience points are one way to measure customer engagement as they take into effectiveness of various marketing contacts such as advertisements and blog registration. Share of brand experience and Experience conversion rate are other metrics used to measure customers interest level in a product. A system called Market Contact Audit (MCA) helps determine if a product was effective enough in entertaining the customer and initiating a purchase. MCA is quite effective and more scientific compared to previous models such as AIDA which subjectively measures the attention, interest, desire and action of the buyer while seeing an ad or interacting with a salesperson.

Chapter 6

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Marketing has traditionally been a discipline that deals with vast analysis of customer data to understand their preferences and needs, which is essential to popularize and promote products. The recent unprecedented advances in technology have enabled the marketers to acquire massive amounts of customer preferences more accurately with relative ease. Technology also has the potential to transform customer attitude towards a product and build brand loyalty. However, it is up to the marketers to understand the cues given by the customer and innovate accordingly to sell products. Given the creative history and humane nature of marketing, it is quite a hard task to convince veterans and CEOs to adopt this technology-assisted approach. This would require marketers to design concrete metric that can prove the efficacy of the new marketing approach. A system integrating enterprise marketing management (EMM) should be capable of sharing knowledge among all departments of an organization, manage workflow and strategies to match customer insights, keep track of marketing metrics and allocate financial resources needed to implement marketing plans.

Chapter 7 COP (communities of practice) is a tool that gets people with common interest together and lets them interact in a free environment. This unleashes the creativity within and helps generate new ideas. It helps multinational firms reach and understand new potential customers. COPs can help MNCs to break cultural barriers and make positive strides into new markets. The Internet has provided an open forum for free exchange of information, which also plays a critical role in improving the internal working environment comprising of employees from various cultural backgrounds.

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Protector and Gamble has implemented COPs on a grand scale through its Connect and Develop program. This enables scientists as well as anyone with innovative ideas to contribute their ideas to improve P & G products. This has helped the company drastically improve its research and development, which has translated into the development of new products overwhelming and financial growth.

Chapter 8 Jack Daniels success story is across the globe was a result of setting up a knowledge center encompassing the years of marketing knowledge accumulated and sharing the knowledge across various countries by translating it into various local languages to break the cultural barrier. This not only helped spread product awareness but also the emotion related to consuming an authentic Jack Daniels drink. Thus, the brand image of Jack Daniels was preserved while way in which it was conveyed differed depending upon socio-cultural aspects. This tale of success is quite similar to McDonalds success the world over by conveying the same message of consistent taste and quality at an affordable price through different means, thus proving that JDs strategy can be replicated for a wide range of products and services.

Chapter 9 A company having several brands in its portfolio promises faster growth and bigger margins, while posing greater risk at the same time since there are numerous variables influencing its success. Resource allocation would depend on the brand value of a product; brands that sell due an emotional connection are surefire bets and deserve more resources to be allocated while brands that sell due to its popularity deserve allocation. ROI depends on pricing and nature of markets,

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which can be improved by manipulating prices. The CEOs of the respective brands would responsible for ensuring steady ROI and brand equity of their brands.

Chapter 10 Tech companies like Microsoft are built by engineers who are not naturally inclined to interpret customer insights from a marketing perspective. However, using these insights to their advantage can help them build their brand, finically grow and use that capital to fund further advance technological advancements. Google has harnessed the emotional component of marketing by focusing on customer experience. Microsoft while marketing Windows Live understood that people all over the world used the Internet to better their everyday lives and reach out to the world. This simple yet emotional insight teaches a critical lesson to traditional business schools about the importance of emotions in marketing.

Chapter I 1 A quick Google search with marketing and knowledge management as parameters leads to several academic and professional articles explaining how the two disciplines have become almost inseparable in the todays electronic age. Marketers working under various industries are turning to knowledge management and simple communication to score clients, thereby justifying their role as an asset to their companies. Marketing Knowledge Centers (MKC) interacts with an organizations CRM, amasses marketing data, feeds it to marketing professionals for further analysis and also trains new marketers by sharing marketing intelligence.

Chapter 12

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There is an immediate need in many organizations for their Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to embrace technology by updating IT infrastructure to improve marketing capability and share resources across the organization. Also, optimum communication, brand experience and innovation can be reached only through the full-fledged merger between IT and marketing. Hyatt's use of Internet to promote their frequent flier programs and the personalization of customer experience through databases fuelled the companys steady growth in the travel industry. Best Buys CMO recently launched Reward Zone, a program that rewards repeat customers and enhances customer relationships.

Chapter 13 Technology has enabled marketing managers to make faster decisions as new marketing adds value to conventional marketing intelligence by making information more streamlined, accessible and continuously updated. Marketing information exchange shares info between brand managers, product developers and sales agents by setting up filters that ensure that the right people get access to the right information. This saves invaluable time and eliminates overhead, thereby indirectly cutting costs for the organization.

Chapter 14 Performance metrics are used to calculate employees contribution to the company; these measures usually do point towards an employees role in fulfilling the organizations mission. Such programs also motivate employees to work better since better performance metrics would directly benefit them. The author claims that brand equity is an emotional insight offered by a consumer which directly impacts profits; a study conducted by Madden et al. provides empirical

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evidence indicating a link between brand equity and long-term financial success (2006). A marketing approach integrating customer engagement with revenue and market share could certainly be experimented since the performance of a marketing plan can be simply measured by its financial success. A "purchase funnel" for buying an LCD television would involve asking if an upgrade from CRT television is required, followed by screen size requirement, brand preference and finally evaluating the warranty policy on dead pixels. The point in the funnel where the marketer reaches a customer determines the return on investment

Chapter 15 Cisco lets its users as well as developers to interact on its forums, thereby enabling them to share problems, report errors, discuss bug fixes, and announce new updates as well as upcoming products. This helps the Cisco community help each other out while encountering problems. The Mozilla community is also quite active and a fine example COPs. Putting together a COP consisting of marketing educators could help publishers gather new perspectives on marketing. However, creating a COP needs careful consideration as opening up the forum to non-experts may make the group susceptible to misinformed opinions and may very well defeat the purpose of starting communities of practice.

Chapter 16 Microsofts Steve Ballmer has been trying to change Microsofts view of marketing, ever since taking over from founder Bill Gates. He believes that marketing needs to be more targeted and also that using scientific methods could be the solution to it. The recent beta launch of

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Windows 7 operating system following the infamous Vista is being well received among the tech community as it has taken customer insights seriously and done away with everything that made Vista fail. Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott is another shrewd leader who believes that marketing has to evolve to cater a new generation of people who have started to spend less following the recession. Kimberly-Clark's take on extending an organizations growth boundaries involves setting up a new strategy for growth by gathering insights from the customer pertaining to what would make their products better. The emphasis is also on choosing only the right insights and discarding ideas that might be detrimental to existing brand equity. Extending their product line to allied products was another strategy employed to expand their business boundaries.

Reference

Arlen, J. (2001). Why Is Target So Cool? - Target's marketing strategy. DSN Retailing Today. Retrieved Jan 31 2009, <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FNP/is_7_40/ai_73181652>

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Blount, M et. al. (2007). Remote health-care monitoring using Personal Care Connect. Information-Based Medicine IBM Systems Journal, Volume 46, Number 1. Retrieved Jan 31 2009, <http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/461/blount.html>

Ferdows, K, Lewis, M, & Machuca, J. (2004). "Rapid-Fire Fulfillment". Harvard Business Review, Vol. 82, No.11.

Hastings, H. (2007). Improve Your Marketing to Grow Your Business. Wharton School Publishing.

Madden et. al. (2006). Brands Matter: An Empirical Demonstration of the Creation of Shareholder Value through Branding. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Volume 34 (2): 224-235