Marketing Strategy: Text and Cases

Citation

Ferrell, O. C., Hartline, M. D., & Hochstein, B. W. (2022). Marketing Strategy: Text and Cases (8th ed.). Cengage.

Chapter Summary

The eighth edition has ten chapters, followed by a set of cases, marketing plan worksheets and an index. Cengage describes the book as presenting strategic marketing management within the social, economic and technological arenas of business, with a systematic approach to developing long-term, customer-oriented marketing strategies and marketing plans. The chapters run in the order of a marketing plan: environment and planning, information, competitive advantage, customers and targets, the marketing program, branding, ethics, implementation and control, and long-term customer relationships.

Chapters 1–2: Marketing in Today's Economy; Strategic Marketing Planning

The opening chapters frame strategic marketing and then introduce planning as the basis of strategy. Chapter 2 is the natural place to meet the marketing plan framework that the book uses to tie its decisions together and that the worksheets at the back put to work.

Chapters 3–4: Collecting and Analyzing Marketing Information; Developing Competitive Advantage and Strategic Focus

From information to strategic choice: how marketing information is gathered and analyzed, and how a firm then builds a competitive advantage and decides where to focus.

Chapters 5–7: Customers, Segmentation, and Target Marketing; The Marketing Program; Branding and Positioning

The core of the plan for a chosen market: customers, segments and targets; the marketing program that puts the strategy into effect; and branding and positioning. Cengage lists product labeling and social media segmentation among the topics discussed in this edition, which fall in this part of the book.

Chapter 8: Ethics and Social Responsibility in Marketing Strategy

Places ethics and social responsibility inside the strategy sequence as a chapter of its own rather than an add-on.

Chapters 9–10: Marketing Implementation and Control; Developing and Maintaining Long-Term Customer Relationships

How a chosen strategy is carried out and monitored, and how a firm builds and keeps long-term relationships with customers. Cengage names customer success among the themes of the edition.

Cases and Marketing Plan Worksheets

Cengage states that most of the cases are new in this edition and cover customer success, today's marketing mix, corporate social responsibility, crisis preparedness, global marketing and integrated marketing communication. They include Tesla and Netflix, Patagonia and Walmart, and a case on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on marketing strategy. The worksheets guide a student through writing a formal marketing plan: organizing data, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, goals and objectives, a strategy and an implementation outline.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4: Planning and Analysis

• Strategic marketing planning: setting out a long-term, customer-oriented strategy as a plan.
• Marketing information: the data and analysis underlying the plan.
• Competitive advantage and strategic focus: how firms differentiate and choose where to compete.

Chapters 5–7: Targets and Program

• Segmentation and target marketing: dividing a market and selecting segments.
• Marketing program: the set of marketing decisions that follow the target choice.
• Branding and positioning: how a brand is defined in customers' minds relative to competitors.

Chapters 8–10: Responsibility, Implementation and Relationships

• Ethics and social responsibility in strategy.
• Implementation and control.
• Long-term customer relationships.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A structure that follows the plan. The chapters follow the order of a marketing plan, and the worksheets at the end give a place to apply each step; Cengage stresses a systematic, reader-friendly approach.
• Case material tied to the text. Cengage describes most cases as new for this edition, with company examples (Tesla, Netflix, Patagonia, Walmart) and a COVID-19 case.
• Ethics integrated. A full chapter on ethics and social responsibility sits inside the strategy sequence.
• Study features. Key terms are defined where they appear, each chapter ends with a "Lessons from the Chapter" summary, and each chapter has three "Beyond the Pages" features, according to Cengage.

Limitations

• A short strategy text, not a reference. With ten chapters it covers each topic briefly; students who need depth on consumer behaviour, pricing or distribution should use a comprehensive marketing text.
• Assumes prior marketing. The book is positioned as a strategy-level text, and the chapter list contains no introduction to basic marketing concepts.
• Cases do the heavy lifting. The application depends on the case set and plan worksheets; used without them the book gives frameworks but little practice.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the marketing list this is the strategy-and-plan text. Kotler and Armstrong's Principles of Marketing and the OpenStax Principles of Marketing are first-course introductions, and Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick's Principles and Practice of Marketing is a UK and European introduction of broader scope. Read one of these first; Ferrell, Hartline and Hochstein then take the same ideas and organize them around building and implementing a plan.

Kotler and Keller's Marketing Management is a broader framework covering customers, markets, brands, pricing and channels, and is the longer, more comprehensive alternative at this level. Hunt's Marketing Theory is a different kind of book: a treatise on the foundations of marketing as a discipline, suited to readers who want the philosophy of science and the theory of competition rather than the practice of planning.

How to Use This Book

The book suits upper-level undergraduate and introductory MBA courses in marketing strategy or marketing planning, for students who have had an introductory marketing course.

• Core: read Chapters 2–7 in order, since they are the planning sequence.
• Application: work through the cases and fill in the marketing plan worksheets as you go, using Chapter 2 as the guide to the plan framework.
• Supporting chapters: Chapters 1 and 8–10 frame the strategy and carry it through implementation and relationships; Chapter 8 can also be read on its own for the ethics dimension of marketing decisions.