Review: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

Title: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
Author: Mark Lynas
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Pages: 303
ISBN: 978-1-4262-0213-1

It is now accepted in scientific circles that our planet is heating up and humans are a major cause of this warming. Since the Industrial Revolution, we as a society have treated the environment as an inexhaustible sink into which we could safely dump the waste products of our industries. In the beginning, this seemed to be a reasonable assumption. The atmosphere and oceans were so vast, it seemed that no matter what we did, we would not affect them. As the Industrial Revolution proceeded apace, the amount of pollutants that were dumped in the atmosphere and the oceans steadily increased. The change that had occurred in one country steadily spread to other countries as well. The first countries to industrialize were European nations and the US. These countries were then followed by Russia and Japan. By this time, the rest of the world had been carved up by the European countries into their colonies. These colonies were primarily considered to be providers of raw materials for the industrial economies of the mother countries. As a result, the spread of industry into other parts of the world was considerably slower than what it might have been otherwise. Nevertheless, many of these colonies did start the process of industrialization. From 1945 to 1965, most of these colonies gained independence. The newly formed countries were determined to catch up with the richer developed countries as fast as they could and the fastest way of doing so was to follow the path forged by the already developed countries.

Till this point, industrial development was viewed as an unmitigated good. As economies developed, the standards of living rose and markets expanded as greater numbers of people could afford to buy goods and services that previously were within the reach of a much smaller group. The effects of industrial development were seen as being localized and negligible on a global level. The first indication that things were otherwise came with the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The book outlined the destructive effects of DDT spraying on the environment. DDT was the most destructive pesticide ever invented but at first the full effects of its destructiveness were not fully appreciated. This book really brought the issue of the effects of humans on the environment to public notice for the first time. Gradually, the realization came that technological progress is not necessarily an unmitigated good and that there are effects that are difficult to assess in advance.

The next step in the growing ecological awareness came with the Earth Day concept that highlighted the effects of industrial development on nature. This was followed quickly by the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer and the role played by ChloroFloroCarbons (CFCs) in this regard. CFCs were compounds that were widely used in air conditioners and refrigerators. At around the same time, climate scientists discovered that global temperatures were gradually increasing. At first it seemed that the rise recorded was part of the natural variability of the planet but by the nineties, it became clear that temperatures were gradually rising and that human activity was playing a major role in this rise.

This brings us to this important book. If temperatures are rising, then what will be the effect on the climate? At current rates of pollutants, it is thought that the rise of global temperature could be anywhere between one degree and six degrees. At each degree increase in the global temperature, what will be the effect on the planet? Mark Lynas' book aims to answer this question. The findings are detailed in this book and they are horrifying. As temperatures increase, the stress on the planet goes up and our civilization's ability to cope with this change decreases. The author has painstakingly detailed what will happen at each degree of rise in temperature. Upto an increase of three degrees, our global civilization will be able to cope with the effects of climate change albeit with increasing difficulty. Beyond that however, our capacity to absorb the change with minimal damage is non-existent. If temperatures rise four, five or six degrees above the current levels, then we are faced with a civilizational collapse and a loss of life on a horrendous scale. No one will be left unaffected. The band of habitable zone will shift dramatically. This will result in vast numbers of climate refugees. The sad part is that the people most affected will be those who have played the least part in causing climate change. However, if Western politicians think that they will be able to fend off the hordes of desperate refugees who have been forced to move, then they are living in an ivory tower. Even if somehow climate refugees are constrained from moving into more clement places, the capacities of richer societies to cope with climate change will gradually diminish. This is because the destructive effects of floods, typhoons, hurricanes etc. will increase dramatically. These are forces of nature that do not respect any borders.

This is an extremely important book and should be read by all concerned people. The very survival of our civilization is at stake and we must be aware of what the effects of climate change will be if we are to avoid sleep walking into disaster. Definitely recommended as a must read.

Review: Small Giants

Title: Small Giants
Author: Bo Burlingham
Publisher: Portfolio
Pages: 225
ISBN: 1-59184-093-7

Growth has been the mantra of business more than a hundred years now. Generations of business school students have had this mantra ingrained into them. Growth is good. Not growing means stagnation and stagnation leads to decline and ultimately the disappearance of the firm. Business is a Machiavellian struggle to become and remain a giant global company which bestrides the Earth like a colossus.

However, perhaps there is another way. Small Giants by Bo Burlingham is an important book in this regard. Unending relentless growth is not the only way forward. There are companies which choose another path and which succeed brilliantly on their own terms. Before looking at what those terms may be, it is perhaps relevant to look at what the basic implication of growth at all costs is.

How can a company grow? A simple question that has generated reams of paper outlining in great detail exactly how the company will grow. Essentially speaking, growth can come either by increasing the number of units sold; whatever those units may be or by increasing the price at which those units are sold or by a mixture of both. Practically speaking, price increases are inevitable in an inflationary environment. The price has to be increased at atleast the inflation level to avoid a loss of profitability. However, the ability to increase prices is limited by the perceived cost/benefit ratio that the end consumer has for the company's product. Many companies have learned to their cost that if the perceived cost/benefit ratio becomes too skewed towards the cost side, then their consumers tend to switch to competitive and/or substitute products. There are very few products that have no effective substitutes (oil being a prominent example that comes to mind). So if the ability to raise prices is limited, then the number of units sold has to be increased. This in turn means either selling more to the existing consumers and or bringing in new consumers or a mixture of both. As a company increases in size, the imperative to grow also increases driven partly by an increase in cost base while at the same time greater effort is needed to achieve this growth.

The companies included in Mr. Bo Burlingham's book have forged a different path. They have shown that it is possible to have a great company without getting onto the treadmill of growth. These companies span a variety of industries and corporate structures. They have a large number of techniques and strategies to keep themselves relevant to and engaged with their consumers. All of them show that it is possible to build a company great opportunities both to customers and to employees. Indeed, for many the primary focus is not customers but employees. It is possible to forge another path and these companies show the way. Every business can learn something from the example of these companies.

Title: The World Without Us
Author: Alan Weisman
Publisher: Virgin Books
Pages: 311
ISBN: 978-0-7535-1357-6

Here is an interesting thought experiment: if humans are suddenly removed from the Earth somehow while leaving everything else intact, how will the artifacts of our civilization fare? The author of this title, Mr. Alan Weisman, takes this thought experiment and runs with it.

We have built a globe girdling civilization with massive and seemingly permanent monuments to our ingenuity. We are pushing materials and structures to their very limits. Witness the current race in building the tallest skyscraper in the world. No sooner has one behemoth been built, then another even bigger one starts construction. We have thrown a network of roads and wires and pipes around the world and built personal transportation devices by the millions to take advantage of this infrastructure. Whole mountains have been leveled in our quest for the raw materials that lie at the foundation of our civilization. Countless ships crisscross the oceans carrying the goods of our commerce within them while in the air, countless airplanes do the same carrying us to and fro across the globe.

Yet according to Mr. Weisman, with us gone nearly all these achievements will be undone in short order by nature. Some of our most impressive and advanced works will be the first to go. In a surprisingly short time, nature will reclaim her own. However, our impact will still be felt far into the future. Our civilization has a dark underside to it; that is the pollution that we have (often inadvertently) caused. This pollution can be seen as a necessary accompaniment to our progress and often it is assumed that over time, even the most durable of substances will break down. However this is not necessarily true. We have introduced substances that have never before been seen in nature. As a result, no organism has adapted itself to break them down. In a sense, these will remain in the environment essentially forever or atleast until some organism learns the trick of breaking them down. The biggest culprit in this regard is the now ubiquitous plastic which breaks down into finer and finer parts until finally there is a microscopic part left that simply remains in the environment. Other pollutants include radioactive substances which have extremely long half lives. This is something that nature will have to cope with somehow after we are gone.

One answer to the thought experiment raised above is that with us gone, the world will revert to the pristine state in which it was before we came. However, as Mr. Weisman has shown, this is simply not the case. We have made an impact (and a massive one) on our environment. The consquences of this impact will be felt far far into the future.

This is a very good book to read. It raises important questions about the consequences of our actions on the planet. Perhaps these questions can stimulate us into better behavior vis a vis our environment than we have done in the past.

Review: The Great Bust Ahead

Title: The Great Bust Ahead
Author: Daniel A. Arnold
Publisher: Virago-US
Pages: 57
ISBN: 1-59196-153-X

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Indeed if the author of this small treatise is to be believed, then be terrified of your economic future. This is a slim book that makes a hefty claim. The author is predicting an economic tsunami that will make the Great Depression look like a party. Not just that, the author makes what to most people will sound like an audacious claim: he claims that there is nothing that governments can do to prevent this economic calamity from descending upon us. We are faced with a 25 year recession and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

These are strong claims that will leave most people skeptical. Yet the logic behind the argument is actually quite compelling. The economic drama that is about to unfold was set in motion several decades ago. It all boils down to demographics. This is an area that leaves most people yawning. However, demographic changes are inexorable and predictable. The surprising thing is that most businesses ignore the effects of demographic change in their calculation. Consider the well documented baby boom that occurred in the US after the Second World War. A larger than previous number of babies were born from the late 40s to the mid 60s. A bulge that was to have serious effect over the coming years. Knowing that a certain demographic event has occurred means that one should be able to predict the broad effects that this will have. So for example, there was bound to be an increase in demand for baby products as a result of the baby boom. As the boomers passed into childhood, demand for baby products would decline and instead demand for children's products would increase. So as the bulge in population works its way through over the years, there is bound to be a concomitant increase in demand for products and services of the corresponding age group and as the bulge passes through that age group, there is also bound to be a decline in the demand for the relevant products and services.

Mr. Arnold's thesis is based on a similar demographic argument. The book explicitly states that the main point presented in it is with respect to the advanced developed economies. These economies are faced with declining populations. Even the US is faced with this prospect; its population has been maintained primarily throught immigration. The mainstay for developed economies is consumer spending. The age group which has the greatest effect on consumer spending is generally the mid 40s to mid 50s group. These are people who generally are at the peak of their earning power and who also have the greatest costs. It is the relative size of this age group which plays a critical role in economic growth and according to the author, the number of these people is declining and as this number declines, the spending power of this group will also decline and the result will be a decrease in economic growth. The author's contention is that this group is so large that its passing will have a correspondingly severe effect; the whole drama will take almost a generation to play itself out.

Some readers of this book may well raise the objection that the argument presented here is relevant only to developed economies. This is a valid point. However, the demographic drama is playing itself out in every nation. Worldwide the rate of population growth is slowing. Furthermore, as an economy grows, consumer spending comes to play an increasing important and dominant role. The other thing that should be kept in mind is that lesser developed economies generally depend on exports to the developed economies for their own growth. So what happens in the developed economies also effects (sometimes almost immediately) the lesser developed economies.

This book raises an important point and is well worth reading. Recommended.

Review: Get Them On Your Side

Title: Get Them On Your Side
Author: Samuel B. Bacharach
Publisher: Platinum Press
Pages: 228
ISBN: 1-59337-278-7

What does it take to succeed in an organization? Is it the hard dedication of your work? Is it the brilliance of your ideas? Is it your networking skills? What is the factor that causes one person to be acclaimed within the organization as a rising star and bright hope of the future while his colleague with the same abilities and skill set is sidelined? What is this elusive factor that puts some people on the high road of success while others end up traveling the low road of frustration?

Businesses demand results. Successful people in an organization are those who generate and more importantly successfully implement ideas that improve it in some fashion - whether by cutting costs, or improving existing products and services or launching entirely new products and services. Paper pushers will at best rise to a mid level and then stagnate. However, merely generating an idea is not enough. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Anyone who works in a field or in an organization will quickly generate many relevant ideas that if implemented will result in positive benefits to their organization. The problem is to get those ideas implemented. The key words here are if implemented. Markets are dynamic places. They are constantly changing and evolving. What works today will almost certainly not work tomorrow. This can be as a result of disruptive technologies - for example the iPod destroyed the market leader Sony Walkman in the portable music market; it can be a result of lower cost competitors - Japanese companies pushed Xerox, the inventor of the copier, out of the lower end of the copier market; it can be a result of changing consumer tastes or it can be a result of a whole host of other reasons. Whatever the reason, if organizations don't evolve and change along with the evolving and changing market, they will peter out and die. Changes within a company come as a result of ideas being generated and implemented by people working in that company.

Given the crucial importance of generating and more importantly implementing ideas, one would imagine that employees within a company will be highly receptive to new ideas and will evaluate each idea on its merit for implementation. However, that is not the case. Most people are inherently conservative and tend to resist new ideas specially where it impacts them directly. So anyone who wants to have their idea implemented has to win support and convert sceptics to their cause. The question is how?

Mr. Samuel Bacharach has given a framwork for accomplishing this in this book. This is a three step process which consists of:

1. Mapping the political terrain.
2. Getting people on your side.
3. Making things happen.

Each of these steps is elaborated upon in this book. For example, mapping the political terrain involves identifying the kinds of reactions that may be encountered when an idea is first broached. These tend to fall into one of six types.

1. "Your idea is too risky."
2. "That idea will actually make things worse."
3. "Your proposal won't change a thing."
4. "You don't know the issues well enough."
5. "You're doing it wrong."
6. "You have ulterior motives."

Notice how the objections range from attacking the idea itself to attacking the person proposing the idea. Overcoming these objections (or their variants) then involves identifying the basic agenda of the person objecting. The author identifies these agenda as:

1. Tinkering
2. Overhauling
3. Planning
4. Improvising

Each agenda has its own issues and concerns which need to be addressed appropriately. At each step, the author also notes the possible pitfalls that can destroy the idea. This framwork is a powerful approach to getting ideas implemented within an organization. This book is for anyone who wants to have an idea implemented regardless of the type of organization he works for. Definitely recommended.

Book Review: The E Myth Revisited

Title: The E Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Business Don't Word and What to Do About It
Author: Mechael E. Gerber
Publisher: HarperBusiness
Pages: 268
ISBN: 0887307280

The statistics are grim. The vast majority of businesses that are started fail within the first five years. According to Mr. Gerber, 80% of businesses fail in this time. The culling does not end here. In the next five, 80% of the businesses that have survived so far fail. The bad news does not end over here. Of the businesses that survive thus far, most provide their owners with at most a subsistence level of existence in return for insane amount of work - work that is required to just barely keep the business alive. But is this a law of nature? Are most startups doomed to failure? The author of this text thinks not.

According to the author, there are three distinct personalities inside each entrepreneur. Each of these has its own desires and needs. When they are in harmony and balance each other, the result is a business that can go on to succeed. When (as is more often the case) they are in conflict, the result is a dysfunctional business that sucks the life out of the putative entrepreneur. These three distinct personalities are identified as Technician, Manager and Entrepreneur. A new business is usually started by the Technician aspect of a person. This is because of an underlying assumption that Mr. Gerber says is a fatal one. The assumption is "if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work." The problem is that the technical work of a business and a business that does technical work are two different things. Failure to understand this leads to problems later on. These problems arise once the business is established and starts growing. The Technician is used to doing all the work himself. As the business grows, the Technician suddenly starts getting overwhelmed; at this point previously established standards start to slip. In a panic , the Technician goes out and hires a preferably experienced hand. At this point, the Manager kicks in. But now, there is a tussle going on between the Manager and the Technician for control. In the meanwhile, the Entrepreneur is also trying to gain control in order to devise a future and a strategic direction for the company. This continuous tussle means that the person who started the business starts to feel overwhelmed and trapped by the business; the very business that was supposed to liberate him from the drudgery of working for someone else. This is the basic reason why most businesses fail and most of the rest struggle indefinitely at a subsistence level.

Is there any hope? Hope lies in the fact that a small number of businesses not only prosper, they thrive. All large companies started out as small ones. There are also a number of companies that may be small in size but are thriving businesses. What do they do differently from the run of the mill small business? Mr. Gerber advocates turning a business into a franchise. More to the point, he advocates a turn-key view of business. In other words, he says that a successful business will be one which the entrepreneur (the person who started the business) can give to a total stranger and it will continue to operate in the same fashion as the original owner intended. This is an important point. It takes a business from being personality driven to being process driven. In the former case, the business owns the person while in the latter case, the person owns the business. A personality driven business will by its nature consume the life of the person who started it. By contrast, the process driven business will give all three aspects that were mentioned above - the Technician, the Manager and the Entrepreneur - full leeway to their respective capabilities and interests and allow the person to engage in his or her interests.

Mr. Gerber has written an important book that should be read by anyone who wants to or is thinking about starting his own business. Read this book before taking the plunge. It will save you a lot of grief later on.

Book Review: Fail Better: Stubmbling To Success In Sales & Marketing

Title: Fail Better: Stumbling To Success In Sales & Marketing
Author: Stephen Brown
Publisher: Cyan Books
Pages: 189
ISBN: 0-462-09904-0

Most business books (nearly all as a matter of fact) focus on how to achieve success. Different authors have different ideas on the best methods of achieving and sustaining long term success in a harsh and unforgiving market. Yet, it is also commonly acknowledged that failure is a better teacher in most respects than success; especially failure that is eventually leveraged into success. Most business books ignore the lessons to be learnt from failure. This book is one of the few that focuses on failure and the lessons that can be learnt from it. More specifically, it focuses on failure as a stepping stone to (eventual) success.

Stephen Brown's book Fail Better presents case studies of 25 individuals, past and present, who should have failed and in many cases failed spectacularly permanently. However, these individuals have confounded critics and have achieved success, in some cases multiple times. Most of these people were serial failures for most of their careers. In many cases, they undertook a large number of and varied types of jobs before settling (or stumbling) on their forte. Some of these names are familiar like for example Steve Jobs, P. T. Barnum while others were well known in their time but are now not so well known like Anna Held and Gabriele D'Annunzio. Nearly all these people have usually done the opposite of what business books recommend for success. They treat their customers with disdain, ignore things like market research and generally behave as if they know better than their customers what the latter really want. At the end, the author highlights what he considers to be common characteristics amongst all the people he highlights.

After reading the book, the conclusion I drew was that the one thing all these case studies had in common was that they satisfied some basic need better than others. Take the case of Michael O'Leary. Ryanair makes one promise: to get you from point A to point B in a fast, cheap, no-frills fashion. It then proceeds to fulfill this promise sufficiently repeatedly to make customers keep coming back. There is no concept of over-promising service and then causing disappointment. Similarly, Thomas Lipton made a promise: to provide quality basic foodstuff cheaply. He then kept on fulfilling his promise causing his customers to return repeatedly. This I believe is the basic take away from this book.

Final conclusion: an interesting book; worth a read but a bit unfulfilling. Whets the appetite but doesn't quite satisfy the hunger.

Book Review: On The Road to Kandahar

Title: On The Road To Kandahar
Author: Jason Burke
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pages: 281
ISBN: 978-0-141-02435-6

Radical Islam (so-called) has been on the news since 9/11. That incident promptly pushed a hitherto little known group that styled itself as Al Qaeda into prominence. A lot of words were written and spoken which sought to explain the agenda of the Islamists and their popularity amongst the Muslim populations. Mr. Burke's book is a personal journey through Muslim lands over the course of more than a decade. Through the medium of a personal account of journeys in Islamic lands, the author traces the recent history of Western interaction with the Muslim world.

If you seek to understand Islam as a religion or Muslim beliefs and practices, then this is not the book. While the author does highlight wrong notions prevalent specially among so-called experts in the West regarding Muslims and he does give his own explanations, ultimately this book leaves the reader unsatisfied. If someone has lent you this book and you have some afternoons free, then pick this book up; otherwise there are plenty of better books to read.

Book Review: Predictably Irrational

Title: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Author: Dan Ariely
Publisher: Harper-Collins

Are people rational? Ask this question to almost anyone and he/she will answer (typically indignantly) with a resounding yes. This is also carried over into the field of Economics where it is assumed that people are rational beings who seek to maximize their satisfaction - a Homo Economicus.

Professor Dan Ariely begs to differ. He believes that people are not fundamentally rational. They behave in irrational ways under many situations all the while thinking that they are behaving perfectly rationally. Moreover, people are irrational in a predictable fashion. In his book, Predictably Irrational, Professor Ariely gives many examples - backed by experiments carried out by him and his colleagues - of people behaving in an objectively irrational manner while believing that they were behaving rationally.

The author divides irrational behavior into several categories. For example, there is the problem of relativity. Nope, I am not talking about Einstein's famous discovery. Relativity in this context means that people take decisions in a relative way and compare them to the available alternative. He gives the example of the price of subscription of the magazine The Economist. While browsing, he came across the subscription page for the magazine. Three options were given: Economist.com subscription (1 year) for $59.00; print subscription (1 year) for $125.00; print and web subscription (1 year) for $125.00. What's going on here? Faced with choices like these, the author in an experiment discovered that more people would choose the third option because compared to the second option, it seems like a great deal. When the author undertook another experiment in which the third option had been removed, he discovered that most people chose the first option. The presence of the third option prompted more people to go for the more expensive subscription because relatively speaking it seemed a great deal as compared to the second option.

Taking another example: the laws of supply and demand are a staple of Econom

Image via Wikipedia

ics. Every student studies these laws typically illustrated by nice charts like the one shown. These show demand decreasing as price increase and the reverse happening with supply. It is assumed that where the two curves intersect is where the price point will be set. But as the author discovered, people are not so rational. It seems that exposure to the initial price point for a product will determine what people will subsequently pay. If they are exposed to a high price, they will be more willing to pay higher prices than if they are initially exposed to a low price.

There are a number of other examples given where people think they are behaving rationally, but it turns out that their behavior is being governed by irrational factors of which they are not even aware of.

This book is an eye opener into human behavior. It should be considered as a must-read for any manager. It exposes the irrational in people and shows that they are not irrational in a random manner; instead the irrationality is very predictable. I highly recommend this book.

Book Review: 10 Deadly Marketing Sins

Title: 10 Deadly Marketing Sins: Signs and Solutions

Author: Philip Kotler

Why is marketing not working? Why is it that the vast majority of new products, services and business fail. Is there something wrong with marketing theory or does the fault lie with marketing practice? This book asserts that the problem is not with marketing theory but with marketing practice. Mr. Kotler identifies 10 practices – which he calls “Deadly Marketing Sins” that lead to this large incidence of failure.

As the author points out, marketing is supposed to drive business strategy. According to the author, marketers are supposed to research new opportunities and then apply Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP) to point the company in the right direction. Only after this are marketers supposed to flesh out the famous 4Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion). Then marketers are supposed to implement the plan and monitor it. Unfortunately, in too many cases, this process does not happen. In far too many companies, marketing has virtually no say in development and design of new products and services but instead is required to try and sell the firm’s current products and services. Thus the marketing function gets reduced to one P (generally Promotion). So what, according to the author are the 10 deadly marketing sin?

• The company is not sufficiently market focused and customer driven.
• The company does not fully understand its target customers.
• The company needs to better define and monitor its customers.
• The company has not properly managed its relationships with its stakeholders.
• The company is not good at finding new opportunities.
• The company’s marketing plans and planning process are deficient.
• The company’s product and service policies need tightening.
• The company’s brand building and communication strategies are weak.
• The company is not well organized to carry on effective and efficient marketing.
• The company has not made maximum use of technology.

The book addresses each of these issues; identifies the signs that characterize each “sin” and proposes possible remedies. In the end, the author proposes a list of 10 commandments, each of which addresses a corresponding fault and the whole of which constitutes good marketing practice.

After going through this book, I felt that the author was talking in too generic terms. While all the points mentioned in the book are worth considering, there is no meat. One comes away with the feeling that this is marketing lite. Treat it as a generic reference book but don’t look to it for inspiration.

Book Review: FAQs Marketing: Answered by the Guru of Marketing

Title: FAQs Marketing: Answered by the Guru of Marketing

Author: Philip Kotler

Publisher: Cyan Books

Mr. Kotler is one of the definitive authorities on marketing. His books are standard required reading in universities around the world. As one of the foremost marketing authorities, Mr. Kotler receives a large number of marketing related questions. In this book, he answers the most frequently asked questions on the subject.

Unlike a standard text book, this book is in a question-answer format. The author covers a wide range of topics covering not just the traditional aspects of marketing but also the new areas which will increase in importance in the future.

The author divides the book into several parts.

• Part 1: Markets and Marketing.
• Part 2: Marketing Strategy.
• Part 3: Marketing Tools (The 4Ps).
• Part 4: Marketing Planning.
• Part 5: Marketing Organization.
• Part 6: Marketing Control.
• Part 7: Marketing Areas of Application.
• Part 8: Marketing Excellence.

Each section is further divided into topics which then explore various marketing issues within each topic. For example, the marketing tools section is further divided into subsections like product, price, place etc. Various topics in each of these are then discussed like the brands and branding topic in the product subsection.

Overall, this small book covers a wide range of topics that are pertinent to marketing in the 21st century. Not only are traditional issues (like the 4Ps) covered, but also newer issues like internet marketing are discussed. This book should be an essential part of a marketers library as it serves as a very handy reference guide to the various marketing issues that such a person will encounter in their career.

Definitely recommended reading. If you haven't got it, get it, read it and keep it as a reference.