Marketing: A Guide to the Fundamentals

The Economist

By: Patrick Forsyth

Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards

Length: 8 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

Even though organisations have become increasingly marketing-focussed in their approach - and it is clear that marketing is more than just the 'marketing department'- marketing is one of the most misunderstood areas of business.

Philip Kotler, an American marketing guru, defines it as "the business function that identifies current unfulfilled needs and wants, defines and measures their magnitude, determines which target markets the organisation can best serve and decides on appropriate products, services, and programmes to serve these markets. Thus marketing serves as the link between a society's needs and its pattern of industrial response".

The late Peter Drucker, a leading management thinker, was content to say simply: "Marketing is looking at the business through the customers' eyes". This new guide clarifies exactly what marketing is and how it works, and it explains the techniques involved. For anyone who wants to understand the marketing mix, the factors involved in pricing policy, the different methods of market research, indeed the whole business of marketing, this guide to the fundamentals will be invaluable.

©2010 Patrick Forsyth (P)2013 Audible Ltd

Foundation

A good place to start your journey through the marketing world. 1.5x speed recommended :)

Marketing Fundamentals

An excellent book. It lays out the principles step by step with lots of examples to contextualize the information. For a novice in the marketing space, this book is a great foundation on which to build or refine the marketing strategy. I know I will refer back to it often.

Great overview of the marketing machine.

This book is a great foundational resource for marketing overview across an organization. It operates very much like a textbook you'd find in a college, but with more accessible information. While it could do with a slight refresh in some of the examples and more current representation of digital advertising, overall the fundamentals and foundations described are sound.

Excellent overview on marketing

Any additional comments?

Peter Drucker defined marketing as "looking at the business through the customers' eyes."
This book is an excellent intro into the field of scientific marketing. Topics covered include: product life-cycle, marketing mix, pricing, market research (min you need to know).

University course in marketing

This is equivalent to a university course in Business Management-Marketing. It introduces all the principles from the 4 Ps to marketing strategy. Great, thanks.

Great tips in this book

There were plenty of great tips for marketing your business in this book. Definitely things I missed as a business owner.

Exactly What it Should Be

Would you consider the audio edition of Marketing: A Guide to the Fundamentals to be better than the print version?

I'm not familiar with the print version, but a topic this dry is served best when not actually read.

What was most disappointing about Patrick Forsyth’s story?

Nothing really. It was good overall.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

As stated earlier, it is a fairly dry topic- His accent and rhythm of speech is a little hypnotic at times and i found myself not listening often. Not to fault the narrator, its just not an exciting topic.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No.

Any additional comments?

I was about to attempt a "test-out" college course in marketing by passing an exam in lieu of actually taking the class. I had 0 knowledge of marketing prior to the test and was hoping this could save me the time of reading the text book. If you are in a similar instance, the book is worth a listen- however, it is not likely sufficient alone to pass any sort of test. With that being said, it did greatly help my ease in reading the class text and did commit a few useful concepts to memory. I passed the test, but i ended up having to read the book.

amazing time

you must spend sometime listening to this great book. It is truly appreciated all the info provided.

Lecture and Stuffy

Enjoyed the content however it reminded me of my college days with the 500 student mass lecture hall and the 100 year old professor who told the same story about Marketing over and over.

Hard to listen to.

Completely hard to get through. I could not focus and listen to what was being said. The reader or the material is absolutely boring and if I hadn't been walking around while listening to it, I probably would have fallen asleep.

I couldn't even finish it.