2004 Q4 Book Review
Counter-Intuitive Marketing
In their book the authors trace the high rate of business failure back to bad marketing strategy. Essentially, the authors describe the intuitive decision-making practices that permeate business today, and demonstrate how these practices lead to disappointing performance.
Throughout each chapter, the authors contrast how marketing decisions are made today and how they should be made. They give equal treatment to targeting, positioning, product development, pricing, customer service, marketing planning and implementation.
Making decisions based on intuition (which the authors say is the same decision that everyone else would make) rarely leads to successful outcomes based on the author’s research and experience. Rather, success comes from counterintuitive thinking grounded in rigorous analysis of unimpeachable data is the key to success in marketing.
The book is divided into three sections. Section I sketches some of the current problems with American business. Section II shows how technology can make a critical difference in targeting and positioning, advertising, new product development and pricing. Section III provides insights into how to implement a well-designed marketing plan.