Leading the Customer Experience explores the relationship between leadership behaviour and exceptional service. Most organisation's strategic aims and goals centre on the delivery of excellent service. Loyal customers not only keep buying from a company but also recommend the business to others. It is clear that managers and leaders throughout an organisation have a key influence on the experience that customers receive. How leaders behave has a direct impact on their team member's motivation to go the extra mile to deliver excellent service for the customer. Sarah Cook's vision for Leading the Customer Experience is to provide practical advice, tools and techniques for managers in how to effectively lead and motivate their team to deliver the best possible customer service. This book encapsulates her research on the behaviours of leaders who successfully create an environment where employees deliver exceptional service and she brings a pragmatic and business focused approach to the topic. Each chapter contains a variety of case study examples from businesses in UK and Europe, Asia Pacific, US and BRIC countries. These include service organisations in the financial sector, manufacturing, hospitality, transport, healthcare, public and third sectors.

Practitioners of marketing in higher education and all academics across all disciplines who work in higher education are aware of the importance of marketing to their careers, their department, and their institution. Chancellors, University Presidents, Deans, Heads of School, Directors of Research, Directors of Programs and faculty, as well as those who work in departments of marketing within higher education institutions, recognise the increasing utility of marketing what they have to offer. Our purpose in this research based book on higher education marketing is to bring to the diversity of these publics a more sophisticated way of thinking about, and methods for, marketing higher education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

Easily accessible, real-world and practical, "Dalrymple's Sales Management 10e" by Cron and DeCarlo introduces the reader to the issues, strategies and relationships that relate to the job of managing an effective sales force. With a lively and engaging style, this book places emphasis on developing a sales force program and managing strategic account relationships. With additional information on team development, diversity in the work force, problem-solving skills, and financial issues, this title provides a complete guide for taking student past the classroom and into a future career in sales management.

Build, implement and optimize your digital marketing campaigns, with this indispensable guide which covers everything from SEO, social media, paid search and display advertising. The Digital Marketing Handbook takes the reader step by step through the various components of B2B and B2C online marketing, making it an essential companion to every marketer's desk. Highly practical in approach, it features tips, platform recommendations and common pitfalls to watch out for, as well as examples from global brands including Google, Amazon and Nissan. Detailed guidance is provided for key areas such as creating content that excites, informs and converts, using marketing automation and analyzing your results to maximize performance. Written by recognized industry expert and bestselling author, Simon Kingsnorth, The Digital Marketing Handbook brings together reliable and actionable insights into one complete resource. Also covering how to manage affiliates and partnerships to deliver highly targeted leads and provide customer service that achieves high review scores and builds loyalty, it is accompanied by online templates and interactive tools to use in practice. This book is an essential blueprint for marketing professionals to deliver the best results from their digital marketing campaigns.

Why Customers Would Rather Have a Smartphone than a Car explores some of the fundamental changes in consumer behaviour: Why do we buy less in shops and more on the internet? Why do we spend more on gadgets, smartphones and apps and not more on food, holidays or clothing? Why do most business people only look at symptoms and not the causes of changing customer behaviour? The new generation buys differently from the baby boomers; they have different priorities and preferences. The internet has changed us in the way we think, act and communicate. Whilst many retailers now understand the need for change, few of them have established convincing or sustainable models for the future. Cor Molenaar argues that by understanding the drivers behind these new consumer behaviours, retailers can identify the opportunities this represents and adapt their offering accordingly. The kind of relationship retailing he advocates involves the way the retailer interacts with their customer; the new environment that they need to sustain along with their ability to relate customer data, technology and new services. The author interweaves examples from traditional and virtual retailing with his research on consumer psychology and buying behaviour to offer a sophisticated and at times challenging guide for all those involved in retailing, as well as those responsible for planning and designing social and retail space.

Socialize Your Patient Engagement Strategy makes the case for a fundamentally new approach to healthcare communication; one that mobilizes patients, healthcare professionals and uses new media to enable gathering, sharing and communication of information to achieve patient-centricity and provide better value for both organizations (in terms of profit) and patients (in terms of better service and improved health). Letizia Affinito and John Mack focus on three priority areas for actions: Improving Health Literacy (e.g. web sites; targeted mass digital campaigns), Improving Self-care (e.g. self-management education; self-monitoring; self-treatment), Improving Patient Safety (e.g. adherence to treatment regimens; equipping patients for safer selfcare). The authors explain the healthcare context to the digital communications revolution; the emerging digital marketing and communications techniques that enable this revolution and the core elements behind a patient-driven digital strategy. Drawing on the authors' research and consulting practices, as well as on the practical experience of managers in medium-large companies worldwide, the book provides a proven framework for improving the development and implementation of patient-centered digital communication programs in healthcare organizations. It is an engaging how-to/how-not-to book which includes tips, advice, and critical reviews that every stakeholder dealing with the healthcare system must have in order to participate in the evolving healthcare system and be more active in making strategic patient-centered choices. Socialize Your Patient Engagement Strategy includes interviews with experts and leading case histories of successful digital communication programs in the healthcare arena. While there are books that focus on specific healthcare communicators within different types of organizations, in their book the authors recognize that effective patient-centric communication crosses all organizational boundar

Stop feeling overwhelmed by data and start using it to its full potential, to create an agile and forward-looking strategy that enables customer-centric marketing, builds your brand and develops product strategies. Many brands talk about creating a marketing strategy powered by data, analytics and metrics. Yet too often they're still overwhelmed by data, or unsure of how to use it to create a flexible and future-focused strategy that doesn't just validate what's happened in the past. Marketing Metrics takes readers through all the stages of implementing a data-first strategy, from early-stage adoption to more advanced customization. Featuring examples from a range of organizations including Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz, it shows how to create a strategy which leverages consumer data for customer-centric marketing, establishes the ROI of channels and campaigns, strengthens brands and creates data-driven product strategies. Covering the range of new global laws that impact consumer privacy and data collection and usage, Marketing Metrics shows how to use data in a non-invasive, secure and ethical way. Also showing how to communicate critical data to the right stakeholders and the skills of the data-savvy marketer, this is a clear and jargon-free guide to creating a future-focused and data-powered marketing strategy.

The Value Trail offers a comprehensive approach to competitive analysis and strategy, considering value as a central theme and from a customer based perspective. It fully develops a disruptive new model of strategic analysis (namely the Three Dimensions of Value model) that approaches the drivers of success within a business from a value-based perspective: how value is understood by the customer (Appreciation of Value), and how it is boosted (Concentration of Value) or subtracted (Predation of Value) by different business agents. From this business-level perspective, the book progressively moves down to a company level to allow the reader to understand how companies can set corporate goals and leverage internal resources to deliver successful value propositions. To close the circle, special attention is paid to the definition of an integrated monitoring system based on both market (outside-in perspective) and company (inside-out perspective) metrics. On top of that, the book also identifies, in line with this new theory, the most relevant existing competitive models, together with a comprehensive analysis of their strategic approach and success drivers. If you are an entrepreneur looking for a solid and understandable guide to fully cover all company stages, a manager seeking to improve the implementation of operational and strategic processes or a practitioner in search of a disruptive approach to competitive analysis, this is the book you've been waiting for.

Where do powerful strategies come from? How do some companies develop strategies that enable them to outperform others regardless of the state of their industry or the economic climate? How does a company get the essentials to work in regard to the company's strategies, such as leadership buy-in and follow through on implementations and performance management, without being slow, rigid and check-box focused? These are some of the questions asked by Arve Peder A~verland in Always On: Digital Brand Strategy in a Big Data World. This book will provide an understanding of what it takes to develop, implement and run a digital strategy but it is not meant as a rigid process document that must be strictly adhered to. Companies have different needs and live in vastly different environments. The internal structure of an organization and the market in which it competes is not going to adapt to a digital strategy process, it must find a process and methodology that works best for it. With big data emerging as a standard framework for decision making, digital strategy and governance have taken on increased importance. It's a given in today's online marketplace that you are perceived as being always on. Make sure your governance programmes for your systems and platforms keep it that way. Think fast, be agile, be ready - you're always on!

Stop feeling overwhelmed by data and start using it to its full potential, to create an agile and forward-looking strategy that enables customer-centric marketing, builds your brand and develops product strategies. Many brands talk about creating a marketing strategy powered by data, analytics and metrics. Yet too often they're still overwhelmed by data, or unsure of how to use it to create a flexible and future-focused strategy that doesn't just validate what's happened in the past. Marketing Metrics takes readers through all the stages of implementing a data-first strategy, from early-stage adoption to more advanced customization. Featuring examples from a range of organizations including Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz, it shows how to create a strategy which leverages consumer data for customer-centric marketing, establishes the ROI of channels and campaigns, strengthens brands and creates data-driven product strategies. Covering the range of new global laws that impact consumer privacy and data collection and usage, Marketing Metrics shows how to use data in a non-invasive, secure and ethical way. Also showing how to communicate critical data to the right stakeholders and the skills of the data-savvy marketer, this is a clear and jargon-free guide to creating a future-focused and data-powered marketing strategy.

The male market is exploding. Thanks to emerging social and cultural trends, men are becoming consumers to reckon with. In 1990 only 4% of men claimed to regularly use a skin care product. By 2015 the figure will have risen to 50%. Branded Male discusses the evolution of the male consumer and the desire of marketers to tap into the still underdeveloped male market. Crammed with facts and anecdotes, it analyzes how to effectively brand products and services for the male market. Using a typical modern male's weekday as a template and examining all the influences affecting him, Branded Male considers his exposure to brands and the ways marketers can exploit these channels, taking you through popular strategies for marketing to men. In his trademark style, Mark Tungate paints a portrait of the male consumer. From razor blades to beer, from aftershave to hotels, he finds out which marketing messages have the most impact on male wallets. Men's bank balances may never be the same again.

How do firms become Client-centric? Effective Client Management in Professional Services is about putting the Client first, everywhere, in the activities of professional services firms. The book introduces The Client Management Model to enable firms to assess their level of Client orientation and relationship development. It also features The Client Management Index which enables firms to benchmark their result against their peers. Many firms are still developing and improving their commercial structures and approaches to attract, develop and retain Clients. Characteristically, professional services firms tend to lag their consumer goods and service industry counterparts in overall commerciality. Only recently have they discovered the value of having a strong brand promise with the associated employee engagement. In many firms achievement of Client satisfaction is not a strategic objective; this may need to be reviewed. This book provides a comprehensive, pragmatic guide to the Client relationship journey, from identifying potential Clients to their engagement, care, retention, development, loyalty and beyond. The handbook format has exercises and tools which can help to establish which Clients are likely to be the most lucrative and thus provide the desired financial returns. The book also includes insights from top practitioners, anecdotes, case studies, charts and useful exercises and checklists. Readers can also determine their own level of effectiveness using the end of chapter reviews and a diagnostic tool to produce a Client Management Profile.

The need for assurance is never more acute than in times of turbulence and uncertainty. The events following the financial market crisis demonstrate the catastrophic consequence of risk taking that exceeds the board's appetite, and of not joining up risk intelligence for sound decision making. Boards and senior management alike consistently seek the 'one truth' about risk exposures and strength of controls but are continuing to grapple with the challenge. Much has been written about assurance and the governance of risks, but mainly by those who provide it - such as internal auditors, accountants and information security technologists - for the purpose of advancing their professional practices. Less is written for or by those in governance who need assurance for the effective discharge of their responsibilities. Regulations do not usually go beyond acknowledging its importance and rely on those in the boardroom to get it right. Studies have consistently shown the link between weak corporate governance and corporate failures. The lack of reliable assurance has often been a factor. Assurance, as an integral part of corporate governance, cannot be taken for granted. It requires conscious action across the organisation. It is time to rethink assurance beyond its usual functional boundaries, to focus on what matters to the business and how discussions in the board room can be better supported by more joined up assurance. This book provides practical guidance for those who need that support as well as those who deliver assurance.

What's Your Business? offers a comprehensive pathway through the subject of corporate design clarifying the relationship between corporate design and corporate strategy and the terms identity, brand, image, communication and reputation. The book explores the impact of developing digital technology on brand creation and positioning in a marketplace, through symbolic and coherent design. A local market trader may buy a van, promote his business on a blackboard and proclaim 'daily special offers'. Corporations use computers, design websites and communicate with global clients through social media. Yet each business started with an idea and developed a distinctive existence. What's Your Business? helps you turn a business idea into reality by establishing its existence, ethos, message and activities. By integrating corporate and design strategy with creative inputs Claire Tomlins illustrates the subject's diversity. She ensures businesses set goals, strategies and plans whilst ensuring they recognise an identity that sparks the corporate design strategy and creative inputs that manifests the company's aesthetic for marketing purposes; including design management, Intellectual Property topics and measures. Business people wishing to know how design can provide added value to their organisation will find this book useful, including where they could contribute. Academic concepts and definitions are updated and explanations are provided to business and design students on where each of their skillsets can contribute to a business.

As the era of ever expanding markets and ample resources ends, governments and business will have to behave differently. The world is facing weak economic growth, limits to affordable resources and increasing concerns about environmental consequences. During the boom times, governments championed de-regulation and business responded by adopting an anything-goes attitude. In these straitened times, strategic analysis has to engage with the challenges that society faces to create resilient corporations fit for the 21st century. In Corporate Strategy in the Age of Responsibility, Peter McManners, who has for nine years run strategy workshops on the Henley MBA focusing on the global business environment, sets about providing a strategic framework for navigating the new economic environment. Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) now exist, but they struggle to find the strategic rationale for the improvements they champion. The author argues that their good intentions often lack traction, partly because others in management don't get it, but also because they are not ambitious enough. The book is not about preaching semi-charitable behaviour or how to enhance the reputation of the corporation instead it is about surviving and thriving in a challenging and changing environment. A corporate audience familiar with strategy books will relate to this book, but will find it steers them towards radically new strategic thinking suitable for a turbulent period of transition.

Learn the fundamentals of market research with this bestselling guide that delivers an overview of the whole process, from planning a project and executing it, what tools to use, through to analysis and presenting the findings. Market Research in Practice provides a practical and robust introduction to the subject, providing a clear step-by-step guide to managing market research and how to effectively to obtain the most reliable results. Written by an industry expert with over 35 years' practical experience in running a successful market research agency, tips and advice are included throughout to ground the concepts in business reality. This text also benefits from real-world examples from companies including Adidas, Marks & Spencer, Grohe and General Motors. Now in its fourth edition, Market Research in Practice is now fully updated to capture the latest changes and developments in the field and explores new tools of qualitative research using online methods as well as expanding further on online surveys such as SurveyMonkey. Accompanied by a range of templates, surveys and resources for lecturers, this is an invaluable guide for students of research methods, researchers, marketers and users of market research.

The behaviour of people and their organisation are the primary drivers of a project's pace of progress. Methodology, tools and techniques are vital but subordinate to human endeavour; if only because their selection, deployment and application entirely depend on the abilities of the project players and their organisation. Performance ultimately rests on human and organisational behaviour: expressed by the players' experience, professional ability, resolve, dialogue and collaboration. Fresh approaches and methods help practitioners to address this reality productively. This book is written under nine headings: collaboration; able people; strength; connections; rigour; pace; persistence; adaptation; and maturity. The Single-Minded Project offers a new and convincing appreciation of project management that will harness players and their organisation. It recognises that at its heart, the management and leadership of a project regime relies on the choices, behaviours and decisions of its players and the organisation's freedom of action. It addresses the urgency of the project (the need for swiftness), coupled with the kind and degree of diligence (the need for rigour in the choice and management of method): referring to its Pace of Progress. The success of a project very much depends on the pace at which it is conducted to then deliver value. Projects find themselves in territory where methodology, tools and techniques are of little help. The Single-Minded Project fills that gap and more.

The journey to purchase for the family shop or the B2B buyer is impacted by media, advice, packaging and trial. The sales and marketing challenge is what to say, and where to say it. Shoppernomics, based on research and case studies from US and UK, examines the path taken by the potential buyer. The authors describe the key drivers and barriers on the journey to purchase. They identify the need to get key messages, key partners and key media all working together, and a framework for success. The authors challenge the budget split between sales and marketing as possibly the largest barrier to successful shopper marketing and identify core stores and the areas they serve as being equally important targets for investment. Shoppernomics provides the manual for achieving successful companies serving happy and loyal customers, as the ultimate goal for manufacturers, retailers and brands. It reminds marketers that it is what customers take from their product or service that is important, not what they think they are delivering. It reminds sales people that nothing is more important than matching supply and demand in the eyes of the customer regardless of who actually makes the ultimate sale. Shoppernomics is designed to deliver fast results for companies prepared to recognise that they are not perfect, and go the extra mile to find out why.

A twenty-first-century sales philosophy that "gets straight to the point about what works, and what doesn't work in today's marketplace" (Kevin Kruse, New York Times-bestselling author of 15 SecretsSuccessful People Know About Time Management, Founder and CEO of LeadX). Being successful at sales has nothing to do with "selling." The best salespeople are the ones who are always curious-not always closing. Succeed Without Selling contains everything a small business owner or sales professional needs to know about what it takes to be successful. From prospecting to discovery to referrals and strategic alliances, it's all covered. There are even chapters for sales managers, direct sellers, and service providers. Succeed Without Selling also includes resources like sample scripts and proposal templates. Anyone who wants to grow their business will find actionable, easy-to-follow information to help them embrace the value of being more interested in others than in making the sale. Succeed Without Selling changes the way readers look at the sales process forever-and stops them from engaging in behaviors that just don't work.

Navigate the B2B marketing sphere with this fully updated guide on how to better understand new customer habits, the digital era and how to shift away from outdated traditional practices. Innovative B2B Marketing is an essential guide for marketers looking for the latest approaches, models and solutions for B2B marketing. Written by one of the leading voices in the B2B marketing sphere who works with the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and other major associations, this book features real-life examples from a diverse range of sectors including marine, information technology and pharmaceutical, plus topical discussion points and challenges from key B2B marketing forums and associations. Now fully updated, the second edition of Innovative B2B Marketing features new chapters on customer attrition, B2B partnership marketing and lead nurturing, as well as further content on influencer marketing and the behaviours of millennial customers. It is accompanied by online resources which consist of case studies, web links to insightful videos and articles, and presentation slides with practical models and templates.

Increasingly in the public discourse there are references to the knowledge economy, knowledge society, knowledge workers and knowledge organisations. The argument is that knowledge is becoming the main economic resource, replacing the natural resources that drove the industrial revolution. The new knowledge economy is driven by knowledge development, innovation and highly skilled employees. Increasing investment in higher education and in universities is in line with this strategy and understanding. In an earlier book, Creating Collaborative Advantage edited with Richard Ennals, Professor Hans Christian Garmann Johnsen argued that it is knowledge that links social and economic processes. He believes that what is missing in the current discussion on innovation is a conceptualisation of exactly what knowledge is. In The New Natural Resource, he digs deeper into what it is and how it develops and subsequently leads to widespread change. The author argues that knowledge is inherently a social phenomenon. That is why social processes are closely linked to economic development, and why this relationship becomes even more apparent in the new knowledge economy. Knowledge is not an objective entity, established once and for all. Knowledge development is interrelated with values, norms, perceptions and interpretations. We need to know what the mechanisms are by which knowledge becomes legitimate, true and relevant.

We need strategy. The world is changing, the future uncertain. What is required is vision: What might the future bring? Where is our business going? What are our fundamental business values? This book is a manual for all those who want to apply strategy in organisations. It is intended for everyone who wants to put the future on the agenda, to look beyond the short term and beyond mere profit. It describes in practical terms the eight questions we must continually discuss in order to pursue a future-proof strategy in a dynamic and uncertain world: mission, trends, scenarios, options, vision, roadmap, action and monitoring. If you are dissatisfied with an approach to strategy based on simple backward looking analysis, management controls and problems solving after the fact, but would like to make a positive contribution to thinking about the future, Scenario-based Strategy offers the instruments to turn your intention into practice. The text provides examples from commercial to government and trade organizations; showing how others have undertaken future explorations and how they used these explorations to create a dynamic strategy. Paul de Ruijter has a deep insight into the theory, alongside practical experience working with some of the most highly regarded and resilient organizations. The result is a rich combination of methodology and practical, engaging examples that shows you how to go about creating an agenda for the future.

There can be little doubt about the profound impact that the Internet has had on all aspects of business over the past decade. Indeed, it is now widely accepted that we have entered a new and even more revolutionary phase in the development of the Net as a global marketing and communications platform; a phase characterised by information pull rather than push, user-generated content, openness, sharing, collaboration, interaction, communities, and social networking. New generation Web-based communities and hosted applications are beginning to have a major impact on customer behaviour across a diverse range of industries. These new applications represent a fundamental change in the way people use the Internet, their online expectations, and experiences.

From a marketing perspective, the most distinctive feature is not the technology involved but rather the growth of a new global culture a Net generation culture based on decentralised authority rather than hierarchy and control, online socialising and collaboration, user-generated and distributed content, open communications, peer-to-peer sharing, and global participation. Success in this new online environment, characterised by people and network empowerment, requires new mindsets and innovative approaches to marketing, customer, and network relationships.

This book makes a valuable contribution to the field by examining recent and future developments in online marketing, including the revolutionary impact of new media. Chapters cover a wide range of topics, including: information exchange on bulletin board systems and in online consumer portals; Web 2.0 and New-Wave Globals; online tribal marketing; co-creation; industry impact; privacy issues; online advertising effectiveness; and practitioner prognostics for the future of online marketing.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

Given the increased social and environmental problems in China, this book looks into the social and environmental disclosure practices of socially responsible Chinese listed firms by constructing a stakeholder-driven, three-dimensional, disclosure index. The book contains a three-part study: the first part explores the current status of social and environment disclosure practices. The second part empirically examines the relationship between corporate social and environmental disclosure and various influencing factors (i.e. stakeholders' power and corporate characteristics). The third part empirically examines the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting (i.e. publishing a CSR report and the quality of the CSR report) and socially responsible reputation. The book finds that the CSR report provided more stakeholder-relevant social and environmental disclosure than the annual report. It also finds that corporate characteristics such as firm size, profitability and industry classification are all statistically significant factors influencing the social and environmental disclosure of the Chinese firms studied. Shareholders significantly influenced firms' social and environmental disclosure, and creditors significantly influenced firms' disclosure related to their environmental performance. The final part of the study reports that publishing a CSR report and CSR reporting quality had a positive influence on firms' socially responsible reputations and that the CEO/chairman duality negatively influenced firms' socially responsible reputation. This book will be of interest to those who are keen to learn more about corporate social responsibilities in the context of Chinese firms.

In recognising the realms of eco-marketing, sustainable marketing, social marketing and ethical consumption, this collection provides an accessible overview of the multifaceted and challenging nature of green and ethical issues. In revealing that there are many ways to explore the consumption activities of green and ethical consumers, the contributors point to some of the weaknesses identified in previous marketing research. The book also considers fundamental ways in which marketing academics and marketing practitioners can gain a more holistic understanding of the demographic, psychological and socio-cultural influences upon the green and ethical consumer. The contributors offer insights underpinned by holistic and cross-cultural perspective. As a result, this collection will advance marketing theory as well as offer valuable implications and recommendations for managers, practitioners and policymakers, the joint efforts of which are needed to ensure a more 'green', ethical and sustainable marketplace. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.