Tales from the Marketplace

Nigel F. Piercy BA, MA, PhD, FCIM is Professor of Marketing and Strategy at Warwick Business School in the University of Warwick, UK. He has also been visiting professor at Texas Christian University, the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in North Carolina, the Columbia Graduate School of Business in New York, and at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously Professor of Strategic Marketing and Head of the Marketing Group at Cranfield School of Management. For several years he was the Sir Julian Hodge Professor of Marketing and Strategy at Cardiff University. He has managerial experience in retailing and was in business planning with Nycomed Amersham plc. He has extensive experience as a consultant and management workshop speaker and facilitator with many organizations throughout the world, specializing in the issues of market strategy planning and implementation. Recent client companies have included: KPMG, British Telecom, Allied Dunbar, Ford Cellular, AT&T, Honeywell, AIB Group, ICL, IMI, Scottish Widows, AMEY, Novar, Yellow Pages, and other smaller companies. He has worked with managers and management students in the UK, Europe, the USA, the Far East, and South Africa. He has been a Vice Chair of the American Marketing Association's Marketing Strategy Special Interest Group, and a Vice Chair with the Academy of Marketing Science. His research interests span several areas related to the development of marketing implementation strategy - such as marketing planning and budgeting, internal marketing and marketing organization - and he is currently focusing on a number of projects related to sales organization effectiveness and the sales/marketing interface. Professor Piercy has published sixteen books and has some 200 articles and papers in the management literature throughout the world. Among other awards and prizes, he was the UK Marketing Author of the Year for three years, and has published papers in the Journal of Market

• Part I Stories and Strategies; Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1 Why a book of stories for managers?; Chapter 2; Part II Stories of Revolution and Reinvention; Chapter 3 CHAPTER 3 British Airways; Chapter 4; Chapter 5 CHAPTER 5 New marketing channels; Chapter 6; Chapter 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Part III Stories of Obsolescence and Renewal; Chapter 10 CHAPTER 10 M& S; Chapter 11; Chapter 12; Chapter 13; Chapter 14; Chapter 15; Chapter 16; Part IV Reflections on the Stories; Chapter 17 CHAPTER 17 Commentaries; Chapter 18 CHAPTER 18 Final thoughts … for now Index;

"This book is really just a bunch of stories and examples". Perhaps that accounts for it being such entertaining reading. Piercy is adamant that this is more than simply a book of case studies, and while it could be productively used for study, he is right. Divided into 'Stories of revolution and reinvention' and 'Stories of obsolescence and renewal' the book profiles 14 internationally renowned brands, such as Levi Jeans, Dell Computers, Skoda Cars, Laura Ashley, Enclopaedia Britannica and Kellogg's Cornflakes. Through these examples the author explores a new era of market-based strategy - in which assumptions are continually challenged, and complacency is rewarded with failure. As Piercy astutely points out, the only principle that strategists can rely on is that there are no principals to reply on.