Drucker on Marketing: Lessons from the World's Most Influential Business Thinker

Drucker on Marketing: Lessons from the World's Most Influential Business Thinker

by William Cohen
Released October 2012
Publisher(s): McGraw-Hill
ISBN: 9780071778633

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

THE ESSENTIAL MARKETING WISDOM OF PETER DRUCKER

"Bill Cohen has done us a wonderful service by faithfully combing through Peter Drucker's vast writings and weaving together Peter's thoughts on marketing. This has never been done before." -- Philip Kotler, from the Foreword

Considered the single most important thought leader in the world of management, Peter Drucker had an equally significant influence on the discipline of marketing. Although he didn’t approach marketing with the same systematic rigor he reserved for management, Drucker addressed the topic in detail in his wellknown treatises on the roles of profitability and leadership, the importance of innovation, and the need to seize new opportunities.

Drucker on Marketing is the first comprehensive look at the marketing wisdom of one of modern history's most influential business thinkers.

A former student of Peter Drucker, William Cohen has sifted through Drucker's huge body of work, singled out his most salient ideas on marketing, and constructed them into a framework that not only outlines Drucker's marketing philosophy but provides practical advice on how to achieve marketing goals in today's business setting. The book is organized into five thematic sections:

  1. The Ascendancy of Marketing
  2. Innovation and Entrepreneurship
  3. Drucker's Marketing Strategy
  4. New Product and Service Introduction
  5. Drucker's Unique Marketing Insights

For Drucker, profitability should not be the main focus of a business. The customer should be; the market should be. He didn't consider marketing as one of many tools to generate profits. Rather, he viewed marketing as the driving force of business, a philosophy for defining and capturing the most enriching customer opportunities.

Providing unique insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers, Drucker on Marketing is an essential read for both marketing professionals and fans of Peter Drucker.

Praise for Drucker on Marketing

"Bill Cohen's interpretation of Drucker's work has never been needed more than today, when marketing spells the difference between success and failure." -- Frances Hesselbein, President and CEO, The Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute

"It is my desire that those in positions of influence, especially executives, professors, and students, take Cohen's advice in this book to heart and help their organizations to help us all." -- Joseph A. Maciariello, Horton Professor of Management, The Drucker School of Management, and coauthor of The Drucker Difference

"Drucker on Marketing reflects Bill Cohen's unique ability to understand and communicate Peter Drucker's thoughts and ideas about [marketing] with the added touch of how to implement them in a dynamic and changing world." -- C. William Pollard, Chairman Emeritus, The ServiceMaster Company

"Drucker said it best when he said that marketing and innovation are the most important business functions because they generate new customers. So, believe me, anything he said about marketing is worth reading. There's no better thinker." -- Jack Trout, global marketing expert, President, Trout & Partners Ltd., and bestselling coauthor of Positioning

"Bill Cohen has synthesized and analyzed and brought to life the single subject that, in many respects, lies at the heart of all of Drucker's writing: how to create a customer. This is a major contribution." -- Rick Wartzman, Executive Director, The Drucker Institute, and columnist for Forbes.com

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Drucker on Marketing : Lessons from the World's Most Influential Business Thinker
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Foreword
  6. Introduction Drucker and His Different Marketing Approach
  7. Part I The Ascendancy of Marketing
    1. Chapter 1 Two Different Views on the Development of Marketing
    2. Chapter 2 The Purpose of Business Is Not to Make a Profit
    3. Chapter 3 Any Organization Has Only Two Functions: One Concerns Marketing, and the Other Is Marketing
    4. Chapter 4 Drucker’s Marketing View
    5. Chapter 5 Marketing Is Leadership
  8. Part II Innovation and Entrepreneurship
    1. Chapter 6 Where the Best Innovations Come From: The Seven Mothers of Invention
    2. Chapter 7 Demand-Side Innovation
    3. Chapter 8 Supply-Side Innovation
    4. Chapter 9 Drucker’s Entrepreneurial Marketing
  9. Part III Drucker’s Marketing Strategy
    1. Chapter 10 The Best Way to Predict the Future Is to Create It
    2. Chapter 11 The Fundamental Marketing Decision
    3. Chapter 12 Drucker’s New Certainties for Formulating Marketing Strategy
    4. Chapter 13 Success by Abandonment of Profitable Products
    5. Chapter 14 Marketing and Selling Are Not Complementary and May Be Adversarial
  10. Part IV New Product and Service Introduction
    1. Chapter 15 How to Do Marketing Research the Drucker Way
    2. Chapter 16 Exploiting Demographic Change
    3. Chapter 17 Timing Isn’t Everything; It’s the Only Thing
    4. Chapter 18 How to Avoid Major Failure
    5. Chapter 19 Drucker’s Five Deadly Marketing Sins
    6. Chapter 20 The Only Way to Set a Price
  11. Part V Drucker’s Unique Marketing Insights
    1. Chapter 21 Quality According to Drucker— It’s Not What You May Think
    2. Chapter 22 Integrity Is Critical to Marketing
    3. Chapter 23 The Dangers of Marketing Professionalism
    4. Chapter 24 Why Buying Customers Won’t Work
    5. Chapter 25 With Drucker into the Future
  12. Notes
  13. Index
  14. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: Drucker on Marketing: Lessons from the World's Most Influential Business Thinker
  • Author(s): William Cohen
  • Release date: October 2012
  • Publisher(s): McGraw-Hill
  • ISBN: 9780071778633