The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 11

(Almost) Everything ILearned About Marketing,I Learned in My Father’sDrugstore. Let Me ShareIt With You.

I went to work in my father’s drugstore as a stock boy when I was nine years old, progressing to cashier, clerk, and pharmacist’s assistant. Retailing is a high-feedback environment in which you can quickly see the effects of what you are doing. You count the money at the end of each day, count the prescriptions, and see the faces of customers. I later became a psychologist and a marketing consultant, but realized that what I had learned in my father’s drugstore, particularly about word of mouth, applies to every business and every product—not exactly in the form I learned it, but translated into a form appropriate to the particular ...