A sharp, aggressively and adequately reasoned book about competition that your smarter rivals will try to get to first. The most authoritative marketing book of the past quarter century if I have to say it with all honesty. A factual goldmine of analytical concepts and tools to help companies get a much clearer grasp of how they can create and keep up competitive advantage. An indespensable must have book for marketing students too. Strategic Marketing: Creating Competetive Advantage also gets to the core of how teamwork are created and when diversification might work. It gracefully addressed diverse approach and strategies for pricing, distribution, promotion, advertising and market segmentation. Factors such as market penetration, market share, profit margins, budgets, financial analysis, capital investment, government actions, demographic changes, emerging technology and cultural trends are essential issues that need to be fully digested by marketing people and students.

Marketing is a philosophy that leads to the process by which organizations,groups and individuals obtain what they need and want by identifying value,providing it, communicating it and delivering it to others. The core concepts of marketing are customers’ needs, wants and values; products, exchange,communications and relationships. Marketing is strategically concerned with the direction and scope of the long-term activities performed by the organization to obtain a competitive advantage. The organization applies its resources within a changing environment to satisfy customer needs while meeting stakeholder expectations. Douglas West successfully laid out the outlines in handling strategic marketing, creating competetive advantage among other competitors.
Implied in his view of strategic marketing is the requirement to develop a strategy to cope with competitors, identify market opportunities, develop and commercialize new products and services, allocate resources among marketing activities and design an appropriate organizational structure to ensure the performance desired is achieved. A strategic marketing approach attempts to determine ways of offering superior value to the more profitable segments without damaging individual customer relationships. A strategic  marketing approach reflects an integrated approach based onresearch and feedback. Customer needs are first evaluated through market research, an integrated marketing effort is developed to satisfy customers so that the organization achieves its goals, especially those affecting shareholders.This is a customer orientation and contrasts very bluntly with a narrow competitor orientation based on sales in which the organization by capitalizingon the weaknesses of vulnerable competitors or by removing its own competitive weaknesses attempts to obtain high sales and long-run profits therby sustaining the competetive edge. The structure simplifies navigation by providing a clear overview of the process of strategic marketing, and promotes a holistic understanding of the subject. Strategic Marketing: Creating Competitive Advantage comprises a wealth of international real-world examples which manifests strategic marketing in practice that allows students to have an in-depth comprehension of the the importance of theoretical concepts.

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