Marketing Finance

In a business environment that demands ever greater accountability from marketing, it’s important for marketers to have a solid grounding in a conceptual framework of marketing finance that transcends flavor-of-the-month trends. Victor J. Cook, Jr. can be said without hyperbole to be one of the most important contributers to our understanding of marketing strategy and finance. Currently Emeritus Professor of Enterprise Marketing Strategy at Tulane University, Cook has written some of the most influential papers on marketing strategy and finance over the past 40 years, and one of the first to push forward concepts of Marketing Return on Investment.

In Competing for Customers and Capital , Cook lays out a new conceptual framework for understanding the role marketing plays in contributing to the bottom-line value of a product and a business. Forget the Wannamaker principal–that half of your marketing budget is wasted, you just don’t know which half. Cook puts forward concrete financial metrics that directly tie product markets and capital markets to revenue and shareholder value. These are new foundational concepts in business and marketing management that any marketing or general business executive must understand.

How The Book Discussion Works

1. All dialog will be carried out through blog postings and comments.
You don’t need to register or pay.

2. You can pick up a copy of the book at Amazon and join in at any point.

3. A schedule and index for the discussion is posted below, where all Book Discussion threads will be linked after posting. To keep up with the dialog either bookmark this page, or subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed. Need RSS help?.

4. To begin, just click on the first link in the schedule below, and return to this page when you want to move on.

Index

Prologue—Oct. 16: Introduction

A Conversation with Victor Cook

Dialog: Competing for Customers and Capital

Dialog: Measuring Intangible Value

Week 1—Oct. 23: Theoretical Overview

Chapter 1: A Bridge to Tomorrow

Supplemental Material: 30-minute narrated PowerPoint supporting chapter 1.

Dialog: Introductory Concepts

Dialog: Understanding Intangibles

Week 2—Oct. 30: Product/Stock Markets