Who should read this blog?

Hello and welcome.

This is a new blog in support of the textbook ‘Introduction to Marketing’ – published by FT Prentice Hall and written by Armstrong, Kotler, Harker and Brennan. I’m Michael Harker, the third on that list and I am an academic at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

This book is intended to accompany introductory classes in marketing – and if you are a student of marketing it is likely that you will be using this book [or a similar/competing textbook] to help you with your studies. If so, then keeping up with the contents of this blog might be helpful to you.

Who else might find it worthwhile to read these postings? If you are teaching rather than studying business in general or marketing in particular I hope you will find useful items here. Professional marketers often comment on the value and relevance of the training and education they received – I hope I will be able to encourage them to provide comment and feedback on the knowledge and skills they apply to their jobs everyday.

So, what sort of content will this blog have? It seems to be that the best blogs keep a strong theme but provide a variety of material on or around it, so here are my initial thoughts on what you might expect to see here:

1.       Discussion of basic concepts and processes in marketing

2.       Review and reflection of marketing-related news stories

3.       Examples of marketing practice – good and bad

4.       Considerations of problems and issues that confront students of marketing

Enough for a beginning I think.