Peter Doyle
ISBN: 0-471-87727-1
Cloth
384 pages
October 2000

The increasing emphasis placed on the financial technique of shareholder value as a means for measuring a company's performance has provided a major opportunity for marketing managers: the ability to increase greatly their sphere of influence in setting their company's strategic direction like never before. To do so, the marketing managers of today have to first realise that his opportunity exists, and then equip themselves with the tools and knowledge to take advantage of it. In his influential new book, Peter Doyle brings out into the open for the first time this critical change in the role of marketing within a company's structure and in so doing rewrites the job description of the marketing manager who wants to take the next significant step forward. Simply put, shareholder value (SV) needs marketing and marketing needs shareholder value. SV can be defined as the ability for investors to earn a return (dividends and share price) on their investment; it occurs when a company achieves a return on investment that exceeds its cost of capital. To achieve this (and thereby attract additional funds and investment) a company must be perceived as being in an attractive market, pursuing a strategy which has a good chance of building a sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore, recognising market opportunities and positioning the company accordingly to achieve competitive advantage is critical to success. This is where the skills of the marketing manager comes to the fore. SV provides an essential tool to evaluate strategic options and make choices. In order to be able to have such choices and evaluation, however, the first stage must be to identify what strategy will be effective in the current and future competitive environment - marketing managers are best placed to provide that information. It is no longer enough to produce only the products/services that customers want; it is now equally necessary to be able to produce the products/services that customers choose above the competitors. In his book, Peter Doyle recognises this interdependence of marketing, SV and strategy and provides marketers and general business readers with a clear and practical understanding of how it can be achieved.