Media Releases

New book from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management examines the changing landscape of marketing

January 10, 2013

TORONTO, ON – The past decade has seen a num­ber of devel­op­ments that threat­en the very fab­ric of how mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties have tra­di­tion­al­ly been con­duct­ed. On one hand, con­sumers are increas­ing­ly social­ly net­worked and val­ue-con­scious, with height­ened expec­ta­tions of how com­pa­nies will react to their demands. Along with the chal­lenges, how­ev­er, come new oppor­tu­ni­ties: the growth of behav­iour­al eco­nom­ics and the emer­gence of new data col­lec­tion tech­niques, for instance, give mar­keters unprece­dent­ed access to pre­vi­ous­ly hid­den aspects of con­sumer behav­ior. Clear­ly, ‘busi­ness as usu­al’ is not an option for mar­ket­ing man­agers who want their firms to stay in the game.

A new book, Flux: What Mar­ket­ing Man­agers Need to Nav­i­gate the New Envi­ron­ment, helps man­agers adapt to the rapid­ly chang­ing busi­ness envi­ron­ment. The book, pub­lished by Rot­man-UTP Pub­lish­ing, an imprint of Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Press in part­ner­ship with the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment, offers a col­lec­tion of the very best think­ing on key areas of mar­ket­ing activ­i­ty and deci­sion-mak­ing.

Each chap­ter is writ­ten by a lead­ing expert from Rot­man School’s award-win­ning mar­ket­ing fac­ul­ty in a spe­cif­ic ‘new’ mar­ket­ing sub­ject area, from man­ag­ing brands to deal­ing with new media, and address­es sub­stan­tive chal­lenges in that area while pro­vid­ing steps for tak­ing action.

“The land­scape on which firms inter­act with cus­tomers is in a state of flux. In the last few years, we have seen dra­mat­ic changes in the man­ner in which this inter­ac­tion takes place,” says co-edi­tor Prof. David Sober­man, who holds the Cana­di­an Nation­al Chair in Strate­gic Mar­ket­ing at the Rot­man School. “From the consumer’s per­spec­tive, easy access to infor­ma­tion has dras­ti­cal­ly changed the very nature of the pur­chas­ing behav­iour. The tra­di­tion­al ‘store choice fol­lowed by brand choice’ mod­el has now giv­en way to an ‘I know what I want and will seek it out’ men­tal­i­ty, and in some cas­es even an ‘I know what I want and I’d like a sell­er who can help me cus­tomize it’ men­tal­i­ty.”

“As an aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tion, we val­ue rig­or­ous aca­d­e­m­ic research that stands up to the high­est qual­i­ty of the peer-reviewed jour­nal pub­lish­ing process. As a busi­ness school, we val­ue research that is applic­a­ble – research that informs the mar­ket­ing man­ag­er in devel­op­ing both short term tac­tics as well as longer-term strate­gies for keep­ing the con­sumer engaged,” says co-edi­tor Rot­man Prof. Dilip Soman, who holds the Corus Chair in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Strat­e­gy. “Our col­leagues at the Rot­man School are lead­ing experts in mar­ket­ing acad­e­mia and have been build­ing a port­fo­lio of research that address­es pre­cise­ly this chang­ing envi­ron­ment which is rep­re­sent­ed in this book.”

Flux has already been crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed by lead­ers in the field of mar­ket­ing.

Prof. Dan Ariely of the Fuqua School of Busi­ness at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty says that “Flux takes us on an eye open­ing jour­ney through the chang­ing and expand­ing world of mar­ket­ing. Berkeley’s Ganesh Iyer, a pro­fes­sor at the Haas School of Busi­ness, adds, “This is a bril­liant­ly put togeth­er book and a deep analy­sis of the trans­for­ma­tion of mar­ket­ing from a tra­di­tion­al brand-build­ing mod­el to one of com­pre­hen­sive con­sumer engage­ment.”

“Flux is an excel­lent com­pendi­um that com­pre­hen­sive­ly cov­ers the the­o­ry and prac­tice of brand­ing and mar­ket­ing, draw­ing on the lessons of the past as well as ana­lyz­ing how these func­tions should oper­ate in the new world cre­at­ed by unprece­dent­ed glob­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty and access to infor­ma­tion,” says K.V. Kamath, Chair­man of Infos­ys Ltd., and for­mer Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and CEO of ICICI Bank.

“If you respect the dis­ci­pline of mar­ket­ing, this is a book for you. If you have been at it for years, like me (cig­a­rettes, bev­er­ages, cere­als, soups & sauces and now media), you will appre­ci­ate why Sober­man and Soman chose the title, “Flux”. Mar­ket­ing is like base­ball. It’s still the same…it’s just evolved,” says John Cas­sa­day, Pres­i­dent and CEO, Corus Enter­tain­ment. “If you are new to the mar­ket­ing game, Flux will serve as a use­ful ref­er­ence man­u­al. All great mar­keters are insa­tiably curi­ous. Flux stim­u­lates your curios­i­ty across a wide range of rel­e­vant mar­ket­ing sub­ject areas.”

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on Flux is avail­able at www.utppublishing.com/Flux-What-Marketing-Managers-Need-to-Navigate-the-New-Environment.html. It is now avail­able from most lead­ing book retail­ers.

Found­ed in 1901, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Press is Canada’s old­est schol­ar­ly press and one of the largest uni­ver­si­ty press­es in North Amer­i­ca, releas­ing over 150 new schol­ar­ly, ref­er­ence, and gen­er­al-inter­est books each year, as well as main­tain­ing a back­list of over 1500 titles in print. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.utppublishing.com.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions. The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

 ‑30-

For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool