A framework for marketing management Book

I was initially skeptical of reading a textbook about marketing, but this one is pretty rigorous and covers all the aspects of modern marketing management. I was also heartened to see that its fundamental thesis is that good marketing underpins great companies, and that marketing isn't just about "fonts and colors"; it drives both sales and product management strategy & execution. This shouldn't really be controversial, but especially in the technology field, you would be surprised at the number of product managers (for example) who take the attitude of "product's job is to put products on the shelf, and marketing's job is to move them off the shelf". It doesn't quite work like that -- or, more accurately, it can function like that, but it's not a very effective way of building a valuable company. One chart in particular that shows marketing's function as driving the entire value delivery chain is one that I'll be using whenever I get asked, "so, what is it that you do?"

The only shortcoming of the textbook is that it's quite dry, being that it's a condensed version of a more comprehensive textbook entitled Marketing Management. This also restricts the number of examples that were included, or the depth of each topic. As a "survey" book, it's not bad, but I would have appreciated additional detail. Still, as someone who finds textbooks largely useless, this one did impress me, and while I wouldn't recommend a straight read through (like I did), certain chapters are valuable as reference material for marketers who need to expand their knowledge in a specific area and just need to get oriented.