International Marketing

Rating:
Summary: Best Overall International Marketing Text
Review: I am a Professor of International Marketing and have used this book and the previous editions for 10 semesters. Compared to the competition, this book is definitely the best in the field. It is well written and researched and gives the reader a solid foundation in the major topics of IM. The instructor support materials are excellent and I highly recommend them, particularly the video series. If you are a new professor teaching IM for the first time, the instructor's manual, powerpoint slides, test bank, and videos are a godsend! The Country Notebook described in the book is a great semester-long team project and really reinforces the content of each chapter. I will continue to use this book for a long time!

Rating:
Summary: a good coverage, but...
Review: I used his book as an MBA student 15 or so years ago. Now as an adjunct professor, I am using this newest edition in my undergraduate classes. Although my observation may be biased, the book is a bit too encyclopedic, a bit superficial in coverage, and fails to excite the students. I wish it were more up-to-date.

Rating:
Summary: Very thorough, but difficult to read, poorly structured
Review: I used this book for an MBA course in international marketing. I agree that some of the instructor materials are good. The video series has some good content. Some of the test questions are good, many are irrelevant (testing memorizing numbers vs. understanding concepts), others are ambiguous.
But the book is very hard to read, repetitive, and not well structured. Updates (e.g. Internet) seem to be added somewhat randomly. Economic fundamentals (currencies, international trade) are not well explained. Some of the data tables are very outdated. I spent over 300 hours preparing for a 3-hour credit course, to update the materials. I would recommend looking at alternatives.


Rating:
Summary: Lots of information, but poorly written
Review: I'm a senior in college, and I have read many textbooks by many authors. Through all that studying, only a handful of books have ever stood out in my mind as "exceptionally good" or "exceptionally bad" for whatever reason.

Well, I am sorry to say that this book more than any other has stood out as "exceptionally bad" because of 1) its horrendous, awkward phraseology, and 2) its unnecessarily lengthy explanations of most concepts. Because of these shortcomings, it routinely took me much too long to read even a few pages, and when I was finally finished, I disappointedly discovered that I hadn't even learned that much about international marketing. It's like reading an essay from a student who is just trying to fill up space or impress his professor with length, while compounding his error with poor style.

On the other hand, there is a lot of good information in the text, for which it received a star. There are several charts, black and white pictures, and some supplementary material as well.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of information, but poorly written
Review: I'm a senior in college, and I have read many textbooks by many authors. Through all that studying, only a handful of books have ever stood out in my mind as "exceptionally good" or "exceptionally bad" for whatever reason.

Well, I am sorry to say that this book more than any other has stood out as "exceptionally bad" because of 1) its horrendous, awkward phraseology, and 2) its unnecessarily lengthy explanations of most concepts. Because of these shortcomings, it routinely took me much too long to read even a few pages, and when I was finally finished, I disappointedly discovered that I hadn't even learned that much about international marketing. It's like reading an essay from a student who is just trying to fill up space or impress his professor with length, while compounding his error with poor style.

On the other hand, there is a lot of good information in the text, for which it received a star. There are several charts, black and white pictures, and some supplementary material as well.

Rating:
Summary: a good coverage, but...
Review: This is a comprehensive college text on the subject of international marketing. It is excellent in that it covers all relevant subject areas in some depth. The text also offers guidelines for student development of a "country notebook" international marketing project. There are also quite a few provocative and relevant cases. The only negatives are that the writing is a bit over the heads of most undergraduates, and the country notebook lends itself toward development of a multidomestic plan rather than a global plan. I use the text to teach international marketing. I have found no other book on the subject that offers an acceptable combination of project, cases, and material to be learned in a single source.