Book Reviews

Improve Your Marketing Techniques - A Guide for Hotel Managers and Caterers by J. R. Sumner, Northwood, London, 1982, g8.95, paperback, 191 pp.

Educators concerned with aspects of hospitality marketing have for many years needed an ade- quate text book to supplement the standard works on marketing principles. Buell, Boyd and Massey, Kotler, McCarthy and Stanton for example, and the British texts by Baker, Cannon, Oliver or Wilmshurst, are all very useful in their ways of communicating basic concepts. For hospitality courses, most educators no doubt draw on authors such as Crissy, Recknagel, Sasser et al., or Taylor and supplement these with recommended articles in American and European journals. But it is not enough. The hospitality texts do not adequately fulfil the students needs. There is by common consent a gap for a comprehensive and analytical book focussed on the principles and practice of hospitality marketing.

Thus, the advent of a new book, Improve your Marketing Techniques by Sumner, is welcome. Coming from a lecturer of much experience in teaching marketing courses in hospitality contexts, it is not surprising that its publishers position the work as an ‘invaluable textbook and reference book’ with a ‘comprehensive bibliography’. These are bold claims together with the statement that the book is also aimed at ‘hoteliers and res- taurateurs . . . looking for ways to improve their businesses’ and the author must expect to be judged in these terms.

There are nine chapters of which the first four examine market segmentation, product analysis, marketing research and pricing. These are fol- lowed by four chapters on distribution channels,

sales generation, marketing measurement and marketing planning. A final chapter is entitled ‘Quantative Methods’. The main criticism to be made of the book is that its explanation of the essential rationale for marketing, as an approach to hospitality businesses, is inadequate. It is far from self explanatory that marketing principles either can or should be simply applied in the hos- pitality context without a careful analysis of mar- ket conditions and the nature of service oper- ations. Sumner allows only four short pages to a discussion of ‘What is Marketing’ and the exam- ples he cites are at the least questionable. Of course, all the chapters are concerned with aspects of marketing but from a student’s point of view, a much more authoritative discussion of the rele- vance of marketing will be needed if the essence of the subject is to be properly communicated. Whilst Sumner provides lists of references for each chapter, many of the references are incom- plete, most are somewhat dated and they do not add up, in this reviewer’s judgement, to the com- prehensive bibliography which is claimed. The chapters on product analysis and channels of dis- tribution are probably the most useful for the target readership whilst the chapter on quantita- tive methods appears very much as an after- thought. Far too short to be useful (Markov chain analysis warrants half a page), this section adds little to the book’s value.

Notwithstanding the criticism made here, there is certainly enough material in Sumner’s book to make it a useful addition as supplementary read- ing for many courses in hotel and catering man- agement in Britain. Students, especially in further education will find its format easy to follow and much more relevant to their chosen career orien- tation than the standard texts referred to earlier. But students in higher education will find the depth of analysis inadequate for their needs.

V. T. C. Middleton University of Surrey

ht. J. Hospitalih/ Management Vol. 2 No. 2 pp. 105-107 1983 Pergamon Press Ltd 1993 Printed in Great Britain

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