114 Journal of Marketing, January, 1970

MANAGEMENT OF THE SALES FORCEby William J. Stanton and Richard H. Buskirk(Homewood. III.: Richard D. Irwin. Inc.. 1969. Pp. 723. $13.35.)

This third edition of one of the best known collegetexts has something for everyone interested in salesmanagement. It is written primarily for college stu-dents, but any sales manager would find tested ideasand models to improve the organization, operation, andcontrol of his sales force. He would also find thestandard practical solutions to most of his daily andlong-range problems.

In updating the book the authors have altered thearrangement and changed the length and content ofthe chapters. For example, the chapter on "CareerOpportunities" has been moved from front to back.They have condensed or omitted some material. Chap-ter 5, "Selection of Salesmen—Determining the Kindof Men Wanted," now contains the material whichcomprised Chapters 6 and 7 in the previous edition,while the social and ethical responsibilities of thesales manager have been combined into one chapter.A new chapter, "The Sales Manager and the Comput-er," has also been added.

The book is management-oriented and covers the ad-ministrative activities of sales force managers at alllevels from the district manager to the chief salesforce executive. The marketing management conceptis explained and illustrated throughout the book.Other aspects of marketing management such asproduct planning, pricing, channels of distribution, ad-vertising, and sales promotion have been excluded sothe activities of the sales manager can be described andanalyzed at greater length.

The authors' basic managerial philosophy, that "theselection of personnel at any level from top to bottom,in any organization, is the most important functionof an administrator," is clearly discernible in everychapter. Decision making is taught by means of cases

scattered throughout the book and questions at theend of each chapter. Thirty-five of the 43 cases inthis edition are new. The authors do not dwell onmanagement theory, use the jargon of advertising, in-formation systems or communications, emphasize sales-manship, or follow common faults of other textbooks.Their style, although somewhat pedestrian, is easilyreadable. Their examples and illustrations are quan-titative where possible and are always taken fromindustry.

The real subject matter is divided into four mainparts: organizing the sales department (2 chapters),sales operations (13 chapters), sales planning (5chapters), and sales analysis (3 chapters). Chapter24, "Marketing Cost Analysis," is the best summarytreatment of this difficult subject to be found in theliterature. Its revisions are tjrpical of those made inthis edition. The writing in some of the paragraphshas been tightened up a little, but the content remainsessentially unchanged. A page dealing with return oninvestment as a measure of sales performance has beenadded; studies cited in the footnotes, as elsewhere inthe book, are recent ones; and some of the questionsand both of the cases at the end of the chapter are newand more sophisticated.

The new chapter, "The Sales Manager and the Com-puter," is a stimulating and timely addition. There isa brief summary of the uses of a computer in opera-tions research, in model building, and in managementinformation systems. The rest of the chapter is adescription of the many applications which the com-puter has in sales planning, sales operations, and salesanalysis.

ROBERT S. RAYMONDOhio University

EXPERIMENTATION FOR MARKETING DECISIONSby Keith K. Cox and Ben M. Enis

(Scranton. Penn.: International Textbook Company. 1969. Pp. 110. $2.25.)

With some reservations this is a very good little book.It could be employed as a primer on experimentationto be used for part of a course in marketing research,particularly at the undergraduate level. It could alsobe read by the marketing practitioner who knows littleabout experimentation but has a moderate backgroundin statistics.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I providesan overview of experimentation. Part II deals withthe most common experimental designs: completelyrandomized, randomized block, Latin square, and fac-torial. The authors employ the useful pedagogicaldevice of a hypothetical marketing problem which isanalyzed extensively throughout the four chapterscomprising this part of the book. In addition, eachchapter contains problems (and answers) to be workedout by the reader. Part III of the book provides well-chosen examples from the marketing literature in theapplication of experimentation to problems of distri-bution, pricing, product, and promotion.

The most serious inadequacy of the book lies in theomission of any reference to Bayesian techniques inexperimentation. Paul Green and others have pub-lished papers in marketing journals illustrating the

usefulness of the Bayesian approach to marketing de-cisions under uncertainty; it is surprising that theauthors have totally ignored Bayesian techniques.

As might be expected of the first edition of a veryshort book on a very large subject, other omissions andconceptual errors are present. Although the authorspoint out that most researchers place too great anemphasis on type 1 errors while ignoring type 2 errors,they themselves proceed to virtually ignore type 2errors in the remainder of the book. Nowhere is therea treatment of determining the number of test unitsto be employed by considering both types of errors.

The authors also misinterpret what it means whena null hypothesis is rejected. A rejection at the 5%level of significance does not mean that if one has ac-cepted the statement that the experimental treatmenthas an effect on the dependent variable one has a 5%probability of being wrong (as the authors state atthe bottom of page 35). It means that before the ex-periment was actually performed, if chance alone de-termined the results, a true null hypothesis would berejected 5% of the time. In fact, it is not difficult (asHoward Raiffa has demonstrated) to construct ex-amples where rejecting the null hypothesis would be

Book Reyiews 115

wrong lOO f̂ of the time, even though the experimentaldesign might be such that actual rejections would takeplace 5<;f of the time.

The book contains a few other vague and misleadingdefinitions and passages. For example, after an illus-tration involving the rejection of a null hypothesis atthe b'', level of significance, the authors imply that theresults may be suspect because of the small numberof observations. A larger n would have reduced theprobability of type 2 error (which is irrelevant, expost facto, when the null hypothesis was, in fact, re-jected). It would also have changed the critical F

ratio. But there is no reason to have more confidencein a rejection at the 5""/ level in an experiment involv-ing a large n than in an experiment involving asmall n.

Overall, however, the reader will find very clearelementary explanations of the designs considered andof their associated analysis of variance. He will alsofind that the authors illustrate very well the practi-cal application of experimental design to marketingproblems.

BERTRAM SCHONERThe University of Iowa

READINGS IN MARKETING INFORMATION SYSTEMS:A NEW ERA IN MARKETING RESEARCH

by Samuel V. Smith, Richard H. Brien, and James E. Stafford(Boston, Mass.: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1968. Pp. 399. $4.95.)

As stated by the authors in their overview articleintroducing the book, the purpose of this collection ofreadings is to provide "something of a chronicle ofthe early impact of the 'Communications Revolution'. . . on marketing management" and, secondly, to applya "managerial systems" concept to the "generation ofadequate decision information for marketing" whichexpands the traditional marketing research activityinto a "marketing information system."

The collection consists of 33 articles obtained from20 sources; namely, 12 periodicals, three AmericanMarketing Association Proceedings, two Bulletins pub-lished by the American Management Association, andchapters from three books. The most frequently uti-lized periodical sources are the Harvard Business Re-view, JOURNAL OF MARKETING, Business Horizons, andManagement Science. About 107f of the articles aretaken from publications issued during the period 1965-1967.

The readings are presented in four parts. Part One,"Introduction" (two articles), introduces the readerto the marketing information systems concept. PartTwo, "Systems Analysis: Some Basic Concepts" (sixarticles), discusses the nature of systems, and the sys-tems concept in business, marketing, and informationmanagement. Part Three, "The Role of Informationin Marketing Planning" (nine articles), is a series ofreadings aimed at linking the relationship between themarketing planning process and the modern informa-tion explosion. Part Four, "The Emergence of Mar-

keting Information Systems" (16 articles), is the mostimportant section discussing the design, implementa-tion, problems, and current status of marketing infor-mation systems.

In evaluating this book it is significant to note thatthis is the first publication of a readings book con-ceming the marketing information systems area. Ina field where the presentation of concepts is widelyscattered and often disjointed, the authors have pro-duced a measure of unity and continuity. The read-ings are arranged in an imaginative structure thatintegrates the readings into a meaningful whole. Theauthors have selected a reasonable sampling of theliterature and included most of the important writerswho have contributed to the development of the mar-keting infonnation systems field. Technical articleson information theory, computer science, and dataprocessing are not included although they lie withinthe information systems boundary. Their exclusion inno way detracts from the merits of the book.

For the professional wishing to be enlightened as tothe marketing information systems approach, the bookis worthwhile as being both informative and practical.In marketing management or research classes it willprovide an extremely useful supplement that will bringstudents up to date with developments in the emergingmarketing information systems area.

Syracuse UniversityGEORGE B. SAUNDERS

BOOKS RECEIVEDBooks are arranged by topic and alphebetically by authors' names

AdvertisingADVERTISING GRAPHICS, by William Bockus, Jr . (New

York: The Macmillan Co., 1969. Pp. 226. $5.95.)HOW TO USE COLOR TO SELL, by Eric p . Danger (Boston,

Mass.: Cahners Publishing Company, Inc., 1969.Pp. 224. $11.95.)

INSURANCE ADVERTISING: ETHICS AND LAW, by RichardL. Ismond (New York: The Roberts PublishingCorp., 1967. Pp. 504. $15.00.)

Consumer BehaviorSELECTION OF NEW SUPPLIERS BY THE MOBILE FAMILY,

by James E. Bell, Jr. (East Lansing, Michigan:MSU Business Studies, Bureau of Business Re-

search, Division of Research, Graduate School ofBusiness Administration, MSU, 1969. Pp. 101.$6.50.)

CASES IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOR, by Roger D. Blackwell,James F. Engel, and David T. Kollat (New York:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969. Pp. 431.$9.95.)

DIMENSIONS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR, by James U. Mc-Neal (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969.Pp. 446. $4.50.)

General MarketingPHARMACEUTICAL MARKETING, by Bernard G. Keller

and Mickey C. Smith (Baltimore, Maryland: TheWilliams and Wilkins Co., 1969. Pp. 396. $11.50.)