When the first edition of this book was written in 1967, marketing was a far simpler subject. Consumer marketing largely operated on mass marketing principles, and business marketing primarily concerned itself with how to build the best salesforce. The retail landscape was populated with major department stores, regional supermarket food chains, and a very large number of mom-and-pop stores. Most marketing thinking focused on making the sale.

In those days, marketers faced a number of tough decisions. They had to determine product features and quality, establish accompanying services, set the price, determine the distribution channels, decide how much to spend on marketing, and decide how to divide their resources among advertising, sales force, and other promotion tools.

Today's marketers, of course, face the same tough decisions. But today's marketplace is enormously more complex. Domestic markets, at one time safe from foreign invaders, are now the happy hunting grounds of giant global corporations as well as global niche specialists. Major strides in technology have considerably shortened time and distance: New products are launched at an astonishing pace and are available worldwide in a short time. Communications media are proliferating. New distribution channels and formats keep appearing. Competitors are everywhere and hungry.

In the midst of these changes, busy consumers are changing their ways. To save time, they are shopping with catalogs, the telephone, and the computer. Today consumers can search the Internet to find the best price for a car. They can handle most of their banking needs over the phone or by computer. They can buy insurance and carry on financial transactions without working with an agent or broker. Consumers don't even need to visit the supermarket: using Peapod, Streamline, or Netgrocer, they can place orders over the Internet and have the groceries delivered to their homes. Nor do they need to buy a newspaper to get their news; in fact, they can get a customized version of the Wall Street Journal every morning.

The changes for business buyers are also profound. Using the Internet, purchasing agents can search for the best vendors and values. General Electric has created the Trading Process Network (TPN) where GE, along with other subscribers to GE's service, can request quotes, negotiate terms, and place orders with global suppliers. Purchasing agents can go on www.Dell.com and order specific computers with customized features.

These new shopping capabilities signify a brand new world of proliferating opportunities and proliferating threats. Silicon Valley is only one symbol of a Brave New World characterized by digitalization, robotization, telecommuting, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other technological advances. At the same time, what is a magnificent opportunity for millions of consumers and businesses is a major and sometimes deadly threat to others. Banks will have to close branches; travel agencies and brokerage firms will need to reduce staffs; automobile manufacturers will reduce the number of auto dealerships; and many bookstores, music stores, and video stores will close their doors. Technological advances are a double-edged sword: they create opportunities and they destroy opportunities.

This new world is also characterized by an amazingly rich information environment. Customers will have increasingly high expectations for quality and service. More and more, they will shop in cyberspace, not just in stores. They will be able to access objective information on competing brands, including costs, prices, features, and quality, without relying on individual manufacturers or retailers. In many cases, they will be able to specify the customized features they want. They will even be able to specify the prices they are willing to pay, and wait for the most eager sellers to respond. The result is a dramatic shift of economic power from sellers to buyers.

Savvy companies are recognizing the inevitability of customer value migration: customers continuously shift toward new solutions that promise more satisfaction or convenience. As buyers adopt new shopping routines, companies that have heavy investments in the older ways of providing value have only two courses of action. They can pursue maintenance marketing, an effort to convince customers that they still offer the most value. Or they can pursue transformational marketing, an effort to move company operations closer to the new sources of value.

Savvy companies also recognize that a major revolution is taking place in markets and marketing. Companies today are striving for leadership in specific markets instead of accepting second-rate positions in mass markets. Companies are emphasizing retaining customers rather than simply acquiring new ones. Companies are expanding their package of services to current customers in a bid for customer share, not just market share. Companies are identifying their more profitable customers and giving them extraordinary service. Companies are calculating customer lifetime value rather than trying to maximize immediate payoffs.

Every company's set of beliefs and practices is undergoing challenge and change:

1. From engineers designing products alone to involving marketing and other functions as well as customers in product development.

2. From pricing the product by an arbitrary markup over cost to pricing on the basis of delivered or perceived customer value.

3. From communicating and promoting offerings mainly through persuasion-based advertising and salespeople to using a much broader set of communication vehicles and platforms.

4. From relying mainly on one major physical channel of distribution to building a mix of channels for reaching customers.

5. From running the company as a separate entity to building a superior value delivery network with suppliers and distributors as committed partners.

Yet even companies that meet the challenges and make the changes need marketing vision and marketing know how to succeed. Many managers think of marketing as a company department whose collective job it is to analyze the market, discern opportunities, formulate marketing strategies, develop specific strategies and tactics, propose a budget, and establish a set of controls. But there is more to marketing: marketing is also responsible for pushing the rest of the company to be customer-oriented and market-driven. Customers, especially good customers, are scarce: plans must be made to acquire and keep them. Marketing must also work hard to ensure that the rest of the company consistently delivers on customer expectations and its own promises.

Marketing is more than a company "selling" department: It is an orderly and insightful process for thinking about and planning for markets. The process is applicable to more than just goods and services. Anything can be marketed-ideas, events, organizations, places, personalities. The process begins with researching the marketplace to understand its dynamics and to identify opportunities to satisfy unmet needs or to realize latent interest. It involves segmenting the market and choosing the target markets the company can satisfy in a superior way; formulating a broad strategy and defining a specific marketing mix and action plan; and then evaluating the results and making improvements. It involves every company department and every function.

We have called the tenth edition the Millennium Edition because it will appear just as a new millennium begins and just as the pace of change in the marketplace is accelerating. It is an opportunity to look back at the past as well as forward to the future, to retain the best of what was as well as to focus on what will be.

This new edition reflects a major effort to feature the marketing ideas, tools and practices companies will need to operate successfully in the New Millennium. Hundreds of minicase examples have been added to illustrate what leading companies are doing to meet the challenges of the new environment. Throughout the book, we show how the World Wide Web and e-commerce are dramatically altering the marketing landscape.

At the same time, this special Millennium edition continues to build on the fundamental strengths of past editions:

1. A managerial orientation. This book focuses on the major decisions marketing managers and top management face in their efforts to harmonize the organization's objectives, capabilities, and resources with marketplace needs and opportunities.

2. An analytical approach: This book presents a framework for analyzing recurrent problems in marketing management. Cases and examples illustrate effective marketing principles, strategies, and practices.

3. A basic disciplines perspective: This book draws on the rich findings of various scientific disciplines--economics, behavioral science, management theory, and mathematics-for fundamental concepts and tools.

4. Universal applications: This book applies marketing thinking to the complete spectrum of marketing: products and services, consumer and business markets, profit and nonprofit organizations, domestic and foreign companies, small and large firms, manufacturing and intermediary businesses, and low and high-tech industries.

5. Comprehensive and balanced coverage. This book covers all the topics an informed marketing manager needs to understand: it covers the major issues in strategic, tactical, and administrative marketing.