Marketing Management: A Strategic

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Contents
Preface xvi
Section One
The Role of Marketing in Developing
Successful Business Strategies 1
1 The Marketing Management
Process 2
Samsung—Building a Global Brand 2
New Competitive and Marketing Strategies
The Results 3
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 1 3
Why Are Marketing Decisions Important? 4
The Importance of the Top Line 5
Marketing Creates Value by Facilitating Exchange
Relationships 5
What Factors Are Necessary for a Successful
Exchange Relationship? 5
1. Who Markets and Who Buys? The Parties
in an Exchange 6
2. Customer Needs and Wants 7
3. What Gets Exchanged? Products
and Services 10
4. How Exchanges Create Value 10
5. Defining a Market 12
What Does Effective Marketing Practice
Look Like? 13
Marketing Management—A Definition 13
Integrating Marketing Plans with the Company’s
Strategies and Resources 15
Market Opportunity Analysis 16
Formulating Strategic Marketing Programs 17
Formulating Strategic Marketing Programs
for Specific Situations 18
Implementation and Control of the Marketing
Program 19
The Marketing Plan—A Blueprint
for Action 19
Who Does What? 21
Marketing Institutions 21
Who Pays the Cost of Marketing Activities—
And Are They Worth It? 22
Room for Improvement in Marketing
Efficiency 23
The Role of the Marketing Decision Maker 23
Some Recent Developments Affecting Marketing
Management 24
2 Globalization 24
Increased Importance of Service 25
Information Technology 25
Relationships across Functions and Firms 27
Take-aways 27
Endnotes 28
2 The Marketing Implications of Corporate
and Business Strategies 30
IBM Switches Strategies 30
Technology Changes and Competitor Actions
Require a Shift in Strategy 30
A New Corporate Strategy 31
New Business and Marketing Strategies 31
The Bottom Line 32
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 2 32
What Is Marketing’s Role in Formulating and
Implementing Strategies? 33
Market-Oriented Management 35
Does Being Market-Oriented Pay? 35
Factors That Mediate Marketing’s Strategic
Role 36
Three Levels of Strategy: Similar Components,
but Different Issues 39
Strategy: A Definition 39
The Components of Strategy 39
The Hierarchy of Strategies 40
Corporate Strategy 40
vii
viii
Business-Level Strategy 42
Marketing Strategy 42
The Marketing Implications of Corporate Strategy
Decisions 42
Corporate Scope—Defining the Firm’s
Mission 42
Corporate Objectives 47
Corporate Sources of Competitive
Advantage 49
Corporate Growth Strategies 49
Allocating Corporate Resources 52
Limitations of the Growth-Share Matrix
Sources of Synergy 57
The Marketing Implications of Business-Unit
Strategy Decisions 58
How Should Strategic Business Units
Be Designed? 59
The Business Unit’s Objectives 59
The Business Unit’s Competitive
Strategy 60
Take-aways 62
Endnotes 62
Section Two
Market Opportunity Analysis 67
3 Understanding Market
Opportunities 68
The Cellular Telephone Business: Increasing
Competition in a Growing Market 68
The Mobile Telephony Market 68
Cell Phone Manufacturing 68
Cell Phone Service Providers 69
Network Equipment Down, Too 69
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 3
Markets and Industries: What’s the Difference?
Assessing Market and Industry Attractiveness
Macro Trend Analysis: A Framework for Assessing
Market Attractiveness, Macro Level 72
The Demographic Environment 72
The Sociocultural Environment 75
The Economic Environment 76
The Regulatory Environment 77
The Technological Environment 78
The Natural Environment 79
Contents
Your Market Is Attractive: What about Your
Industry? 80
Porter’s Five Competitive Forces 80
A Five Forces Analysis of the Cellular Phone
Service Industry 83
Challenges in Macro-Level Market and Industry
Analysis 84
Information Sources for Macro-Level
Analyses 85
Understanding Markets at the Micro Level 86
54 Understanding Industries at the Micro Level 88
The Team Domains: The Key to the Pursuit of
Attractive Opportunities 89
Mission, Aspirations, and Risk Propensity 89
Ability to Execute on the Industry’s Critical
Success Factors 90
It’s Who You Know, Not What You Know 90
Putting the Seven Domains to Work 91
Anticipating and Responding to Environmental
Change 91
Impact and Timing of Event 92
Swimming Upstream or Downstream:
An Important Strategic Choice 93
Take-aways 93
Endnotes 94
4 Understanding Consumer Buying
Behavior 96
Cruise Ships—Not Just for Grandma and Grandpa
Anymore 96
Savvy Marketing Helped Fuel Industry
70 Growth 96
70 Future Challenges 97
71 Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 4 98
The Psychological Importance of the Purchase
Affects the Decision-Making Process 99
How Do Consumers Make High-Involvement
Purchase Decisions? 99
Low-Involvement Purchase Decisions 107
Understanding the Target Consumer’s Level
of Involvement Enables Better Marketing
Decisions 107
Contents ix

Why People Buy Different Things: Part 1— Installations 142

The Marketing Implications of Psychological
and Personal Influences 111
Perception and Memory 111
Needs and Attitudes 112
Demographics, Personality, and Lifestyle
Why People Buy Different Things: Part 2—The
Marketing Implications of Social Influences 117
Culture 117
Social Class 118
Reference Groups 118
The Family 119
Take-aways 120
Endnotes 120
5 Understanding Organizational Markets
and Buying Behavior 122
DHL Supply Chain: Building Long-Term
Relationships with Organizational Buyers 122
Building Long-Term Relationships with
Customers 122
Long-Term Relationships Enhance Long-Term
Performance 123
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 5
Who Is the Customer? 124
A Comparison of Organizational versus
Consumer Markets 124
What Do the Unique Characteristics of
Organizational Markets Imply for Marketing
Programs? 126
The Organizational Customer Is Usually a Group
of Individuals 126
How Organizational Members Make Purchase
Decisions 129
Types of Buying Situations 129
The Purchase Decision-Making Process 130
The Marketing Implications of Different
Organizational Purchasing Situations 136
Purchasing Processes in Government
Markets 138
Selling Different Kinds of Goods and Services
to Organizations Requires Different Marketing
Programs 139
Raw Materials 139
Component Materials and Parts 141
Accessory Equipment 142
Operating Supplies 143
Business Services 143
Take-aways 144
115 Endnotes 144
6 Measuring Market Opportunities:
Forecasting and Market
Knowledge 146
Intel’s Secret Weapon 146
Bell’s Charter at Intel 146
How Do Anthropology and Ethnography
Work? 147
What Is Bell Learning about Generation X? 147
Can Bell’s Work Make a Difference? 147
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 6 148
Every Forecast Is Wrong! 148
A Forecaster’s Tool Kit: A Tool for Every
Forecasting Setting 149
Statistical and Other Quantitative Methods 150
Observation 151
123 Surveys or Focus Groups 151
Analogy 153
Judgment 153
Market Tests 154
Psychological Biases in Forecasting 154
Mathematics Entailed in Forecasting 154
Rate of Diffusion of Innovations: Another
Perspective on Forecasting 156
The Adoption Process and Rate of
Adoption 156
Adopter Categories 157
Implications of Diffusion of Innovation
Theory for Forecasting Sales of New Products
and New Firms 157
Cautions and Caveats in Forecasting 159
Keys to Good Forecasting 159
Common Sources of Error in Forecasting 160
Why Data? Why Marketing Research? 160
Customer Relationship Management: Charting a Path
toward Competitive Advantage 162
Internal Records Systems 162
Marketing Databases Make CRM Possible 163
x Contents
Why CRM Efforts Fail 166
Client Contact Systems 166
Competitive Intelligence Systems 167
Marketing Research: A Foundation for Marketing
Decision Making 167
Step 1: Identify the Managerial Problem
and Establish Research Objectives 168
Step 2: Determine the Data Sources
and Types of Data Required 169
Step 3: Design the Research 171
Step 4: Collect the Data 174
Step 5: Analyze the Data 174
Step 6: Report the Results to the Decision
Maker 175
What Users of Marketing Research
Should Ask 175
Rudimentary Competence: Are We
There Yet? 175
Take-aways 176
Endnotes 176
7 Targeting Attractive Market
Segments 178
The Developing World’s Emerging Middle Class 178
The New Middle Class: Who and How
Large? 178
Targeting India’s New Middle Class 179
Targeting: One Ingredient in Marketing
Success 179
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 7
Do Market Segmentation and Target Marketing
Make Sense in Today’s Global Economy? 180
Most Markets Are Heterogeneous 181
Today’s Market Realities Often Make
Segmentation Imperative 181
How Are Market Segments Best Defined? 182
Who They Are: Segmenting
Demographically 183
Where They Are: Segmenting
Geographically 185
Geodemographic Segmentation 185
How They Behave: Behavioral
Segmentation 186
Innovative Segmentation: A Key to Marketing
Breakthroughs 189
Choosing Attractive Market Segments: A Five-Step
Process 189
Step 1: Select Market-Attractiveness
and Competitive-Position Factors 190
Step 2: Weight Each Factor 193
Step 3: Rate Segments on Each Factor, Plot
Results on Matrices 193
Step 4: Project Future Position for Each
Segment 195
Step 5: Choose Segments to Target, Allocate
Resources 195
Different Targeting Strategies Suit Different
Opportunities 196
Niche-Market Strategy 197
Mass-Market Strategy 197
Growth-Market Strategy 198
Global Market Segmentation 198
Take-aways 199
Endnotes 200
8 Differentiation and Brand
Positioning 202
Fast Food Turns Healthy 202
The Jared Diet 202
Repositioning Fuels Subway’s Growth 202
Value: A Second Dimension to Subway’s
Positioning 203
Marketing Challenges Addressed
in Chapter 8 203
180 Differentiation: One Key to Customer Preference
and Competitive Advantage 204
Differentiation among Competing Brands 205
Physical Positioning 205
Limitations of Physical Positioning 206
Perceptual Positioning 206
Levers Marketers Can Use to Establish Brand
Positioning 207
Preparing the Foundation for Marketing Strategies:
The Brand Positioning Process 208
Step 1: Identify a Relevant Set of Competitive
Products 209
Step 2: Identify Determinant Attributes 210
Step 3: Collect Data about Customers’ Perceptions
for Brands in the Competitive Set 212
Contents xi

Step 4: Analyze the Current Positions of Brands Appropriate Conditions for a Prospector
in the Competitive Set 212 Strategy 238
Step 5: Determine Customers’ Most Preferred Appropriate Conditions for an Analyzer
Combination of Attributes 216 Strategy 240
Step 6: Consider Fit of Possible Positions Appropriate Conditions for a Defender
with Customer Needs and Segment Strategy 240
Attractiveness 218 How Different Business Strategies Influence
Step 7: Write Positioning Statement or Value Marketing Decisions 242
Proposition to Guide Development of Marketing
Strategy 218 Product Policies 243
Pricing Policies 245
The Outcome of Effective Positioning: Building Distribution Policies 245
Brand Equity 221 Promotion Policies 245
Managing Brand Equity 222 What If the Best Marketing Program for a
Some Caveats in Positioning Decision-Making 223 Product Does Not Fit the Business’s Competitive
Take-aways 224 Strategy? 246
Endnotes 224 Take-aways 248
Endnotes 248
Section Three
Developing Strategic Marketing 10 Product Decisions 250
Programs 225 Product Decisions in a Services Business 250
9 Business Strategies: A Foundation for Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 10 251
Marketing Program Decisions 226 Product Design Decisions for Competitive
Business Strategies and Marketing Advantage 252
Programs at 3M 226 Goods and Services: Are the Product Decisions
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 9 228 the Same? 253
Product Quality and Features Decisions 253
How Do Businesses Compete? 229 Branding Decisions 255
Generic Business-Level Competitive Packaging Decisions 258
Strategies 229 Services Decisions and Warranties 258
Do the Same Competitive Strategies Work Managing Product Lines for Customer Appeal
for Single-Business Firms and Start-ups? 232 and Profit Performance 259
Do the Same Competitive Strategies Work
for Service Businesses? 232 Product Systems 260
Do the Same Competitive Strategies Work New Product Development Process Decisions 261
for Global Competitors? 234 The Importance of New Products to Long-Term
Will the Internet Change Everything? 234 Profitability 261
How Do Competitive Strategies Differ from New Product Success and Failure 261
One Another? 235 Organizing for New Product Development 262
Differences in Scope 235 Key Decisions in the New Product Development
Differences in Goals and Objectives 237 Process 263
Differences in Resource Deployments 237 Limitations of Stage Gate Thinking and
Differences in Sources of Synergy 238 Processes 270

Deciding When a Strategy Is Appropriate: Product Decisions over the Product Life Cycle 271
The Fit between Business Strategies and the Market and Competitive Implications of Product
Environment 238 Life Cycle Stages 272
xii
Strategic Implications of the Product Life
Cycle 277
Limitations of the Product Life Cycle
Framework 278
Take-aways 278
Endnotes 278
11 Pricing Decisions 280
Ryanair: Low Prices, High Profits—But Increasing
Costs 280
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 11
A Process for Making Pricing Decisions 282
Strategic Pricing Objectives 283
Estimating Demand and Perceived Value 286
Estimating Costs 289
Analyzing Competitors’ Costs and Prices 290
Methods Managers Use to Determine an Appropriate
Price Level 291
Cost-Oriented Methods 291
Competition-Oriented Methods 293
Customer-Oriented Methods 295
Deciding on a Price Structure: Adapting Prices to
Market Variations 299
Geographic Adjustments 299
Global Adjustments 300
Discounts and Allowances 301
Differential Pricing 303
Product-Line Pricing Adjustments 305
Take-aways 306
Endnotes 306
12 Distribution Channel Decisions
Selling Soft Drinks in Africa—Coke Builds
a Distribution System 308
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 12
Why Do Multifirm Marketing Channels Exist?
Designing Distribution Channels: What Are the
Objectives to Be Accomplished? 311
Product Availability 311
Meeting Customers’ Service Requirements
Promotional Effort 314
Market Information 314
Cost-Effectiveness 314
Flexibility 314
Contents
Designing Distribution Channels: What Kinds
of Institutions Might Be Included? 315
Merchant Wholesalers 315
Agent Middlemen 315
Retailers 316
Nonstore Retailing 317
Channel Design Alternatives 318
Alternative Consumer Goods Channels 319
Alternative Industrial Goods Channels 320
Which Alternative Is Best? It Depends on the Firm’s
281 Objectives and Resources 320
Availability and the Satisfaction of Customer
Service Requirements 321
Promotional Effort, Market Information,
and Postsale Service Objectives 323
Cost-Effectiveness 324
Flexibility 326
Multichannel Distribution 326
Channel Design for Global Markets 327
Market Entry Strategies 327
Channel Alternatives 328
Channel Design for Services 330
Channel Management Decisions 331
Vertical Marketing Systems 331
Sources of Channel Power 334
Channel Control Strategies 334
Trade Promotions—Incentives for Motivating
Channel Members 335
Channel Conflicts and Resolution
Strategies 338
Take-aways 339
Endnotes 340
308
13 Integrated Promotion Decisions 342
Nano Goes Nowhere 342
309
Marketing Missteps 342
310 Tata Responds 343
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 13 343
The Promotion Mix: A Communication Tool Kit 344
313 Developing an Integrated Marketing Communications
Plan 345
Step 1: Define the Audience(s) to Be Targeted 345
Step 2: Set the Promotional Objectives 346
Step 3: Set the Promotion Budget 347
Contents
Step 4: Design the Promotion Mix 348
Step 5: Evaluate the Results 350
The Nitty-Gritty of Promotional Decision
Making 351
Making Advertising Decisions 351
Making Personal Selling Decisions 362
Making Sales Promotion Decisions 367
Making Public Relations Decisions 368
. . . And All the Rest 369
Take-aways 370
Endnotes 370
Section Four
Strategic Marketing Programs
for Selected Situations 373
14 Marketing Strategies for a Digitally
Networked World 374
Opportunities in the App Economy 374
Games as Apps 374
More than Games 374
Business Models 375
Is It Real, or Is It a Bubble? 375
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 14
Does Every Company Need a Social Media
Strategy? 376
Threats or Opportunities? The Inherent Advantages
and Disadvantages of the Digital World for
Marketers 378
The Syndication of Information 378
Increasing Returns to Scale of Network
Products 379
The Ability to Efficiently Personalize
and Customize Market Offerings 380
Disintermediation and Restructuring of
Distribution Channels 380
Global Reach, 24/7 Access, and Instantaneous
Delivery 382
Are These Digital World Attributes
Opportunities or Threats? 382
First-Mover Advantage: Fact or Fiction? 384
Developing a Strategy for a Digitally Networked
World 385
Marketing Applications for a Digitally
Networked World 385
xiii
Developing Digital World Marketing Strategies:
The Critical Questions 391
Managing Digitally Networked Strategies:
The Talent Gap 395
Developing Strategies to Serve Digital World
Markets 396
Serving the Dot-Com Markets of Tomorrow 397
Take-aways 398
Endnotes 398
15 Strategies for New and Growing
Markets 400
Canon, Inc.—Success That Is Hard to Copy 400
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 15 401
How New Is New? 402
Market Entry Strategies: Is It Better to Be a Pioneer
or a Follower? 404
Pioneer Strategy 404
Not All Pioneers Capitalize on Their Potential
Advantages 406
Follower Strategy 407
Determinants of Success for Pioneers
375 and Followers 408
Strategic Marketing Programs for Pioneers 410
Mass-Market Penetration 410
Niche Penetration 410
Skimming and Early Withdrawal 412
Marketing Program Components for a
Mass-Market Penetration Strategy 412
Marketing Program Components for a Niche
Penetration Strategy 415
Marketing Program Components for
a Skimming Strategy 417
Growth-Market Strategies for Market Leaders 417
Marketing Objectives for Share Leaders 418
Marketing Actions and Strategies to Achieve
Share-Maintenance Objectives 418
Fortress, or Position Defense, Strategy 420
Flanker Strategy 423
Confrontation Strategy 423
Market Expansion 424
Contraction or Strategic Withdrawal 425
Share-Growth Strategies for Followers 425
Marketing Objectives for Followers 425
xiv
Marketing Actions and Strategies to Achieve
Share Growth 425
Frontal Attack Strategy 426
Leapfrog Strategy 430
Flanking and Encirclement Strategies 430
Supporting Evidence 431
Take-aways 432
Endnotes 433
16 Strategies for Mature and Declining
Markets 436
Johnson Controls—Making Money in Mature
Markets 436
Marketing Challenges Addressed
in Chapter 16 437
Challenges in Mature Markets 438
Challenges in Declining Markets 438
Strategic Choices in Mature Markets 438
Strategies for Maintaining Competitive
Advantage 439
Methods of Differentiation 440
Are the Dimensions the Same for Service
Quality on the Internet? 443
Methods of Maintaining a Low-Cost
Position 445
Customers’ Satisfaction and Loyalty
Are Crucial for Maximizing Their Lifetime
Value 447
Marketing Strategies for Mature Markets
Strategies for Maintaining Current Market
Share 449
Strategies for Extending Volume
Growth 451
Strategies for Declining Markets 457
Relative Attractiveness of Declining
Markets 457
Divestment or Liquidation 460
Marketing Strategies for Remaining
Competitors 460
Take-aways 463
Endnotes 464
Contents
Section Five
Implementing and Controlling
Marketing Programs 465
17 Organizing and Planning for Effective
Implementation 466
Electrolux—Organizing to Rule the World of
Household Appliances 466
Too Many Brands, Too Little Coordination 466
A New Structure to Implement the New
Strategy 467
Preliminary Results 467
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 17 468
Designing Appropriate Administrative Relationships
for the Implementation of Different Competitive
Strategies 469
Business-Unit Autonomy 469
Shared Programs and Facilities 471
Evaluation and Reward Systems 472
Designing Appropriate Organizational Structures
and Processes for Implementing Different
Strategies 472
Functional Competencies and Resource
Allocation 472
Additional Considerations for Service
Organizations 474
Organizational Structures 475
Recent Trends in Organizational Design 480
Organizational Adjustments as Firms Grow
and Markets Change 481
449 Organizational Designs for Selling in Global
Markets 482
Marketing Plans: The Foundation for Implementing
Marketing Actions 483
The Situational Analysis 487
Key Issues 488
Objectives 489
Marketing Strategy 489
Action Plans 489
Projected Profit-and-Loss Statement 490
Contingency Plans 490
Take-aways 490
Endnotes 490
Contents xv

18 Measuring and Delivering Marketing When and How Often Is the Information
Performance 492 Needed? 510
In What Media and in What Format(s) or Levels
Metrics Pay for Walmart 492 of Aggregation Should the Information Be
Changing Metrics for a Changing Strategy 493 Provided? 511
Can Walmart’s Overseas Stores Plug Does Your System of Marketing Metrics
the Gap? 493 Measure Up? 511
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 18 493 What Contingencies Should Be
Planned For? 512
Designing Marketing Metrics Step by Step 495 Global Marketing Monitoring 514
Setting Standards of Performance 496 A Tool for Periodic Assessment of Marketing
Specifying and Obtaining Feedback Data 501 Performance: The Marketing Audit 515
Evaluating Feedback Data 501
Taking Corrective Action 502 Types of Audits 515
Design Decisions for Strategic Monitoring Measuring and Delivering Marketing
Systems 503 Performance 516
Identifying Key Variables 503 Take-aways 518
Tracking and Monitoring 504 Endnotes 518
Strategy Reassessment 504
Design Decisions for Marketing Metrics 504 Index 519
Who Needs What Information? 505
SEO and SEM Analysis 509
Preface

Why This Book? experience spans a broad variety of manufacturing,

service, software, and distribution industries and
has taken us—and thereby you, the reader—around

W
HY DID YOUR INSTRUCTOR CHOOSE
THIS BOOK? Chances are, it was for one or the world many times. Simply put, we’ve actually
done what we teach, as well as what we write about
more of the following reasons:
in this book.
● Your instructor has designed his or her course
As the reader will see from the outset in Chapter 1,
around the use of cases, a real-world project, or a
marketing decision-making is a critical activity in
marketing simulation such as Markstrat, to bring
every firm, from start-ups to big companies with tra-
marketing decision-making to life. This book has
ditional marketing departments. Further, it is not just
been written with exactly these kinds of instructors in
marketing managers who make marketing decisions.
mind. Thus, one of your instructor’s key objectives
People in nearly every role in every company can
is to give you the necessary tools and frameworks
have powerful influence on how happy customers are,
to enable you to be an effective contributor to mar-
or are not, with the goods and services the company
keting decision-making—regardless of whether
provides. Stockbrokers must attract new customers.
you follow a career in marketing positions per se,
Accounting and consulting firms must find ways to
in another functional area, or as an entrepreneur or
differentiate their services from other providers so
in other general management roles. This book’s focus
their customers have reasons to give them their busi-
on strategic decision-making sets it apart from
ness. Software engineers must understand how their
other texts that place greater emphasis on descrip-
technology can benefit the intended customer, for
tion of marketing phenomena than on the strategic
without such benefits, customers will not buy. Thus,
and tactical marketing decisions that managers and
we have written this book to meet the marketing needs
entrepreneurs must make each and every day.
of readers who hope to make a difference in the long-
● Your instructor wants to use the most current and
term strategic success of their organizations—whether
most internet-savvy book available. We integrate
the latest web and social networking developments, their principal roles are in marketing or otherwise.
from Aprimo to Zynga and more, throughout the In this brief preface, we want to say a bit more about
book, and we devote an entire chapter, Chapter 14, each of the three distinctive benefits, listed above, that
to the development of marketing strategies for this book offers its readers. We also point out the key
today’s digitally networked world. In addition, we changes in this edition compared to previous ones;
supplement the book with an interactive website to and we thank our many students, colleagues, and oth-
help you self-test what you learn and to help your ers from whom we have learned so much and without
instructor choose the best cases and other materials whom this book would not have been possible.
and in-class activities.
Our goal—and probably that of your instructor as
well—is to make both the latest internet-based tools
as well as time-tested marketing principles relevant A Focus on Strategic
to those of you who will work in companies of all Decision-Making
kinds, dot-com and otherwise.
● Your instructor appreciates and believes you will Previous editions of this book have been known for
benefit from the real-world, global perspectives their strategic approach, an approach that helps clarify
offered by the authors of this book. Our combined the relationships among corporate, business-level, and
entrepreneurial, marketing management, and consulting marketing strategies for firms large and small; the

xvi
Preface
relationships between marketing strategies and the
marketing environment; and the relationships between
marketing and other functional areas in the firm. This
eighth edition retains this strategic perspective while
providing the reader with specific tools and frame-
works for making marketing decisions that take best
advantage of the conditions in which the firm finds
itself—both internally, in terms of the firm’s mission
and competencies, and externally, in terms of the mar-
ket and competitive context in which it operates.
By focusing on decision-making, we believe we’ve
written the best textbook available for instructors who
incorporate case-based teaching, marketing simulations,
and/or course-long projects like the development of a
marketing plan in their course design. And, by keep-
ing each chapter—and the book in total—concise and
readable, we allow space in students’ busy schedules for
instructors to add supplemental readings to highlight the
latest in marketing thinking.
Our decision-focused approach is also important to
students and executives who are our readers, because,
in most well-designed marketing management classes
and executive courses, the students or participants will
be asked to make numerous decisions—decisions in
case studies about what the protagonist in the case
should do; decisions in a course project, such as those
entailed in developing a marketing plan; or decisions
in a marketing simulation.
Our decision-focused approach is also important to
employers, who tell us they want today’s graduates to
be prepared to “hit the ground running” and contrib-
ute to the firm’s decision-making from day one. The
ability to bring thoughtful and disciplined tools and
frameworks—as opposed to seat-of-the-pants hunches
or blind intuition—to marketing decision-making is
one of the key assets today’s business school gradu-
ates offer their employers. This book puts the tools in
the tool box to make this happen. In the end, employ-
ers want to know what their new hires can do, not just
what they know.
Web-Savvy Insights
This book brings a realistic and informed perspective
to an important question many students have been
asking in recent years: “Has the advent of the inter-
net changed all the rules?” Our answer is, “Well, yes
and no.” On the one hand, the internet has made avail-
able a host of new marketing tools, from Facebook
xvii
to e-mail marketing to delivery of digital goods and
services over the internet, many of which are avail-
able to companies in every industry. On the other
hand, time-tested marketing fundamentals, such as
understanding one’s customers and competitors and
meeting customer needs in ways that are differentiated
from the offerings of those competitors, have become
even more important in the fast-moving digital world,
as the many dot-com failures attest.
Thus, throughout the book, we integrate examples
of dot-com companies—both successful and not—to
show how both yesterday’s and today’s marketing
tools and decision frameworks can most effectively
be applied. Because the advent of social networking
and other new technologies is so important in its own
right, however, we also devote Chapter 14 to this fast-
growing arena. This chapter provides for marketers in
all kinds of companies a road map for decisions about
where, when, and how to deploy the tools now avail-
able in today’s digitally networked world.
A Real-World,
Global Perspective
Theory is important, because it enhances our under-
standing of business phenomena and helps managers
think about what they should do. It is in the applica-
tion of theory—the world of marketing practice—
where we believe this book excels. Our decision focus
is all about application. But we don’t just bring an
academic perspective to the party, important as that
perspective is.
One of us, John Mullins, brings to this book 20 years
of executive experience in the retailing industry in the
United States, including three entrepreneurial compa-
nies. John now works in Europe at the London Busi-
ness School, where he draws on the perspectives of
MBA students and executive education participants
from more than 120 countries to inform this book with
the realities of building vibrant businesses in today’s
global economy. John’s work in executive education
regularly takes him not only to North America and
Europe, but to Africa, Asia, and Latin America as well.
His first-hand vantage point into these fast-growing
regions will be evident to readers of this book.
Orv Walker spent most of his career at the Carlson
School of Management at the University of Minnesota,
where he worked with some of the world’s leading
consumer goods marketers and won the marketing
xviii
discipline’s most prestigious awards for his research.
Orv also enjoyed a number of years running a business
as a vintner in the rolling hills of western Wisconsin.
Both of us have contributed the fruits of our research
to the growing body of knowledge in the marketing
management, marketing strategy, new product devel-
opment, and entrepreneurship arenas. The result of
our collective experience and expertise is a book filled
with examples of real people from around the world
making real decisions, examples of start-ups and high-
growth companies as well as examples of larger, more
established firms.
What’s New in This Edition?
In this eighth edition of Marketing Management, we’ve
done significant updating to reflect four key trends
that are sweeping the world of marketing theory and
practice and changing the aspirations of graduates
everywhere:
● The growing interest of many of today’s students in all
things entrepreneurial and in learning what it will
take to run their own companies, whether now—
upon, or even before graduation—or at some later
point in their careers.
● The growing importance of fast-growing emerging
markets like India and China on the global eco-
nomic stage and the growing realization in companies
everywhere that business today is a global game.
● The changing nature of marketing research. These
changes are being brought about by two factors:
the power of the internet to make many kinds of
research both less expensive and faster to carry
out, and by a growing recognition that understand-
ing customer needs in today’s increasingly com-
plex world requires more than a consumer survey
administered now and again.
● The growing ubiquity and power of social networks—
Facebook, Linkedln, Twitter, and the like—which
offer numerous opportunities for marketers of all
kinds, whether companies with goods of services
to market or political uprisings seeking to change
the world.
We’ve addressed the first of these issues, the grow-
ing interest of students in entrepreneurship by con-
tinuing to add new examples throughout the book
about how entrepreneurial companies—not just large,
established ones—are applying the tools and concepts
that this book brings to life. The author team knows
from experience that the entrepreneurial path makes
Preface
for achallenging—and always exciting—career path.
As increasing numbers of today’s graduates are taking
the entrepreneurial plunge, we’d like our readers who
choose such a path to be well-equipped for the journey.
Recent editions of this book have been known for
their real-world global perspective and this edition is
no exception. We’ve continued to work hard in this
revision to add examples from fast-growing emerg-
ing economies like India, China, and elsewhere. Four
new globally focused case vignettes—on the emerg-
ing middle class in the developing world (Chapter 7)
on marketing Coca-Cola in China (Chapter 12): on the
marketing of the Tata Nano, the world’s least expen-
sive automobile (Chapter 13): and on the strategy and
global organizational structure that Swedish appliance-
maker Electrolux employs (Chapter 17)—will provide
our readers with new insight into marketing on today’s
global stage. For almost every company, it seems,
India or China—or Brazil, Russia, or another devel-
oping country—is important as a source of supply or
labor, as a market for what the company produces,
or both.
To address the changing nature of marketing re-
search, we’ve done a significant updating of Chapter 6.
We now open the chapter with a case vignette on
Intel’s secret weapon, an anthropologist and ethnogra-
pher named Genevieve Bell, whose team’s consumer
insights—along with those of other technology-driven
companies that are ramping up their qualitative and
ethnographic research efforts—are changing the way
high-tech products are conceived and developed.
Throughout the chapter, we address the many changes
in marketing research—and in forecasting, too—that
these and other changes, including the growing clout
of social networks and other web-based phenomena,
are bringing about.
Perhaps nothing, however, provides a greater
opportunity for today’s marketing graduates than the
growing ubiquity and power of social networks and
their applicability for marketers of all kinds. Thus,
we’ve done a major updating of Chapter 14 to accom-
plish two things. First, we’ve removed much of the
earlier material that described many of the market-
ing possibilities of the internet, since many of today’s
internet marketing tools are well understood by
today’s web-savvy readers. Second, we’ve refocused
the chapter on the reality that today we live and work
in a digitally networked world. A new case vignette
opens the chapter with a look at the burgeoning array
of opportunities in the market for apps. In addition,
Preface
throughout the chapter, dozens of new examples
address the social networking phenomenon, mobile
and location-based advertising, and other digital world
developments from a variety of perspectives.
As today’s digitally networked world continues its
rapid evolution, keeping students (the easy part, since
many of the most important changes are being led by
members of their generation) and instructors (the harder
part!) current on such developments is essential and, in
our view, well worth the entire chapter we dedicate to it.
In addition to the major changes we’ve noted
above, every chapter has undergone rigorous scrutiny,
with materials refreshed and updated, new examples
added, outdated ones deleted, and some of the lat-
est empirical evidence incorporated so readers know
what works and what doesn’t. Instructors will be
pleased to know, however, that the structure and flow
of this eighth edition remains unchanged. Our purpose
in each and every change we have made is to better
prepare the reader to “hit the ground running” and
contribute to marketing decision-making from what-
ever vantage point in the organization he or she sits.
Our focus on strategic decision-making remains, as
always, the key strength of this book.
Additional Resources
Supplemental materials for instructors and students
are available on the book website at www.mhhe.com/
mullins8e. Instructor resources include an instructor’s
manual, PowerPoints, and a test bank. A list of rec-
ommended cases and supplementary readings is also
available. These materials range from both classical
and recent practitioner-focused articles from Harvard
Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review
to carefully selected, classroom-ready, knock-your-
socks-off teaching cases set all over the world (all
xix
with teaching notes available), in companies large
and small, old and new. They’ll help any instructor
keep his or her course bang up to date and pragmati-
cally focused.
Thanks!
Simply put, this book is not solely our work—far
from it. Many of our students, colleagues, and those
we work with in industry have made contributions
that have significantly shaped our perspectives on
marketing decision-making. We are grateful to all
of them. We wish to give thanks to the individuals
who reviewed the previous edition of this text and
provided useful feedback: Catharine Curran, Univer-
sity of Massachusetts–Dartmouth; Anna Andriasova,
University of Maryland University College; Sanjay S.
Mehta, Sam Houston State University; Prema Nakra,
Marist College.
We also thank a small army of talented people at
McGraw-Hill/Irwin for their work that has turned our
rough manuscript into an attractive and readable book.
In particular, our editors, Laura Spell and Lori Bradshaw,
have been instrumental in giving birth to this edition.
Without them, we’d probably still be writing!
Finally, we thank Harper Boyd, without whom this
book would not exist, and our parents, without whom,
of course, neither of us would be here. To all of you
we extend our love, our respect, and our gratitude for
passing on to us your curiosity and your passion for
learning. We therefore dedicate this book to Harper
Boyd, to Jeannette and Orville Walker, Sr., and to
Alice and Jack Mullins.
John W. Mullins
Orville C. Walker, Jr.
London, U.K.; Madison, Wisconsin
Summer 2011
Walkthrough
Case Vignette
These vignettes have been chosen to increase C HAPTER S IX
the book’s global focus and international
perspective.
Measuring Market
Opportunities: Forecasting
and Market Knowledge
Intel’s Secret Weapon1

G
ENEVIEVE BELL HAS A RADICAL directions, leading new product strategy and defini-
IDEA. Bell, the only female among Intel’s ros- tion, and driving consumer-centric product innovation
ter of top technical talent dubbed Intel Fellows, and thinking across the company. All this is everyday
and Director of Intel’s User Experience Group, thinks work for this wiry-haired woman who as a very small
the world would be a better place if we can better under- girl used to kill things—frogs and the like—growing
stand how people would like to use technology, rather up in an aboriginal community in Australia’s outback.
than tossing technology that people don’t really want Why is there a role like Bell’s at Intel today? “I
into the market at an alarming pace. Bell was given her joined Intel in 1998,” she recalls, “There was a col-
own lab at Intel in 2010, an event that may change Intel, lective sense in Intel’s senior management that they
or even the future of technology itself. didn’t know what was going to happen when PCs
“Imagine,” says Bell, “If we were willing to take on became mass market. They knew they had market
board the ways in which PCs don’t work and applied research, they knew they had the skills to size markets
that to other technologies such as our refrigerators or and how to survey people, and a little bit of usability
televisions. If your fridge said, “I’m terribly sorry, you work was going on even then, but I think the sense
cannot have that cold milk until I’ve rebooted myself of what was missing was this notion about what was
and downloaded new drivers!” or your TV said, “You motivating people, what did they care about and was
gives his or her permission to be sent marketing messages. Were this not the case, cannot
the watch the end of the cricket match because I am there an opportunity if you understood the things to
system would be inundated with unwanted messages to the point that it would come todefragging
a my hard drive,” we would all go insane.” drive new uses of technology.”
screeching halt!19 The growth of unwelcome e-mails, or spam, is a customer problem that “For many years thereafter, a part of every pres-
entation I gave, every class I taught, every meeting I
software makers are working hard to address. Bell’s Charter at Intel attended was explaining what an anthropologist was,
Blogging is another fast-growing internet application. Given the ease with which any-
what ethnography was, what was user centered design
one can now post material on the web, companies large and small are developing blogs In Bell’s view, her charter at Intel is straightforward, and why it was going to be a useful tool at Intel.” In
with which they can, sometimes anonymously, promote their products or ideas or even dis-
“To provide insights and inspire innovation.” Her team her 13 years at Intel, Bell has fundamentally changed
parage competition. There are even sites (for example, www.betterbusinessblogging.com of )social scientists, interaction designers and human how the company envisions, plans, and develops its
to help businesses develop their blogs! factors engineers is charged with setting research product platforms.
Podcasting, a technology that provides a way for consumers to receive audio via the
internet, is another growing web-based application. Advertisers and other providers such
146
as CNN, the Cable News Network, provide short audio feeds that can be downloaded and
listened to on a PC or on a portable MP3 player.
While the new media seem, on the surface, to be radically different from their more
traditional counterparts—radio, television, and print—the logic entailed in planning their
roles in promotional programs is no different than for other media. Considerations of
reach, frequency, and cost—measured in cost per thousand impressions (or “hits” or
“click-throughs” on the web)—provide a means of comparing their value to one another
and to traditional media. Cost per acquisition, another measure, is useful for web adver-
tising that results directly in actual customer purchases, a model familiar in the direct-
marketing industry. To the extent that new media performance can be measured (How
many extra customers does a restaurant get for weekday lunches as a result of its ad, and
at what cost per customer?), marketers will be encouraged to use them to their full eco-
nomic potential.
The rapid growth of these and other new media has led to a variety of ethical issues
marketers must address, including the implications of location-based services discussed in
Ethical Perspective 13.2.
International Media Global advertising has been aided by the rise of globally ori-
ented television media like CNN, MTV, and ESPN, all of which originate primarily in the
United States, and a variety of other media like STAR-TV and Al Jazeera, which originate
in Asia and the Middle East, respectively. The ability of media like these to deliver to Ethical Perspectives
Ethical Perspective 13.2 The Centre for Democracy and Technology, a privacy These minicases highlight ethical issues that
Do You Really Want Burglars to Know advocate, argues that the privacy policies of companies
Where You Are? that are collecting and using location-based data are
“uneven at best and inadequate at worst.”
commonly arise in marketing management.
The creators of PleaseRobMe.com, a simple website Some companies are better, of course, and some
that publishes a live feed of location-based posts worse. Loopt includes software that monitors its ser-
that appear on Twitter, points out that the tweet- vice for suspicious patterns of behaviour, it says. But
ers are somewhere other than at home. The site’s politicians are getting into the act, holding a congres-
creators want to highlight the fact that tweeters on sional hearing in Washington to examine the impli-
the likes of Foursquare and other location-based cations of such services and their rapid growth. If
services give away information that burglars would web-savvy burglars want to take advantage of all this
love to have. data, it would appear that they’d better do so soon.
But the founders of location-based services and the
venture capitalists backing them will have to deal with Source: “Follow Me,” The Economist, March 6, 2010, p. 81.
growing concerns that collecting information about peo- For more on Foursquare and Loopt, see www.foursquare.com and
ple’s movements may have unintended consequences. www.loopt.com.

xx
 much h lik
like th
Strategic Issue
Stattisstic
Sta ti al me
metho
hodds gen
enerarally
ly ass
ssumme ththat
at
CenturyLinkk Strategic Issue
the
he futur
fu ure will lookok ve
veryy muc
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he
Mountain an n
passt.
p t SoSom me
etiimess th
his is noot th
the case e. when its statt Highlight critical information and crucial questions
failed to allo
throughout each chapter.

cal data that are available. Whee

to introduce a new flavor, its m
Global Perspective
to forecast the sales for the new
w and Internet Icons
high-technology products, for w
extremely expensive to producee Identify global examples as well as effective internet
marketing for both new and economic marketers.

music from iTunes and for the

which to play them. First, Napp
rage with consumers (though n
convinced the courts that Napstt
Take-aways than 300 million units, proving
End-of-chapter points review the most use of analogs like these, as w
important “lessons learned” from each not to copy—is
py a crucial appro
chapter.

Take-aways
1. Every forecast and estimate of market potential is
wrong! Evidence-based forecasts and estimates,
prepared using the tools provided in this chapter, are
far more credible—and generally more accurate—than
3. Superior market knowledge is not only an important
source of competitive advantage, but it also results in
happier, higher volume of, and more loyal customers.
Thus, the systematic development of market knowledge

xxi
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Section One

The Role of Marketing

in Developing Successful
Business Strategies

Chap t e r 1 The Marketing C h apter 2 The Marketing

Management Process Implications of
Corporate and
Business Strategies

1
 C HAPTER O NE

The Marketing
Management Process
Samsung—Building a Global Brand1

S
AMSUNG ELECTRONICS is the largest com-
ponent of South Korea’s largest chaebol—one
of the giant family-controlled conglomerates
that have been instrumental in building the country’s
economy over the last half century. Samsung’s elec-
tronics unit started out in 1970 making cheap TV sets
for the Sanyo label. Over time it morphed into a tech-
nically innovative company that was one of the pio-
neers in developing flat-screen displays, plasma TVs,
multifunction cell phones, and other digital devices.
But until the mid-1990s, the unit competed primarily
by (a) producing technical components or low-cost
manufactured products for firms with better-known
brands, such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and General
Electric; and (b) selling me-too consumer products—
like TVs and microwave ovens—under the Samsung
brand through discount chains like Walmart at very
low prices.
Samsung’s cost-driven competitive strategy worked
well until 1996, but then several shocks in its mar-
ket and competitive environments forced a major
reevaluation. First, the global market for memory
chips and other components Samsun supplied for
other electronics brands softened because of increased
competition and excess capacity. At about the same
time, sales of Samsung’s own branded products were
also declining. As Yun Jong-yong—a company vet-
eran who was brought in as CEO of the electronics
unit—complained, Samsung could build a TV that
was technically as good as a Sony, but because of the
down-market image of the Samsung brand its sets sat
at the back of the store or piled up in discount chains.
Finally, the Asian financial crisis of 1997 made a
major strategic shift essential for the unit’s survival.
New Competitive and
Marketing Strategies
Mr. Yun initiated an ambitious new competitive strat-
egy aimed at developing and marketing technically
superior products while building an image of Samsung
as a stylish, high-quality brand commanding a pre-
mium price. The objective was to establish a unique
competitive position using technical innovation and
design to appeal to younger and relatively upscale cus-
tomers around the world. “If we were to continue com-
peting only on price,” Mr. Yun argued, “the Chinese
would slaughter us.”
Technical Innovation and R&D In order to
implement its new competitive strategy, Samsung had
to become a pioneer in developing new digital tech-
nologies. While Sony and other rivals had a substan-
tial lead in consumer electronics, that lead was rooted
in the analog world. The digital world required new
technical innovations. Consequently, the firm shifted
substantial resources into R&D focused on technolo-
gies such as large-area LCDs, display drivers and chip
sets, and mobile telephony. In the 2009 fiscal year, it

2
spent 7.6 trillion won (over $7 billion)—nearly 6 per-
cent of the unit’s revenue—on R&D. More than one-
quarter of the company’s workforce—some 44,000
people—are engaged in R&D activities in about
40 research centers around the world.
New Product Development and Design But
cutting-edge technology does not guarantee market suc-
cess. It must be incorporated into products that deliver
benefits that at least some segment of consumers will
consider to be worth the price. And some of those
benefits may be subjective—attractive styling, say, or
a cool image. Therefore, new product development at
Samsung usually involves a team of designers who col-
laborate closely with the firm’s engineers, manufactur-
ing people, and marketers. To ensure they stay in touch
with consumer tastes in different countries, the firm’s
450 designers are assigned to design centers in cities
like London, Tokyo, Shanghai, and San Francisco, and
the company’s market researchers run focus groups and
user surveys in many markets around the world.
Marketing Programs to Build the Samsung
Brand Revamping Samsung’s marketing efforts
was also critical to the success of its new com-
petitive strategy because even the most technically
sophisticated and well-designed products are likely
to fail unless potential customers know they exist,
can acquire them easily, and think they’re worth the
money. Therefore, Eric Kim was recruited from out-
side the firm to head a global marketing effort. One of
his first moves was to reorganize the firm’s distribu-
tion channels. Consistent with the strategic objective
of establishing Samsung as a high-quality brand wor-
thy of a premium price, many of the company’s prod-
ucts were pulled out of low-priced discount chains
and distributed through service-oriented electronics
Marketing Challenges Addressed in Chapter 1
The activities of Samsung’s managers as they worked to redefine the company’s brand
image and supporting marketing plan demonstrate that marketing involves decisions
crucial to the success of every organization, whether large or small, profit or nonprofit,
specialty stores and web retailers—like Best Buy and
Amazon.com—instead.
To ensure consistency in Samsung’s market-
ing communications across world markets, Mr. Kim
consolidated the firm’s roster of advertising agencies
from 55 down to a single global advertising group,
British-based WPP. He then launched the firm’s first
brand-building campaign with fashion-forward TV
commercials showing off the company’s cool sense
of style as well as the technical sophistication of its
products.
The firm also makes extensive use of more contem-
porary promotional tools such as product placements,
sponsorships, and internet advertising to strengthen
its brand. For instance, Samsung provides both finan-
cial and technical support for a variety of sporting and
cultural events in every major region of the world. It
is a sponsor of the Olympics, Asian games, and other
international events, but it also supports regional and
local events—such as the Montreal Jazz Festival and
the Chelsea Football Club in the UK—as a means of
staying close to local customers.
The Results
Samsung Electronics’ revamped competitive strategy
and the marketing programs designed to implement it
have been a smashing success. According to studies
by Interbrand (a brand consultancy), the global value
of Samsung’s brand increased by more than 200 per-
cent from 2000 through 2008, and it overtook Sony
as the most valuable consumer electronics brand. As a
result, the unit’s sales grew to 139 trillion won (about
$119 billion) in the 2009 fiscal year, and operating
profit reached 11.6 trillion won.
3
4 Section One The Role of Marketing in Developing Successful Business Strategies

manufacturer, retailer, or service firm. The CEO of a high-tech firm like Samsung must
decide what technologies to pursue, what goods or services to sell, to whom, with
what features and benefits, at what price, and so on. A chief financial officer for a
large multinational corporation must market the merits of the company to the capital
markets to obtain the resources needed for continued growth. The executive director of
a nonprofit community agency must pursue the resources necessary for the agency to
achieve its mission, whether those resources come from fees for the services it deliv-
ers or from grants and contributions. And all of those managers must market their
ideas for improving their organizations’ prospects and performance to their colleagues
inside the firm as well as to customers, suppliers, strategic partners, and prospec-
tive employees. Thus, most managers engage in tasks involving marketing decisions
virtually every day.
This book provides prospective managers and entrepreneurs with the marketing tools,
perspectives, and analytical frameworks they’ll need to play an effective role in the mar-
keting life and overall strategic development of their organizations, regardless of whether
or not they occupy formal marketing jobs. Chapter 1 addresses a number of broad but
important questions all managers must resolve in their own minds: Are marketing deci-
sions important? Does marketing create value for customers and shareholders? What con-
stitutes effective marketing practice? Who does what in marketing and how much does it
cost? And finally, what decisions go into the development of a strategic marketing pro-
gram for a particular good or service and how can those decisions be summarized in an
action plan?

Why Are Marketing Decisions Important?

The improved performance of Samsung Electronics following the retooling of its strategic
marketing plan illustrates the importance of good marketing decisions in today’s business
organizations. And according to many managers and expert observers around the world, a
strong customer focus and well-conceived and executed marketing strategies will be even
more crucial for the success of most organizations as the global marketplace becomes
more crowded and competitive.2
The importance of marketing in a company’s ongoing success can be better appreciated
when you consider the activities marketing embraces. Marketing attempts to measure and
anticipate the needs and wants of a group of customers and respond with a flow of need-
satisfying goods and services. Accomplishing this requires the firm to
● Target those customer groups whose needs are most consistent with the firm’s resources and
capabilities.
● Develop products and/or services that meet the needs of the target market better than
competitors.
● Make its products and services readily available to potential customers.
● Develop customer awareness and appreciation of the value provided by the company’s
offerings.
● Obtain feedback from the market as a basis for continuing improvement in the firm’s offerings.
● Work to build long-term relationships with satisfied and loyal customers.

The most important characteristic of marketing as a business function is its focus on

customers and their needs. This is a focus that all managers—not just marketers—need to
adopt to ensure their organizations can build and sustain a healthy “top line.”
Chapter One The Marketing Management Process 5

The Importance of the Top Line

In the financial markets it is a company’s bottom line—its profitability—that is most impor-
tant. In the long run, all firms must make a profit to survive. But as the managers at Sam-
sung are well aware, there can never be a positive bottom line—nor financing, employees,
or anything else—without the ability to build and sustain a healthy top line: sales revenue.
As a wise observer once said, nothing happens until somebody sells something. Or to para-
phrase management guru Peter Drucker, everything a company does internally is a cost cen-
ter. The only profit center is a customer whose check doesn’t bounce.
Strategic Issue That is why the customer focus inherent in the marketing function
A customer focus enables firms to enjoy is important. When properly implemented, a customer focus enables
success by exploiting changes in the firms to enjoy success by exploiting changes in the marketplace, by
marketplace, by developing products and
services that have superiority over what is developing products and services that have superiority over what is
currently available, and by taking a more currently available, and by taking a more focused and integrated cross-
focused and integrated cross-functional functional approach to their overall operations, as Samsung has done
approach to their overall operations.
in its product-development process.

Marketing Creates Value by Facilitating

Exchange Relationships
While we have described marketing activities from an individual organization’s
perspective, marketing also plays an important role in the broader context of the global
economy. It helps facilitate exchange relationships among people, organizations, and
nations.
Marketing is a social process involving the activities necessary to enable individuals and
organizations to obtain what they need and want through exchanges with others and to develop
ongoing exchange relationships.3

Increased division and specialization of labor are some of the most important
changes that occur as societies move from a primitive economy toward higher levels
of economic development. But while increased specialization helps improve a soci-
ety’s overall standard of living, it leads to a different problem: Specialists are no lon-
ger self-sufficient. Artisans who specialize in making pots become very skilled and
efficient at pot making, producing a surplus of pots, but they do not make any of the
many other goods and services they need to survive and to improve their lifestyle. A
society cannot reap the full benefits of specialization until it develops the means to
facilitate the trade and exchange of surpluses among its members. Similarly, a nation
cannot partake of the full range of goods and services available around the world or
penetrate all potential markets for the economic output of its citizens unless exchanges
can occur across national boundaries.

What Factors Are Necessary for a Successful

Exchange Relationship?
Many exchanges are necessary for people and organizations to reap the benefits of the
increased specialization and productivity that accompany economic development. But
such exchanges do not happen automatically, nor does every exchange necessarily lead
6 Section One The Role of Marketing in Developing Successful Business Strategies

to a mutually satisfying long-term relationship. The conditions for a successful exchange

transaction can be met only after the parties themselves—or marketing intermediaries such
as a wholesale distributor or a retailer—have performed several tasks. These include iden-
tifying potential exchange partners, developing offerings, communicating information,
delivering products, and collecting payments. This is what marketing is all about. Before
we take a closer look at specific marketing activities and how they are planned and imple-
mented by marketing managers, we will discuss some terms and concepts in our defini-
tion of marketing and the conditions necessary for exchange. Let’s examine the following
questions:
1. Who are the parties involved in exchange relationships? Which organizations and people
market things, and who are their customers?
2. Which needs and wants do parties try to satisfy through exchange, and what is the difference
between the two?
3. What is exchanged?
4. How does exchange create value? Why is a buyer better off and more satisfied following an
exchange?
5. How do potential exchange partners become a market for a particular good or service?

1. Who Markets and Who Buys?

The Parties in an Exchange
Virtually every organization and individual with a surplus of anything engages in market-
ing activities to identify, communicate, and negotiate with potential exchange partners.
Some are more aggressive—and perhaps more effective—in their efforts than oth-
ers. When considering extensive marketing efforts aimed at stimulating and facilitating
exchange, we think first of the activities of goods manufacturers (Intel, BMW, Samsung),
service producers (Air France, McDonald’s, 20th Century Fox), and large retailers (Zara,
Marks & Spencer, Wal-Mart).
However, museums, hospitals, theaters, universities, and other social institutions—
whether for profit or nonprofit—also carry out marketing activities to attract customers,
students, and donors. In the past, their marketing efforts were not very extensive or well
organized. Now, increasing competition, changing customer attitudes and demographics,
and rising costs have caused many nonprofit organizations to look to more extensive mar-
keting efforts to solve their problems.4 For example, some U. S. churches are using mar-
keting techniques to address social problems, as well as to increase church attendance. But
as discussed in Ethical Perspective 1.1, such efforts can also raise ethical questions.
Customers Both individuals and organizations seek goods and services obtained
through exchange transactions. Ultimate customers buy goods and services for their
own personal use or the use of others in their immediate household. These are called
consumer goods and services. Organizational customers buy goods and services
(1) for resale (as when TESCO buys several gross of Jeans for resale to individual con-
sumers); (2) as inputs to the production of other goods or services (as when Toyota buys
sheet steel to be stamped into car body parts); or (3) for use in the day-to-day operations
of the organization (as when a university buys paper and printer cartridges). These are
called industrial goods and services. Throughout this book we examine differences in
the buying behavior of these two types of customers and the marketing strategies and
programs relevant for each.5
Chapter One The Marketing Management Process 7

Ethical Perspective 1.1 may be just a well-disguised attempt to identify prospects

Marketing Goes to Church
in the United States
What’s old-time religion to do? At a time when the
search for spiritual guidance is on the rise, angels,
crystals, and shamans are more engaging to some
people than organized religion.
Amid the competition for a piece of America’s
soul, denominations such as the Southern Baptists,
Lutherans, and Roman Catholics are searching for
ways to reach baby boomers—without seeming too
evangelical. Those religions, along with the Mormon
Church, which is starting its 50th advertising cam-
paign, have introduced national public-service cam-
paigns focused on children and families. They are
also producing cable and network television specials
that incorporate Christian themes in their story lines,
and studying how best to use the internet to get
their spiritual message across.
The Lutheran Hour Ministries, which spends about
half of its $20 million budget on marketing, produced
an advertising campaign with themes about family,
instead of specific religious messages. A print, radio,
and TV campaign that appeared in Chicago shows
two children with the words “Drugs. Violence. Peer
Pressure. The world is tough. Being a kid shouldn’t
be.” The rest of the text includes a toll-free number
to call to receive a free audio cassette and booklet
on how to “talk with your kids about today’s issues
and the Christian values they need in today’s world.”
Some observers have expressed doubts about the
ethics of the Lutheran Hour approach, fearing that it
for recruiting new church members. It is true that a per-
son who calls the toll-free number can request a visit
from members of a local Lutheran church. But “there’s
no hit made [to recruit]. It’s not a bait-and-switch,” says
Dr. Dale Meyer, speaker for the Lutheran Hour Ministries.
However, other denominations—particularly evan-
gelical congregations like California’s Saddleback
Valley Community Church, one of the biggest reli-
gious institutions in America—have recently been
much more aggressive in using marketing techniques
to recruit new converts as well as raise money for
social projects like fighting poverty in Africa. Those
techniques focus not only on media advertising, but
also on internet ads, blogs, websites, and a variety
of “product enhancements” such as the formation
of interest and lifestyle groups within the congrega-
tion and the addition of church coffee shops and
cafeterias. But these techniques can also provoke
some negative reactions among segments of the
churchgoing population. For instance, a recent study
suggests that while baby boomers largely approve
of these contemporary approaches to religion, “the
younger generation sees the megachurches as too
production-oriented, too precise. . . . They want a
more traditional understanding of religion and faith.”
Sources: Fara Warner, “Churches Develop Marketing Campaigns,”
The Wall Street Journal, April 17, 1995, p. B4; William C. Symonds,
“Earthly Empires,” BusinessWeek, May 23, 2005, pp. 78–88; Fara
Warner, “Prepare Thee for Some Serious Marketing,” The New York
Times, October 22, 2006, Section3, pp. 1–4; and Brett McCracken,
“The Perils of ‘Wannabe Cool’ Christianity,” The Wall Street Journal,
August 13, 2010, archived at www.online.wsj.com.

2. Customer Needs and Wants

Needs are the basic forces that drive customers to take action and engage in exchanges.
An unsatisfied need is a gap between a person’s actual and desired states on some physi-
cal or psychological dimension. We all have basic physical needs critical to our survival,
such as food, drink, warmth, shelter, and sleep. We also have social and emotional needs
critical to our psychological well-being, such as security, belonging, love, esteem, and self-
fulfillment. Those needs that motivate the consumption behavior of individuals are few and
basic. They are not created by marketers or other social forces; they flow from our basic
biological and psychological makeup as human beings.
Organizations also must satisfy needs to assure their survival and well-being. Shaped
by the organization’s strategic objectives, these needs relate to the resource inputs, capital
equipment, supplies, and services necessary to meet those objectives.
Wants reflect a person’s desires or preferences for specific ways of satisfying a basic
need. Thus, a person wants particular products, brands, or services to satisfy a need.
8 Section One The Role of Marketing in Developing Successful Business Strategies

A person is thirsty and wants a Coke. A company needs office space and its top executives
want an office at a prestigious address in midtown Manhattan.
Basic needs are relatively few, but people’s many wants are shaped by social influences,
their past history, and consumption experiences. Different people may have very different
wants to satisfy the same need. Everyone needs to keep warm on cold winter nights, for
instance. But some people want electric blankets, while others prefer old-fashioned down
comforters.
This distinction between needs and wants helps put into perspective the charge that
“marketers create needs,” or that “marketers make people want things they don’t need.”
Neither marketers nor any other single social force can create needs deriving from the
biological and emotional imperatives of human nature. On the other hand, marketers—and
many other social forces—influence people’s wants. A major part of a marketer’s job is to
develop a new product or service and then to stimulate customer wants for it by convincing
people it can help them better satisfy one or more of their needs.
Do Customers Always Know What They Want? Some managers—particularly
in high-tech firms—question whether a strong focus on customer needs and wants is
always a good thing. They argue that customers cannot always articulate their needs and
wants, in part because they do not know what kinds of products or services are technically
possible. As Akio Morita, the late visionary CEO of Sony, once said:
Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products
they want. The public does not know what is possible, but we do. So instead of doing a lot of
marketing research, we refine our thinking on a product and its use and try to create a market
for it by educating and communicating with the public.6

Others have pointed out that some very successful new products, such as the Chrysler mini-
van and Compaq’s pioneering PC network server, were developed with little or no market
research. On the other hand, some famous duds, like Ford’s Edsel, New Coke, and McDonald’s
McLean low-fat hamburger, were developed with a great deal of customer input.7
The laws of probability dictate that some new products will succeed and more will fail
regardless of how much is spent on marketing research. But the critics of a strong customer
focus argue that paying too much attention to customer needs and wants can stifle innova-
tion and lead firms to produce nothing but marginal improvements or line extensions of
products and services that already exist. How do marketers respond to this charge?
While many consumers may lack the technical sophistication necessary to articulate
their needs or wants for cutting-edge technical innovations, the same is not true for indus-
trial purchasers. About half of all manufactured goods in most countries are sold to other
organizations rather than individual consumers. Many high-tech industrial products are
initiated at the urging of one or more major customers, developed with their cooperation
(perhaps in the form of an alliance or partnership), and refined at customer beta sites.
As for consumer markets, one way to resolve the conflict between the views of technolo-
gists and marketers is to consider the two components of R&D. First there is basic research
and then there is development—the conversion of technical concepts into actual salable
products or services. Most consumers have little knowledge of scientific advancements
and emerging technologies. Therefore, they usually don’t—and probably shouldn’t—play
a role in influencing how firms like Samsung allocate their basic research dollars.
However, a customer focus is critical to development. Someone—or some develop-
ment team—within the organization must have either the insight and market experience
or the substantial customer input necessary to decide what product to develop from a new
technology, what benefits it will offer to customers, and whether customers will value
Chapter One The Marketing Management Process 9

those benefits sufficiently to make the product a commercial success. The importance of a
customer focus often becomes clear when a firm attempts to develop a variety of success-
ful new product offerings from a single well-established technology as illustrated by the
travails of LEGO, the Swedish toy company, described in Exhibit 1.1.
In the case of an innovative new technology, it often must be developed into a con-
crete product concept before consumers can react to it and its commercial potential can
be assessed. In other cases, consumers can express their needs or wants for specific ben-
efits even though they do not know what is technically feasible. They can tell you what
problems they are having with current products and services and what additional benefits
they would like from new ones. For instance, before Apple introduced the i-Pod, few con-
sumers would have asked for such a product because they were unfamiliar with the pos-
sibilities of digitization and miniaturization in the electronics industry. But if someone had
asked whether they would buy a product smaller than a Sony Walkman that could store
and play thousands of songs they could download from their computer without messing
with cassette tapes or CDs, many probably would have said, “Sure!”
A strong customer focus is not inconsistent with the development of technically inno-
vative products, nor does it condemn a firm to concentrate on satisfying only current,
articulated customer wants. More important, while firms can sometimes succeed in the
short run even though they ignore customer desires, a strong customer focus usually pays

Exhibit 1.1 How LEGO Revived Its Brand

N ot many toy companies in the world have as

much brand recognition as LEGO. Three genera-
tions of kids around the world have built cars, fire
trucks, even entire cities, with the Swedish compa-
ny’s plastic bricks. But despite its widely known and
respected brand, the firm’s profits declined dramati-
cally in the early to mid-2000s.
One reason for the decline was a loss of strategic
focus. LEGO launched a kid’s TV series, a set of action
figures drawn from that series, and other products
in highly competitive categories which were largely
unrelated to the firm’s popular bricks and where the
firm had no experience or special expertise.
More critically, LEGO began foundering within its
core product line as well. Top management had given
free reign to the firm’s designers to develop more
imaginative creations for kids to build with LEGO
bricks. The designers happily embraced their new
freedom and developed many increasingly complex
and artistic designs. Unfortunately, those complex
designs incorporated thousands of new compo-
nents, many of which were not interchangeable with
those of other products in the line. As a result, parts
inventories exploded and supply costs went through
the roof. To make matters worse, many of the new
designs did not appeal to the kids who are the firm’s
ultimate consumers, and sales of the company’s core
products went down hill.
Paradoxically, the solution to LEGO’s product design
and profitability problems involved reducing the cre-
ative freedom of the firm’s designers. Top executives
decreed that new product development projects should
be managed by teams involving marketing managers
familiar with tastes, preferences, and purchase behav-
iors in different countries; manufacturing managers who
could help control production and supply costs; market
researchers who could test kids reactions to various
product prototypes; as well as designers.
While innovative product design is LEGO’s primary
competitive strength, the company has found that
designers function most successfully when placed
under some constraints; namely that the products
being designed appeal to the customers who will use
them. As Mads Nipper, LEGO’s VP of Products and
Markets points out, “Children are . . . very demand-
ing about what they want to buy. If your offer does
not stack up, they will go somewhere else.”
Source: Jay Greene, “How LEGO Revised Its Brand,” www
.businessweek/design.com, July 23, 2010. See also, Jay Greene, Design
Is How It Works (New York: Portfolio/Penguin Group, 2010), and
www.LEGO.com.
10 Section One The Role of Marketing in Developing Successful Business Strategies

big dividends in terms of market share and profit over the long haul,8 as we’ll see in the
next chapter.

3. What Gets Exchanged? Products and Services

Products and services help satisfy a customer’s need when they are acquired, used, or
consumed. Products are essentially tangible physical objects (such as cars, watches, and
computers) that provide a benefit. For example, a car provides transportation; a watch tells
the time. Services are less tangible and, in addition to being provided by physical objects,
can be provided by people (doctors, lawyers, architects), institutions (the Roman Catholic
Church, the United Way), places (Walt Disney World, Paris), and activities (a contest or a
stop-smoking program).

4. How Exchanges Create Value

Customers Buy Benefits, Not Products As argued earlier, when people buy
products to satisfy their needs, they are really buying the benefits they believe the products
provide, rather than the products per se. For instance, you buy headache relief, not aspirin.
The specific benefits sought vary among customers depending on the needs to be satisfied
and the situations where products are used. Because different customers seek different
benefits, they use different choice criteria and attach different importance to product fea-
tures when choosing models and brands within a product category. (This is diagrammed in
Exhibit 1.2.) For example, a car buyer with strong needs for social acceptance and esteem
might seek a socially prestigious automobile. Such a buyer would be likely to attach great
importance to criteria relating to social image and engineering sophistication such as a
high-powered motor, European-road-car styling, all-leather interior, and a state-of-the-art
sound system.
Keep in mind, too, that services offered by the seller can also create benefits for cus-
tomers by helping them reduce their costs, obtain desired products more quickly, or use
those products more effectively. Such services are particularly important for satisfying

Exhibit 1.2
Customers Buy Benefits, Not Products

Need

Benefits sought

Choice criteria

Product/service features

Brand/supplier chosen
Chapter One The Marketing Management Process 11

organizational buyers. For example, a few years ago the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology discovered that it was doing business with about 20,000 vendors of office and
laboratory supplies each year. To improve the efficiency of its purchasing system, MIT
developed a computerized catalog that staff members can access via the school’s intranet.
It then formed alliances with two main suppliers—Office Depot Inc. and VWR Corp.—
who won the bulk of MIT’s business by promising to deliver superior service. Both firms
deliver purchases within a day or two right to the purchaser’s desk rather than to a build-
ing’s stockroom.9
Product Benefits, Service, and Price Determine Value A customer’s estimate
of a product’s or service’s benefits and capacity to satisfy specific needs and wants deter-
mines the value he or she will attach to it. Generally, after comparing alternative products,
brands, or suppliers, customers choose those they think provide the most need-satisfying
benefits per dollar. Thus, value is a function of intrinsic product features, service, and
price, and it means different things to different people.10
Customers’ estimates of products’ benefits and value are not always accurate. For
example, after buying an air-conditioning installation for its premises, a company may find
that the product’s cost of operation is higher than expected, its response time to changes in
the outside temperature is slow, and the blower is not strong enough to heat or cool remote
areas in the building.
A customer’s ultimate satisfaction with a purchase, then, depends on whether the prod-
uct actually lives up to expectations and delivers the anticipated benefits. This is why
customer services—particularly those occurring after a sale, such as delivery, installation,
operating instruction, and repair—are often critical for maintaining satisfied customers.
Also, it is essential that companies handle customer complaints effectively. The aver-
age business never hears from 96 percent of its dissatisfied customers. This is unfortu-
nate, for 50 percent of those who complain would do business with the company again if
their complaints were handled satisfactorily—95 percent if the complaints were resolved
quickly.11
The Value of Long-Term Customer Relationships Firms have traditionally
focused on the individual transaction with a customer as the fruition of their marketing
efforts. But as global markets have become increasingly competi-
Strategic Issue tive and volatile, many firms have turned their attention to building
Many firms have turned their attention a continuing long-term relationship between the organization and the
to building a continuing long-term
relationship between the organization and customer as the ultimate objective of a successful marketing strategy.
the customer as the ultimate objective of a They are taking action to increase lifetime customer value—the pres-
successful marketing strategy. ent value of a stream of revenue that can be produced by a customer
over time. For an automobile manufacturer, for instance, the lifetime
value of a first-time car buyer who can be kept satisfied and loyal to the manufacturer—
buying all future new cars from the same company—is well over a million dollars.
Throughout this book we will discuss marketing decisions and activities geared to
increasing the satisfaction and loyalty—and therefore the lifetime value—of customers.
While such activities can add to a company’s marketing costs, they can also produce big
dividends, not only in terms of long-term revenues and market share, but also in terms of
profitability. The reason is simple: It costs more to attract a new customer than to keep
an existing one.12 To persuade a customer to leave a competitor and buy your product or
service instead usually takes either a financial inducement (a lower price or special pro-
motional deal) or an extensive and convincing communication program (advertising or
sales force effort), all of which are costly. Consequently, the increased loyalty that comes
through developing long-term customer relationship translates into higher profits.
12 Section One The Role of Marketing in Developing Successful Business Strategies

Brand Equity The assets—including customers’ perceptions of a product’s benefits

and value, their positive past experiences, and their loyalty over time—linked to a brand’s
name and symbol constitute the brand’s equity.13 Brand equity reflects the value of the
brand name and logo as promotional tools for attracting future buyers and building market
share and profitability. That is why Samsung’s recent marketing efforts have concentrated
on building the equity of the Samsung brand in global markets by incorporating innovative
technologies and stylish design in the firm’s offerings and advertising them as appropriate
products for modern lifestyles. Ultimately, in other words, a brand’s value to the company
depends on how much value customers think the brand provides for them; value creation
cuts both ways.

5. Defining a Market
A market consists of (a) individuals and organizations who (b) are interested and willing to
buy a particular product to obtain benefits that will satisfy a specific need or want, and who
(c) have the resources (time, money) to engage in such a transaction. Some markets are suf-
ficiently homogeneous that a company can practice undifferentiated marketing in them. That
is, the company attempts to market a line of products using a single marketing program. But
because people have different needs, wants, and resources, the entire population of a society is
seldom a viable market for a single product or service. Also, people or organizations often seek
different benefits to satisfy needs and wants from the same type of product (e.g., one car buyer
may seek social status and prestige while someone else wants economical basic transportation).
The total market for a given product category thus is often fragmented into several
distinct market segments. Each segment contains people who are relatively homogeneous
in their needs, their wants, and the product benefits they seek. Also, each segment seeks a
different set of benefits from the same product category.
Strategic marketing management involves a seller trying to determine the following
points in an effort to define the target market:
1. Which customer needs and wants are currently not being satisfied by competitive product
offerings.
2. How desired benefits and choice criteria vary among potential customers and how to identify
the resulting segments by demographic variables such as age, sex, lifestyle, or some other
characteristics.

Exhibit 1.3 Haier—A Chinese Manufacturer

Pursues Segments of the Appliance Market

H aier, the rapidly growing Chinese manu-

facturer of washing machines, refrigera-
tors, and other household appliances, uses
extensive market research to modify product
designs and marketing programs to fit the unique needs
and preferences of a variety of geographic, socioeco-
nomic, and lifestyle segments. For instance, customer
surveys discovered that people in Saudi Arabia desired
extra-large washing machines to hold the flowing robes
that are commonly worn there. Consequently, Haier
developed a machine with a 26-pound capacity—more
than double that of the average washer. The product
was a hit, selling more than 10,000 units in its first year.
At the other extreme, the firm also offers a miniwasher,
aimed at developing economies, that costs only $38.
Another washing machine, designed to handle fluctua-
tions in voltage and pick up where it left off if the power
goes out, is marketed in rural areas of Asia where the
power supply is not always reliable.
Source: David Rocks, “China Design,” BusinessWeek, November 21,
2005, pp. 56–62.
Another random document with
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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN