Relevant Knowledge Series

MSI’s “Relevant Knowledge” Series offers concise, high quality books on timely business topics. Written by leading academics for general audiences, these monographs synthesize important research streams, summarize current knowledge, and offer practical guidance for managerial decision making.

Consumer Insights: Findings from Behavioral Research
Joseph W. Alba, 2011  [11-601]
Collects findings on 42 consumer behavior topics related to information search, pricing, advertising, brand effects, inference, attitudes and persuasion, decision making and purchase, social and group effects, vulnerable consumers, and health and well-being; includes behavioral insight(s), evidence base, managerial implications, and references.

Shopper Marketing
Venkatesh Shankar, 2011  [11-600]
Provides a framework for understanding a new paradigm of customer purchase behavior. Defines shopper marketing, and offers research insights about shopper behavior, industry practices, and implications for manufacturers and retailers. Concludes with a discussion of important trends and research questions.

Innovation Diffusion and New Product Growth
Eitan Muller, Renana Peres, and Vijay Mahajan, 2009  [09-601]
Develops a framework for understanding how diffusion occurs in today’s markets. Reviews classic and more recent diffusion models, and investigates the mechanisms that underlie new product growth—with particular attention to current market trends such as information proliferation, globalization, competition, social networks, and growth in service markets.

Empirical Generalizations about Marketing Impact: What We Have Learned from Academic Research
Dominique M. Hanssens, 2009  [09-600]
Collects general findings in 16 topic areas to summarize current knowledge about the impact of marketing spending at product and firm levels; includes empirical generalizations, evidence base, managerial implications, and references. Part of MSI's Relevant Knowledge Series.

Relationship Marketing
Robert W. Palmatier, 2008  [08-600]
Explores the theoretical underpinnings of relationship marketing: What is relationship marketing? How does relationship marketing work? How do relationships change over time? Offers insight into important managerial issues: understanding the financial impact of relationship marketing, building and maintaining strong relationships, targeting and adapting relationship marketing strategies, and improving performance through best practices. Outlines future research directions and topics. Part of MSI’s Relevant Knowledge Series

Social Networks and Marketing
Christophe Van den Bulte and Stefan Wuyts, 2007  [07-600]
Explores the business trends that are prompting managers to look into social network analysis, offers a conceptual "toolkit" of social network concepts, investigates "social capital"—the concept that particular positions in networks can confer particular benefits, and reviews research on consumer, intra-organizational, and inter-organizational networks. Part of MSI's Relevant Knowledge Series.

Marketing Metrics and Financial Performance
Donald R. Lehmann and David J. Reibstein, 2006  [06-602]
Describes the current drive to demonstrate the productivity of marketing investments, examines existing measures, develops a metrics “value chain,” and discusses the evidence for various links in that chain. Part of MSI's Relevant Knowledge Series.

Pricing
Russell Winer, 2005  [05-601]
Offers overview of pricing research: measurement and scaling issues, behavioral response to price, pricing tactics, empirical research, game-theoretic models, pricing on the Internet, and directions for future research. Part of MSI's Relevant Knowledge Series.

Service Quality
Valarie A. Zeithaml and A. Parasuraman, 2004  [04-602]
Offers overview of service quality: how to define it, how to measure it, and how to improve service performance. Discusses evidence of links between service quality, customer loyalty, and profitability, and challenge of delivering service quality on the Internet. Part of MSI's Relevant Knowledge Series.

Branding and Brand Equity
Kevin Lane Keller, 2002  [02-601]
Addresses the conceptualization and measurement of brand equity, brand building, brand extensions, and brand strategies and alliances. Part of MSI's Relevant Knowledge Series.

Sales Promotion
Scott A. Neslin, 2002  [02-600]
Offers an overview of the field of promotion: how promotion affects sales and profits, types of sales promotions, the interaction of advertising and promotion, and future research. Part of MSI's Relevant Knowledge Series.