This text focuses on issues of buyer-seller relationships, customer satisfaction and retention, and a relational rather than transaction view of marketing's role. Each chapter's examples are highlighted by boxed vignettes, and 36 new, revised or updated cases appear at the end of the text. The authors show how intense competition, both in the US and around the world, is affecting marketing planning and the importance for rapid response in new product development. This edition integrates coverage of new developments, ranging from direct interactive promotion and the Internet to quality management practices in marketing, and the use of activity-based costing for marketing control. A chapter on implementation and control highlights how radical new approaches are improving traditional approaches and making the whole strategy-planning cycle more effective. - from Amzon