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Strategic Marketing: Cases and Concepts from Indian Businesses by C. Bhaktavatsala Rao.

Professor C. B. Rao is a renowned authority from the IIT Madras, Ajit Singhvi Chair Professor with 49 years of global strategic and operational leadership in the business and operational environment regarding the Indian marketing strategies. This book effectively combines an academic framework with real world applications.

The book is divided into thirty chapters wherein each gives focus to diverse elements of strategic marketing along with its relevance in different domains including Automobile, FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods), Retail and many more. It also seeks to embrace other fundamental areas of marketing such as demand management and brand creation, thus providing a holistic perspective of business strategies.

Since the book is detailed, supported by up-to-date research, and chock full of case studies when dealing with most major Indian industries, with the author focusing on branding and brand equity. The best feature of the book is that the author incorporates theories into practice, thereby ensuring that the material is both informative and implementable at the same time. It will be useful for anyone in an old and new business with focus on product marketing.

One of the major strengths of the book is the authors’ decision to entirely devote their work to the Indian market, which generally holds some distinct features and tendencies. Through a contextualisation of strategic marketing, concepts as presented and explained by Rao, are close to South Asian market realities.

This book features real brand and products cases with detailed investigations of successful and unsuitable brands, which has also fails to realize the brand potential like Tata Nano. Each of these offers, warrants reasons for their lack of success lessons.