be helped and challenged by its coverage and examples.
There is an Instructor's Manual to be published soon
which, unfortunately, was not available at the time of this
Review.
Ernest D. Phelps
Professor of Marketing Emeritus
Nichols College
Dudley, Massachusetts
Farrington, Brian, Industrial Purchase Price Manage-
ment, Gower, Westmead, Farmborough, England,
$15.00.
Price is a critical marketing decision variable, yet one
that may receive inadequate analysis in many organiza-
tions. Brian Farrington analyzes the pricing of industrial
products from the standpoint of the professional buyer.
Since money saved on low cost buying has a direct
impact on bottom-line profits, judicious purchasing can
be of significant importance to the firm.
After presenting the relationship between purchase
price and selling price of the firm's output, the author
uses a variety of buyer behavior models to look at the role
of price in industrial purchasing behavior. However,
many of the models presented are quite dated and con-
cerned with consumer goods purchasing and may lack the
ability to be applied to the industrial buying situation.
Indeed, the following chapter dealing with the key fac-
tors in industrial pricing is not integrated with the models
previously presented.
The chapter on the role of costs in settling prices points
to the great difficulty in accurately determining true
costs. While several useful rules are presented, little is
done to provide the reader with a useful paradigm if such
information is lacking. The examples presented in this
chapter are quite difficult to follow, but the verbal de-
scriptions of full-cost, marginal-cost, ROI, and flexible
pricing techniques are useful.
The remaining chapters on The Role of Profit in Pric-
ing, A Review of Current Practices, Negotiation Skills,
Purchase Price Management, and Improving Manage-
ment Capability do not fit in well with the previous
material. There are several instances of duplication of
earlier concepts and a lack of coordination of material.
While the intent of the author is meritorious, the actual
contribution of the book is lacking. Perhaps a better
framework rather than the ' 'culmination of years of prac-
tice" is called for.
Peter J. LaPlaca
Associate Professor
University of Connecticut
Christopher, Martin, Schary, Philip, and Skjott-Larsen,
Tage, Customer Service and Distribution Strategy,
Halsted Press, New York, 191 pp., $32.95.
Customer service has been a long neglected element in
marketing books; however, several recent articles in the
business press have demonstrated that there is wide-
spread concern for the service function, particularly
among industrial purchasing agents. In this brief book
(191 pages), Christopher, Schary, and Skjott-Larsen pre-
sent an excellent overview of the customer service. They
define this as "a system organized to provide a continu-
ing link between the time that the order is placed and the
goods are received with the objective of satisfying cus-
tomer needs on a long term basis."
The contents of the book are based on a year-long
investigation of companies involved with the manufac-
ture, marketing and distribution of consumer goods.
However, the analysis is presented in a clear manner and
can readily be applied to industrial products; indeed,
many of the references and supportive statements are
concerned with the industrial product arena.
The book is divided into ten chapters as follows:
1. The concept of customer service
2. The corporate context of customer service
3. The process of customer service
4. The customer's perceptions of customer service
5. Customer service and the impact on the consumer
6. Customer service as an operating system
7. Strategy in customer service
8. Management control over customer service
9. How to evaluate customer service
10. Customer service: an overview
309