Marketing professional services [antikvár]

PREFACE We have spent nearly our entire professional careers—a combined total of more than forty years—teaching, writing, and consulting in the field of marketing. As close observers of developments in this field, we have witnessed an enormous surge of interest in marketing over the last decade from sectors of our society which formerly ignored or disdained marketing, such as hospitals, educational institutions, and government agencies. But nowhere in our experience have we seen the acceptance and adoption of marketing occur as rapidly and as massively as it has occurred recently in the professions. Accountants, lawyers, management consultants, architects, interior designers, engineers, dentists, doctors, and other professionals are turning to marketing with great enthusiasm and commitment. And marketing, in turn, is creating fundamental and lasting changes in their professions. In spite of the great enthusiasm and commitment that professionals have shown toward marketing, there have been only very limited amounts of resource materials made available to guide the adoption and implementation of professional service marketing programs. We have been constantly told by professionals that a need exists for written materials that recognize the distinctive problems of marketing professional services (versus more conventional goods and services) and provide sound, in-depth advice on how to deal with those problems. This book represents an attempt to fill such a need. We have written a book that carefully explains how marketing concepts can be applied to the problems commonly faced by professional service organizations when they seek to improve their practice development programs. The book provides guidance on how to think strategically and analytically about marketing in professional service settings. We have gone beyond the offering of a collection of marketing tips and ideas and sought to integrate the thinking of numerous individuals into a book that teaches both the "how" and the "why" of various professional vii