MANAGEMENT OF THE SALES FORCE by William J. Stanton and

114
Journal of Marketing, January, 1970
MANAGEMENT OF THE SALES FORCE
by William J. Stanton and Richard H. Buskirk
(Homewood. III.: Richard D. Irwin. Inc.. 1969. Pp. 723. $13.35.)
This third edition of one of the best known college
texts has something for everyone interested in sales
management. It is written primarily for college students, but any sales manager would find tested ideas
and models to improve the organization, operation, and
control of his sales force. He would also find the
standard practical solutions to most of his daily and
long-range problems.
In updating the book the authors have altered the
arrangement and changed the length and content of
the chapters. For example, the chapter on "Career
Opportunities" has been moved from front to back.
They have condensed or omitted some material. Chapter 5, "Selection of Salesmen—Determining the Kind
of Men Wanted," now contains the material which
comprised Chapters 6 and 7 in the previous edition,
while the social and ethical responsibilities of the
sales manager have been combined into one chapter.
A new chapter, "The Sales Manager and the Computer," has also been added.
The book is management-oriented and covers the administrative activities of sales force managers at all
levels from the district manager to the chief sales
force executive. The marketing management concept
is explained and illustrated throughout the book.
Other aspects of marketing management such as
product planning, pricing, channels of distribution, advertising, and sales promotion have been excluded so
the activities of the sales manager can be described and
analyzed at greater length.
The authors' basic managerial philosophy, that "the
selection of personnel at any level from top to bottom,
in any organization, is the most important function
of an administrator," is clearly discernible in every
chapter. Decision making is taught by means of cases
scattered throughout the book and questions at the
end of each chapter. Thirty-five of the 43 cases in
this edition are new. The authors do not dwell on
management theory, use the jargon of advertising, information systems or communications, emphasize salesmanship, or follow common faults of other textbooks.
Their style, although somewhat pedestrian, is easily
readable. Their examples and illustrations are quantitative where possible and are always taken from
industry.
The real subject matter is divided into four main
parts: organizing the sales department (2 chapters),
sales operations (13 chapters), sales planning (5
chapters), and sales analysis (3 chapters). Chapter
24, "Marketing Cost Analysis," is the best summary
treatment of this difficult subject to be found in the
literature. Its revisions are tjrpical of those made in
this edition. The writing in some of the paragraphs
has been tightened up a little, but the content remains
essentially unchanged. A page dealing with return on
investment as a measure of sales performance has been
added; studies cited in the footnotes, as elsewhere in
the book, are recent ones; and some of the questions
and both of the cases at the end of the chapter are new
and more sophisticated.
The new chapter, "The Sales Manager and the Computer," is a stimulating and timely addition. There is
a brief summary of the uses of a computer in operations research, in model building, and in management
information systems. The rest of the chapter is a
description of the many applications which the computer has in sales planning, sales operations, and sales
analysis.
ROBERT S. RAYMOND
Ohio University
EXPERIMENTATION FOR MARKETING DECISIONS
by Keith K. Cox and Ben M. Enis
(Scranton. Penn.: International Textbook Company. 1969. Pp. 110. $2.25.)
With some reservations this is a very good little book.
It could be employed as a primer on experimentation
to be used for part of a course in marketing research,
particularly at the undergraduate level. It could also
be read by the marketing practitioner who knows little
about experimentation but has a moderate background
in statistics.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I provides
an overview of experimentation. Part II deals with
the most common experimental designs: completely
randomized, randomized block, Latin square, and factorial. The authors employ the useful pedagogical
device of a hypothetical marketing problem which is
analyzed extensively throughout the four chapters
comprising this part of the book. In addition, each
chapter contains problems (and answers) to be worked
out by the reader. Part III of the book provides wellchosen examples from the marketing literature in the
application of experimentation to problems of distribution, pricing, product, and promotion.
The most serious inadequacy of the book lies in the
omission of any reference to Bayesian techniques in
experimentation. Paul Green and others have published papers in marketing journals illustrating the
usefulness of the Bayesian approach to marketing decisions under uncertainty; it is surprising that the
authors have totally ignored Bayesian techniques.
As might be expected of the first edition of a very
short book on a very large subject, other omissions and
conceptual errors are present. Although the authors
point out that most researchers place too great an
emphasis on type 1 errors while ignoring type 2 errors,
they themselves proceed to virtually ignore type 2
errors in the remainder of the book. Nowhere is there
a treatment of determining the number of test units
to be employed by considering both types of errors.
The authors also misinterpret what it means when
a null hypothesis is rejected. A rejection at the 5%
level of significance does not mean that if one has accepted the statement that the experimental treatment
has an effect on the dependent variable one has a 5%
probability of being wrong (as the authors state at
the bottom of page 35). It means that before the experiment was actually performed, if chance alone determined the results, a true null hypothesis would be
rejected 5% of the time. In fact, it is not difficult (as
Howard Raiffa has demonstrated) to construct examples where rejecting the null hypothesis would be
Book Reyiews
115
wrong lOO^f of the time, even though the experimental
design might be such that actual rejections would take
place 5<;f of the time.
The book contains a few other vague and misleading
definitions and passages. For example, after an illustration involving the rejection of a null hypothesis at
the b'', level of significance, the authors imply that the
results may be suspect because of the small number
of observations. A larger n would have reduced the
probability of type 2 error (which is irrelevant, ex
post facto, when the null hypothesis was, in fact, rejected). It would also have changed the critical F
ratio. But there is no reason to have more confidence
in a rejection at the 5""/ level in an experiment involving a large n than in an experiment involving a
small n.
Overall, however, the reader will find very clear
elementary explanations of the designs considered and
of their associated analysis of variance. He will also
find that the authors illustrate very well the practical application of experimental design to marketing
problems.
BERTRAM SCHONER
The University of Iowa
READINGS IN MARKETING INFORMATION SYSTEMS:
A NEW ERA IN MARKETING RESEARCH
by Samuel V. Smith, Richard H. Brien, and James E. Stafford
(Boston, Mass.: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1968. Pp. 399. $4.95.)
As stated by the authors in their overview article
introducing the book, the purpose of this collection of
readings is to provide "something of a chronicle of
the early impact of the 'Communications Revolution'
. . . on marketing management" and, secondly, to apply
a "managerial systems" concept to the "generation of
adequate decision information for marketing" which
expands the traditional marketing research activity
into a "marketing information system."
The collection consists of 33 articles obtained from
20 sources; namely, 12 periodicals, three American
Marketing Association Proceedings, two Bulletins published by the American Management Association, and
chapters from three books. The most frequently utilized periodical sources are the Harvard Business Review, JOURNAL OF MARKETING, Business Horizons, and
Management Science. About 107f of the articles are
taken from publications issued during the period 19651967.
The readings are presented in four parts. Part One,
"Introduction" (two articles), introduces the reader
to the marketing information systems concept. Part
Two, "Systems Analysis: Some Basic Concepts" (six
articles), discusses the nature of systems, and the systems concept in business, marketing, and information
management. Part Three, "The Role of Information
in Marketing Planning" (nine articles), is a series of
readings aimed at linking the relationship between the
marketing planning process and the modern information explosion. Part Four, "The Emergence of Mar-
keting Information Systems" (16 articles), is the most
important section discussing the design, implementation, problems, and current status of marketing information systems.
In evaluating this book it is significant to note that
this is the first publication of a readings book conceming the marketing information systems area. In
a field where the presentation of concepts is widely
scattered and often disjointed, the authors have produced a measure of unity and continuity. The readings are arranged in an imaginative structure that
integrates the readings into a meaningful whole. The
authors have selected a reasonable sampling of the
literature and included most of the important writers
who have contributed to the development of the marketing infonnation systems field. Technical articles
on information theory, computer science, and data
processing are not included although they lie within
the information systems boundary. Their exclusion in
no way detracts from the merits of the book.
For the professional wishing to be enlightened as to
the marketing information systems approach, the book
is worthwhile as being both informative and practical.
In marketing management or research classes it will
provide an extremely useful supplement that will bring
students up to date with developments in the emerging
marketing information systems area.
Syracuse
University
GEORGE B. SAUNDERS
BOOKS RECEIVED
Books are arranged by topic and alphebetically by authors' names
Advertising
ADVERTISING GRAPHICS, by William Bockus, Jr. (New
York: The Macmillan Co., 1969. Pp. 226. $5.95.)
HOW TO USE COLOR TO SELL, by Eric p . Danger (Boston,
Mass.: Cahners Publishing Company, Inc., 1969.
Pp. 224. $11.95.)
INSURANCE ADVERTISING: ETHICS AND LAW, by Richard
L. Ismond (New York: The Roberts Publishing
Corp., 1967. Pp. 504. $15.00.)
search, Division of Research, Graduate School of
Business Administration, MSU, 1969. Pp. 101.
$6.50.)
CASES IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOR, by Roger D. Blackwell,
James F. Engel, and David T. Kollat (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969. Pp. 431.
$9.95.)
DIMENSIONS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR, by James U . Mc-
Neal (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969.
Pp. 446. $4.50.)
Consumer Behavior
General Marketing
SELECTION OF NEW SUPPLIERS BY THE MOBILE FAMILY,
PHARMACEUTICAL MARKETING, by Bernard G. Keller
and Mickey C. Smith (Baltimore, Maryland: The
Williams and Wilkins Co., 1969. Pp. 396. $11.50.)
by James E. Bell, Jr. (East Lansing, Michigan:
MSU Business Studies, Bureau of Business Re-