Book Review : Services Marketing by Rajendra Nargundkar

Book review originally published in SCMS Journal of Indian Management April-June 2007

Title : Services Marketing:Text and Cases

Author : Mr.Rajendra Nargundkar

Edition : Second Edition

Pages : 481

Publisher : Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited, New Delhi.

Services Marketing has evolved to become a major stream of study across b-schools in India thanks to the boom in the sector. With analysts expecting further growth in the Banking, financial and Insurance sectors in the coming decades, the importance of this stream of study has become more visible.

In that perspective, Mr Nargundkar’s book on Services Marketing is indeed a valuable addition to the existing literature. Although there are may books dealing with Services Marketing, Mr Nargundkar’s book is refreshing and stimulating.

Services Marketing: Concepts and Cases follow the traditional 7 P as its foundation. The chapeters 2-8 focuses on explaining the 7 P’s: Product, Place, Promotion, Price, Physical Evidence,Process and People. Nargundkar follows a lucid style in presenting the concepts, which makes reading this book easy for management students. Mr. Nargundkar has followed the same style of his earlier book on Marketing Research, which is a preferred book of management students on that subject.

Services Marketing also touch upon the concepts like Strategy, CRM and its application and also some insights into retailing in the service angle. Besides the chapters on concepts, the book also offers mini cases and Perspectives, which give insights in to the application of these concepts in the practical world. The book is full of such boxed items and illustrations that too Indian examples which makes this book more attractive to the Indian audience. The chapter on Promotion has several print ads of Indian service firms, which speaks volumes about the importance of advertising campaigns in service industry. The book also has 30 cases, which offers a valuable pedagogical tool for faculty and students. The cases are a mix of conceptual and quantitative data and the author has been able to strike a balance between both types.

Although the book is refreshingly Indian, the book is only an adaptation of existing services marketing concept in the Indian context. The book is purely conceived and developed as a textbook for management students and it fulfills that promise. For a scholar on services marketing, this book may pass on as another basic textbook since the author has not tried to develop or propose any original model or concept. The book also does not provide links to any additional reading in terms of references.

Services Marketing: Text and Cases is a good basic academic textbook that is easy to read for students and pedagogically useful for academicians.