Marketing Professor Co-authors Management Book

11.27.2007 Faculty News, Marketing, News Release

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – James A. Narus, professor of business marketing at Wake Forest University’s Babcock Graduate School of Management, has co-authored a management practice book, “Value Merchants: Demonstration and Documenting Superior Value in Business Markets.”
 

Jim Narus co-authored “Value Merchants” – a book that provides step-by-step guide to understanding customer value management.

Narus wrote the book with James C. Anderson, a professor of behavioral science the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and Nirmalya Kumar, professor of marketing at London Business School. “Value Merchants” was published Nov. 7 by the Harvard Business Press.

The book provides a step-by-step understanding of customer value management, a data-driven approach to demonstrating and documenting in monetary terms the superior value that a supplier’s offerings deliver to customers. “Value Merchants” provides the tools for companies to set themselves apart from the other commodity suppliers. The case studies include Dow Corning, Grainger, Milliken, SKF, Sonoco, Tata Steel and others that have shifted the focus from price to demonstrating and documenting superior value.

CRM Magazine recommends the book in this month’s issue: “Salespeople are under tremendous pressure to battle the price war, but at what cost? A sales team with a poor understanding of what is valuable to the customer – and of what makes its product superior – turns its salespeople into value spendthrifts. In ‘Value Merchants: Demonstrating and Documenting Superior Value in Business Markets,’ authors James Anderson, Nirmalya Kumar and James Narus introduce a set of business techniques to estimate the value of your market offerings and create propositions that resonate with customers.”

Narus is also the co-author of the textbook “Business Market Management: Understanding, Creating and Delivering Value” and the author of “Connect with Your Suppliers: A Wholesaler-Distributor’s Guide to Electronic Communications Systems.”

He has been a marketing professor specializing in business-to-business marketing issues at the Babcock School since January 1988.