Preface

In the modern era, marketing keeps changing constantly, from initially focusing on production and products to gradually prioritizing customer needs as the core, and increasingly emphasizing the positive role it plays in the sustainable development of society. As a highly popular business course in China's colleges and universities, marketing has always remained a big attraction in the textbook publishing industry, and numerous textbooks for it are available on shelves. Among this wide variety of choices, most instructors prefer Chinese textbooks or Chinese versions of the classic foreign marketing textbooks for teaching or reference. However, since the 21st century, the continuously deepening internationalization of China has caused a surge in domestic demand for talents equipped with global vision and English proficiency, hence many Chinese colleges and universities began to offer bilingual marketing courses, which then induced a growing demand for English-Chinese bilingual textbooks for this course as teaching materials. Unfortunately, bilingual marketing textbooks suitable for Chinese students are in extremely short supply at present, so original foreign textbooks are often taken as close substitutes, which poses great challenges to effective teaching. Typical problems faced by an instructor include but are not limited to: lack of appropriate case study analysis of Chinese companies, failure to apply foreign research results to China's practical experiences, and students’ poor understanding of the text due to language barriers. Therefore, how to improve efficiency and effectiveness of bilingual teaching becomes a major concern for each and every teacher of bilingual marketing courses.

In this context, our writing group comes up with the idea of compiling this bilingual marketing textbook. It approaches marketing management theories with a global perspective, and combines those theories with our lecture notes as well as rich bilingual teaching experience. All contents are carefully chosen and based on over ten years of bilingual teaching experience of the chief editor. An innovative paradigm, which puts Chinese and foreign case studies side by side, is adopted so as to facilitate comparison and understanding, and seamlessly integrate theories in Chinese with explanations of terms in English. The overall format of this textbook is particularly designed to help Chinese students study marketing bilingually, with an aim to maintain the original marketing theories on the one hand, and ensure readers’ in-depth understanding of the profound meaning of these theories on the other hand. Furthermore, the comparison between domestic and international business cases contributes to preparing students with a global perspective. This textbook is ideal for bilingual marketing courses. It provides a comprehensive and well-illustrated overview of marketing management ideas, and is suitable for a wide range of readers in marketing-related fields,including business major students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and other readers interested in marketing management. The joint efforts and collective wisdom of all the writing group members make an unseen but indispensable part of this textbook. All citations and references have been carefully checked for accuracy. Deficiencies and imperfections are possible and further comments, critiques and suggestions from all readers are welcome.