Marketing in an electronic age.

• Author: Peters, Thomas J.

Marketing in an Electronic Age.

Robert Buzzell, ed. Harvard Business School Press, $32.95. High Technology editor Bob Haavind delivered a scathing editorial blast earlier this year. American firms, he said, are throwing away their major advantage, that of being domestic enterprises, closer than any foreign firm to the customer and the $4 trillion economy. Haavind may have sounded the alarm too late. Foreign firms increasingly are making use of sophisticated technologies to tap the U.S. markets. An article in a recent Business Week chronicled the approach of Custom Vetement Associates, the New York subsidiary of the French clothing maker, Vestra. Local U.S. retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue, it said, have been given "terminals made for the French national Videotex system. These link retailers with the main manufacturing operation in Strasbourg. Tailors take key measurements from customers and plug them into a terminal. Every night the data are sent to a central computer in New York and beamed via satellite to France. In the morning, after nine inspectors look at different pieces of data, a computer-controlled laser cutter selects the appropriate material and cuts the garment. The staff of tailors does the finishing touches, and the suit is shipped within four days.'

Such seemingly Buck Rogers electronics and telecommunications links have arrived. The effects of the technology revolution on marketing, selling, distribution, and servicing may be more profound than the highly touted changes in the factory. Long-time Harvard Business School marketing professor Robert Buzzell provides a useful guide to the coming--or arrived--revolution in this collection of articles stemming from a Harvard Business School seventy-fifth anniversary symposium.

Topics range from an examination of pioneering distribution companies such as American Hospital Supply and McKesson Drug to an assessment of media fragmentation and its effect on advertising and marketing decision-making.

Changes in distribution are occurring at an extraordinary pace, altering the traditional way of doing business in every industry. The new buzz term is EDI, for electronic data interchange. EDI provides, say authors Louis Stern and Patrick Kaufmann: "(1) reduced order lead time; (2) higher service levels; (3) fewer out-of-stock situations; (4) improved communications about deals, promotions, price changes, and product availability; (5) lower inventory costs; (6) better accuracy in...