Brands, Consumers, Symbols and Research

The 54 collected works in this volume provide an opportunity for the reader to determine whether Sidney′s work, individually and/or collectively, qualify as a masterpiece. For me, Sidney has created more individual pieces of his work that merit this status than any other marketing scholar I know. Collectively, the work in this volume is a masterpiece of insight into the social enterprise that is marketing. Again, I don′t know anyone whose career-long program of thought is so extraordinarily rich in imagination and practical value. He challenges, provokes, excites, soothes, and supports us with one or another of his writings. —from the foreword by Gerald Zaltman, Harvard Business School For the first time, the writings of marketing legend Sidney J. are available in this comprehensive collection of significant scholarly essays and studies in the field of marketing. And what a compendium this is! Dennis Rook, a former student of Sidney J. Levy, has compiled the work of this prolific, internationally-recognized and award-winning writer whose ideas began to influence marketing executives in the late 1940s. His ideas continue to impact how we think about marketing′s role in management, how managers develop products and brands, how they understand their consumers, and how corporate and academic researchers investigate marketplace concerns. Brands, Consumers, Symbols, and Research is an exciting and definitive volume that should have a place on the bookshelves of every marketing professional, educator, and student around the globe!

Dennis Rook is a Professor of Clinical Marketing at the Marshall School of Business. He received his PhD in marketing in 1983 from Northwestern University′s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, where he concentrated in consumer behavior theory and qualitative research methods. Following this, he served on the marketing faculty of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Dr. Rook left the academic environment in 1987 to join the Strategic Planning Department of DDB Needham Worldwide in Chicago where he was a research supervisor. Following this he was appointed Director of Qualitative Research Services at Conway/Milliken & Associates, a Chicago research and consulting company. Dr. Rook rejoined the USC marketing faculty in 1991. Professor Rook′s published research has investigated consumer impulse buying, "solo" consumption behavior, and consumers′ buying rituals and fantasies. These and other studies have appeared in the Journal of Consumer Research, Advances in Consumer Research, Symbolic Consumer Behavior, and Research in Consumer Behavior. He has served as Treasurer of the Association for Consumer Research, for which he is also a member of the Advisory Council. In 1985, his dissertation research was awarded by the Association for Consumer Research, and in 1988, he was appointed to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Consumer Research. Dr. Rook has served as a research and marketing consultant for companies in the consumer packaged goods, financial services, communications and entertainment industries.