This book tells you everything some random engineer like me would ever want to know about marketing and more. Unfortunately all of Allvine's examples are out-of-date! For example, there is an example about Xerox who is now in a terrible position. This is the main reason that this book did not get that fifth star. The book is written well enough, though the version I had was produced in a rather unpolished form. It had black ink on simple paper with a simple paper cover. The font of the text was fairly standard. This review, however, does not consider the format of the book. This book also had some problems of figures that did not exist.
When it comes to marketing theory, almost all of what's in the book is consistant with general theory and it is mostly backed up by data. However, there are some ideas presented that are arguable mostly because there is no data to back it up. Ultimately the book serves well for an introductory course in marketing.