Essentials of Marketing is a concise, no-nonsense book, which is designed to contain all the essential information that students need to understand when taking a short introductory course. This book brings together theory and practice. It covers a wide range of applications, industries and markets, exploring the ways in which marketers respond to situations that demand an nnovative response. In preparing this new edition, we have particularly focused on understanding how the fast-evolving area of digital marketing is being integrated into marketing thinking and practice. Much that was innovative when we produced the second edition is now mainstream, and since then the emergence of social media and advances in technology that have opened up tools such as m-marketing, s-marketing and f-marketing have made a huge impact on the marketing landscape. Similarly, we have reinforced the emphasis on corporate social responsibility and marketing ethics in this edition, again in line with the increasing importance of these concepts to practising marketers. We hope that you enjoy working with this textbook and that you find it thought-provoking and stimulating. And of course, we wish you every success in your marketing studies.