The Distribution Trap: Keeping Your Innovations from Becoming Commodities

The American Marketing Association Foundation (AMAF) announces The Distribution Trap: Keeping Your Innovations from Becoming Commodities (Praeger) as the recipient of the 2010 Berry-AMA Book Prize for the best book in marketing.

The Distribution Trap, by Andrew R. Thomas, Ph.D. and Timothy J. Wilkinson, Ph.D. explains that it is time for U.S. companies to wake up to the destructive mass-marketing theories that have cut their profits, diminished their reputations, and sent American jobs overseas. Current marketing and distribution notions, the authors contend, have wrongly convinced thousands of U.S. innovators that the sale and distribution of their products and services is better left in the hands of outside forces. By catering to the mass market, innovators are allowing mega-distributors to dilute the value of their products and services, imposing costs and changes in strategic direction and operational control. The first section of the book explains the distribution trap, detailing how it hurts companies by forcing them to reduce costs, often by chasing cheap labor overseas. The second section details how to avoid the trap, it's a lesson U.S. companies ignore at their own peril.

The annual Berry-AMA Book Prize recognizes books whose innovative ideas have had significant impact on marketing and related fields. The prize is one of the AMAF’s programs designed to recognize marketing excellence and is named in honor of Leonard L. Berry, a distinguished professor of marketing at Texas A&M University, and his wife Nancy F. Berry. Exceptional marketing books that have set the standard for excellence and that were published within the previous three years (2007, 2008 or 2009) were eligible for consideration to receive the 2010 Berry-AMA Book Prize.

For additional information about the Berry-AMA Book Prize winner, please visit:
2010 Berry-AMA Book Prize.