“Marketing is just like soccer; we all think we know something about it”

What should you do with textbooks are outdated or written in a traditional, sometimes even conservative way? Writing a book at that point seems like a monumental challenge. Yet Henry Robben, Professor of Marketing and Job Andreoli, Assistant Professor of entrepreneurial finance, both associated with Nyenrode Business Universiteit, decided to do some research and write a book. What are the process pitfalls? What tips and advice do they have for future writers? They discuss this and more in this podcast, and ask each other the question whether neuromarketing can play a role in financing start-ups.   

European success

Few textbooks had been written about “Entrepreneurial Finance” until now. Which is why Job Andreoli together with Luisa Alemany, Associate Professor of Management Practice at London Business School, wrote a study book entitled Entrepreneurial Finance: The Art and Science of Growing Ventures. The book, intended for students and entrepreneurs who want to know more about financing (growing) ventures, was written as a counterbalance to all existing books focused on the United States and Silicon Valley. "These textbooks give students a distorted picture, as if startups and their financing are only possible in the United States, while we also have many great examples in Europe," says Andreoli.  

Decisive factor

According to Henry Robben and Letizia Alvino, it is time to revise marketing strategies that have traditionally been linked to business success. With their research, they show that creating a strong and positive image is the decisive factor in determining whether a company is actually successful in a market. Furthermore, they conclude that it is more important to decide where to compete than how. For this research, they used neuromarketing because, as Alvino explains, traditional ways of questioning, such as a survey, do not always offer the desired results. "When we ask a consumer about what they like, usually we get an answer what they think we want to hear rather than their honest opinion. Sometimes, people even lie. Often the subject of the survey is of influence, such as religion or sexuality." Two books were published as a result of the research conducted (Moenaert, Robben, & Gouw, 2011, 2014; Moenaert & Robben, 2016).