International Business – Open Textbook Library

Reviewed by Barry Hawkey, Adjunct Faculty, Portland Community College on 6/19/18

Comprehensiveness

rating:
3
see less

This is a massive text, and seems to cover everything I’d need in my International Marketing course. Without a table of contents or an index, however, it is difficult to understand the complete flow of this 730-page text! Any instructor using this text would need to begin by constructing their own.

Content Accuracy

rating:
5

This text seems to be very professionally written, and I have found no errors or evidence of bias. I would recommend it to college-level instructors

Relevance/Longevity

rating:
4

International Marketing is a rapidly changing topic, so it is difficult to write a text with examples that will not seem out of date in a few years. Examples in this text include Coca-Cola, DeBeers, and Google, which seem unlikely to be rendered obsolete any time soon.

The text is well-organized by section and subsection, but the lack of a table of contents or index makes it very difficult to find every reference to a particular topic. Without those, future updates will be very hard to integrate.

Clarity

rating:
5

The text is very professionally written. Sentence structures and explanations are easy to follow, and should be easily accessible to college-level students.

Consistency

rating:
4

The text is professionally written, and appears well laid-out. I do not see much evidence of language or concepts building on themselves, or of early topics being referenced in later chapters, however. There is also no glossary, and key words do not seem to be given highlighted definitions in the text. Still, the overall voice of the text is very consisent.

Modularity

rating:
4

The case studies and matching exercises given in every chapter are a huge help, and make the massive text much more approachable to readers.

While the case studies, “amusing anecdotes” and exercises are very helpful, in some areas they seem to overwhelm the actual text. For example, Section 5.3, on The United Nations and the Impact of Trade, begins on page 252 and continues for 9 pages. If you remove all of the ‘asides,’ however, you are left with only 4 pages! More than half of the section is spent on asides.

The lack of any pictures or illustrations hinders reader understanding in some places. For example, the ‘6 Steps of Scenario Planning’ on page 397 would greatly benefit from a flowchart or diagram.

Organization/Structure/Flow

rating:
2

The text does not have a table of contents or index! This makes it very hard to use as a reference, and they should definitely be added. At 730 pages, the lack of a table of contents even makes it hard for an instructor to get a handle on what the book offers.

Interface

rating:
2

Blue, underlined text of chapter and section headings are not working hyperlinks, although they seemed designed to look like them.

The lack of pictures and illustrations make these text tiring to read. It always makes the text ‘feel’ unprofessional, although the content itself is great.

Grammatical Errors

rating:
5

This text is very professionally written. I have not found any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance

rating:
5

This text appears to be very professionally written. I have not found any evidence of cultural insensitivity, and the examples appear to come from many different countries. It is a large text, however, and I have not read all 730 pages.

Comments

While I understand that intellectual property rights somehow must require this book be published with the phrase “Author’s Name retracted as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee,” it is disconcerting to see that phrase appear again and again. That phrase is given 15 times in total, and I expect it will cause readers to question the quality of the content, unfortunately.