Recommended reading if you want to get your mind round marketing and the challenges of business from either a general management point of view, or as a thoroughbred marketeer:

Philip Kotler: Marketing Management (12th Edition), approx $130
This is basically the bible in marketing. Kotler was in the right place at the right time when marketing theory was being laid in stone. He is a wise and learned man, but what really makes his book good is that he watches trendy theories come and go, sees younger professors trying to leave their stamp on marketing, and then observes which models and theories are actually adopted by business. So only when things really are common practice in marketing do they make it, deservedly, into his book. It’s expensive, but worth it. And being American, his book has lots of pictures in it and great examples.

This is also my recommendation for Market Research, as long as you are not specialising in the discipline or it is a central part of your job. If you are, see here.

I saw a facsimile copy of the book from China (in ENGLISH, only with a Chinese intro for local readers!). It’s on thin paper, the cover feels and looks cheap, but it’s the words that matter. And apparently it’s a fraction of the cost. Worth investigating (any feedback on this appreciated – please comment below).

Philip Kotler und Friedhelm Bliemel: Marketing-Management. Analyse, Planung und Verwirklichung, approx €40
German. Kotler doing what you should do: adapting products to local markets. This is thus much more Germanic in approach, a bit more wordy (so for me a bit too intellectual), but still recommendable. The theories are all the same though!

Heribert Meffert: Marketing, approx €37
German. Standard reading at many German universities. Bread and butter teutonic angle on the world of marketing.

Internes Marketing: Manfred Bruhn
German. My recommendation if you want to take the techniques and models of marketing and apply them to big companies (and small, I guess) that have to market themselves internally to employees – common practice in large personnel departments. Also companies market themselves to potential employees, so there are books on Personnel Marketing but not being familiar with them I am not willing to make a recommendation.

Warning: this book is difficult to get hold of, but useful!

Internal Marketing: Tools and Concepts for Customer-Focused Management, approx $35
Pervaiz K. Ahmed; Mohammed Rafiq;
Not a book I have read myself, but it gets good write-ups and is quoted frequently in other literature, as does any work by Grönroos. It was Grönroos who originally opened many people’s eyes at the American Marketing Association to the fact that to market yourself effectively to the outside world, you need to market yourself to your own colleagues.

Services Marketing: Valerie Zeithamel & Mary Bitner, approx €50
Standard book on the main concepts of services marketing, using the GAPS model as a framework.

Masaaki Kotabe and Kristiaan Helse: Global Marketing Management, approx €60
Good on international marketing (as well as sales options, partnerships, and more). Recommended only if you have a thorough understanding of marketing as the basics are not included. Excellent case studies, a real “work book” for students. Disappointing on aspects of advertising adaptation (best on that, though still a bit cursory: an old book, sadly out of print, by De Mooij & Keegan: Advertising Worldwide: Concepts, Theories and Practice of International, Multinational and Global Advertising)

Paul Walton: Bluffer’s Guide to Marketing (Bluffers Guides). Approx €30
If you hate books with lots of theory this provides an alternative angle on marketing from someone who saw the ins and outs of real business through the eyes of Unilever. Wonderful anecdotes, plus all the real theories in non-bullshit format. Also contains some useful shortcuts and cheats. Surprisingly it really does cover off many of the key aspects found in bigger and more expensive books.

If you want a similar book in German, this is recommended by another MBA: Grundlagen Marketing: Von der Vermarktungsidee zum Marketingkonzept. Only 7 euros!

Business to Business Marketing. A step-by-step guide. Ray Wright. Approx £30
Recommendations on good BtB books are hard to come by. The problem is that the theory is basically the same, only you have to go into a lot more detail on processes, buyer-seller interactions, customer relationship management, pricing and pitching, and long-term business issues relating to life-time cost, payback and investments. As a result many books are much too sector-specific. So if you want a book on Tier 2 automotive suppliers then fine, but I find it very difficult to pinpoint a good all-rounder in BtB.

Despite this, I spent many hours in London’s biggest book shop and having gone through them all, my end-of-major-headache recommendation is as above. This one is about as good as it gets. Sensible and practical, and opening up the same theories that apply to all areas of marketing (!) from a BtB angle.

Püttmann/Lippmann Produktmanagement für kleine und mittelständige Unternehmen
German. Difficult to find (no ISBN). If you’re in a business that was born and bred under family management, grew slowly like many German SMEs but is now a leader in its field (probably highly technical niche market) – and now you really need to think more professionally about marketing, then this is the book for you. Highly practical. How to create product management structures. The do’s and don’ts.