Marketing to South African Consumers open textbook launch

Students doing the first-year Marketing course at the University of Cape Town (UCT) will be using the institutionally published Marketing to South African Consumers open textbook as their primary text this year.

The recently launched open textbook was developed by Editors James Lappeman and Paul Egan of the UCT Liberty Institute for Strategic Marketing, along with co-Editors Gillian Rightford and Thabang Ramogase, with the help of a grant received from the DOT4D project. 

The Marketing to South African Consumers textbook provides core introductory marketing theory underpinned by a contemporary and localised South African perspective. Written by academics, practitioners and students, the textbook is focused on making local context a central reference rather than a peripheral addition. As such, the work forms part of the DOT4D research and implementation agenda, which is exploring the use of open textbooks to promote curriculum transformation and parity of participation in the creation of teaching and learning materials.

Openly available online under a Creative Commons licence, the Marketing to South African Consumers textbook can be freely downloaded and distributed, both within and beyond UCT. Co-published by the UCT Liberty Institute of Strategic Marketing and UCT Libraries, with publishing support provided by the DOT4D project, the work also forms part of an pilot initiative exploring institutional partnerships for open textbook production and publishing at UCT.

The 21 chapters, produced by a cohort of 22 authors and peer reviewed by 23 industry experts, are available to access and download from the UCT Libraries open access Continental Platform.