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reflecting the rampant optimism characterizing much new product business analysis, to assume that products will go on generating sales in perpetuity." He proceeds to point out that one of the major reasons new products fail is that they are developed on the basis of overly optimistic estimates and that this optimism is known by those involved at the time the estimates are made. Throughout this book, the reviewer wishes that instead of remaining objective and somewhat academic, the author had included more good and bad "real world" examples and more of his own private insights. On the occasions when he does do so, Webster makes his most important contributions. This book was address d to an audience of managers: people who use rules of thumb and intuitive judgments rather than academic theories and textbook jargon. Anyone who defines his role in that way will find Marketing for Managers worthwhile reading, either as an introduction to marketing or as a refresher course.

Quantitative allocation models, such as linear programming models, are well suited for planning and controlling sales office operations in the insurance industry. This article surveys some of the problems of branch management and then outlines the structure and results of a programming model developed for the branches of a mutual liability company. The conclusion reports the results obtained, both expected and unexpected. Home office planning for sales growth in the insurance industry is both a simple and a difficult matter. It is simple in that non-renewed policies, or sales losses, oftentimes can be predicted quite accurately. It is difficult because suitably qualified new policyholders must be found to offset those sales losses and produce sales growth. Toward that end, a company may use market research to evaluate new sales territories, sales contests to motivate its local representatives, loss experience records to identify new customer types, and so on. Essentially, the alternatives for securing additional sales revenue are numerous and the probable efficacy of the alternatives may well be difficult to predict. Notwithstanding the complexities of sales planning, this article argues that effective, profitable management science models for sales planning are feasible for the insurance industry. The vehicle for Robert M. Olsen, Ph.D., was Assistant Professor in the School of Business at the University of Kansas when this paper was written. He is now Associate Professor of Marketing in the School of Business Administration and Economics, California State College at Fullerton. Dr. Olsen, whose principal research interest is in applying quantitative techniques to problems in insurance marketing, is currently working on a study of policy cancellations made for the purpose of switching coverage to a competing company. This paper was presented at the A.R.I.A. 1969 Annual Meeting. this argument is a survey of the results of one type of model-known as a block-diagonal programming model '-for the field sales operations of a single-line mutual company in the liability insurance industry. The model itself, however, can be generalized to multiple-line companies or companies represented by independent agents. The emphases of this article are on the problem situation studied and the model's general structure because the author's purpose is to argue for modeling as a general approach to sales planning. Some attention will be given to the construction of the model itself, but the model's description will by no means be