Marketing communication: principles and practice

chapter 
five
MANAGING WITH
STAKEHOLDERS IN
MIND
LEARNING POINTS
Careful study of this chapter will help you to:
• take a broadened view of the role of marketing communication in
contemporary management
• consider the whole system of relationships that provides the context for
exchange and communicative behaviour for marketing purposes
• examine the stakes that can be affected by marketing actions

---

Other social commentators have suggested that marketing communication
can be dialogical interaction to find a distinct and ‘visible’ value-creating
‘voice’ among stakeholders. Values are offered in a participative process of
co-constructing meaning, identity, and knowledge.
The societal marketing movement has sought to satisfy consumers and
generate profits while also encompassing the interests of society. This requires
marketing managers to widen their view of roles and responsibilities beyond
their engagement with the particular group of customers that they serve. 
THE MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
The marketing environment is a complex set of interacting people, processes,
situations, and technologies, including the marketing corporation, that can
significantly impact upon the nature and performance of the business
enterprise. Typically, this system is examined in political, economic, social,
and technical terms when managing marketing.
We can think of the total environment as a system comprising four sub-
systems of ascending levels of complexity and distance or abstraction from
the marketer. Rather like a set of Russian dolls, the corporation operates
within markets, which are themselves within a stakeholder network, which
is within the social network (Figure 5.1).
The micro-environment is the corporation and its close markets, whereas
we may term the wider environment within which marketers operate as the
macro-environment. Arguably, the micro-environment is controllable in
managing marketing, but the macro-environment has a greater influence on
the ability of the corporate members to fulfil their ambitions than they can
exert on the more distant (in a number of terms) elements of the environment.