Marketing communication: principles and practice

RATIONALE FOR THE BOOK
The ‘easy’ way to sell a textbook is to reproduce the success formula of those
that have gone before. If Professor Gummesson is right, this does a disservice
to students who are asked to have faith that the so-called experts are telling
the whole and true story. At the very least, such cultural products as textbooks
should be promoted honestly.
In response to Gummesson’s polemical critique of marketing textbooks,
and in anticipation of a similar criticism of marketing communication
textbooks from Professor Buttle (see chapter two), this book has been
designed with the following principles:
• closer to reality by moving beyond simplistic stimulus–response models
of communication
• attempt to integrate, not merely compile fragmented knowledge
• avoid taking the 4Ps (product, price, place, promotion) as a general theory
of marketing
• avoid equating marketing communication only or mostly with mass
communication
• incorporate quality management knowledge
• integrate around concepts of relationships, networks, and interaction
• examine a social constructionist approach as an alternative approach to
explaining marketing and consumer behaviour
• consider marketing communication processes to be discursive, not merely
expressive
• directly consider a communication mix to fully recognize marketing as a
social process, rather than fragment our thinking to a promotion mix within
a marketing mix
Marketing communication is thus a management process that enables and
facilitates a dialogue among consumers (and in certain cases other
stakeholders).
The key points of each chapter are highlighted in the ‘What Do You Think?’
section with a set of questions that catalyse reflection on the preceding
I N T R O D U C T I O N
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discussion, and build a link into the subsequent chapter. These questions
can also be the departure point for further reading and thinking.
‘Comment’ sections are interspersed with the text to provide links into
day-to-day experiences that you may have had yourself, or that can be brought
forward from other people’s experiences. These illustrate or challenge the
point of view presented and can be used as the basis of class discussion. 
FURTHER READING
Blythe, J. (2000) 
Marketing Communications
, London: Prentice-Hall.
Covey, S. R. (1989) 
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character
Ethic
, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Engel, J. F., Warshaw, M. R. and Kinnear, T. C. (1994) 
Promotional Strategy:
Managing the Marketing Communication Process
, 8th edn, Burr Ridge, IL: Irwin.
Fang, I. (1997) 
A History of Mass Communication: Six Information Revolutions
, Boston,
MA: Focal Press.
Levinson, P. (1997) 
The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information
Revolution
, London: Routledge.
Pine, B. J., Peppers, D. and Rogers, M. (1995) ‘Do you want to keep your customers
forever?’, 
Harvard Business Review
, March–April: 103–14.