Marketing communication: principles and practice

decide to not repeat our purchase
of this product, perhaps choosing
one from another supplier
There are implications here too for the design of marketing communication
systems and activities, as well as performance criteria for both marketing
and communication management.
MINDFULNESS
The personal perspective on people communicating for marketing and
consumption purposes can be thought of as the pursuit of healthy
communicator interactions that lead to mutual need satisfaction through
the exchange of valued products, etc. 
Psychologist Edith Langer’s concept of ‘mindfulness’ (Langer, 1989)
suggests that dysfunctional behaviour is based on unnecessarily limiting
thought processes. Mindful thinking requires that the communicator:
• creates new categories for new information about the perceived world,
rather than trying to force it to fit existing categories
• is open to the new information which is added to his/her expanding, and
increasingly differentiated, information base
• is aware that there is usually more than one perspective on a situation, i.e.
is sensitive to context
• pays attention to the process before its outcomes
Langer has a view on rationality and the connection between cognition and
perception:
In dealing with the world rationally, we hold it constant, by means of
categories formed in the past. Through intuition, on the other hand,
we grasp the world as a whole, in flux.
(Langer, 1989: 123)
This has interesting implications for marketing as a communication system,
as we saw in chapter two. Marketing simply cannot be merely a one-way
informing technology – unless we want to be responsible for an unhealthy
society. We deal with ethical issues in chapter seventeen. 
C O N S U M E R B E H A V I O U R A N D C O M M U N I C A T I O N
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