Marketing communication: principles and practice

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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BOX 3.2
INITIATORS, APPREHENDERS, AND APPRECIATION
We must abandon the notion of senders and receivers because, as we will see
throughout this book, the transmission or transportation model of human
communication is outmoded.
The initiator begins the process of communicating with an intention, while the
apprehender is drawn into a joint system of communication when they try to interpret
the other person’s intention.

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construct, partly subjective, largely intersubjective (i.e. based on a shared
subjective judgement), constantly challenged or confirmed by experience.
Only if the appreciative mind classifies the situation as changeable or in
need of preservation, does the person devise possible responses and evaluates
them with criteria determined by their other concerns. Thus ‘problems’ are
discerned and ‘solutions’ sought. Action may or may not follow.
This perspective provides a simple and yet profound way of understanding
what has to happen for a communication system to function. It has rarely
been applied in the management of marketing communication. Are you
willing to develop your thinking in this way?
DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS
When the compact disc was introduced in 1983 in Europe, how did so many
people become committed to buying and using it? We had no prior experience
of this product. Very few of us woke up screaming one night, in search of a
life-enhancing 12 cm shiny flat plastic disc with a hole in the middle. But
today, almost every household has a player and numerous discs. Many have
a Walkman version and another in their car. Almost all PC software is now
supplied on a disk, so many of us see a CD-ROM drive as essential equipment.
How did this come about? Through the best efforts of certain professional
marketers! But how exactly?
Innovation in a market may be through behaviour change or technology
change. Products may be modified (through varying degrees of technological
change), or novel introductions made (requiring new purchase and usage
behaviours). The CD was a technology change. Soon they may become
obsolete as we can download MP3 and other format music files directly from
the Internet. We will then be able to choose whether to visit the downtown
record shop in the rain so as to thumb through disorganized CDs before
joining a queue of coughing people to pay too much for them! 
Once again, in trying to explain the process by which a new product spreads
through a market through purchase by adopters, we have a choice of models.
Figure 3.10 summarizes four such models.
The process has a number of stages identified, each with certain factors
that are of importance to planning marketing communication. Note how
similar these process models are to the decision-making process model(s)
discussed earlier in this chapter. As we move through these stages, we tend
to use different media as means of finding data and for taking action. Rogers
(1981(with Kincaid), 1983, 1986) gives a sound account of this process in
terms of communication.
Over time the process of aggregate adoption is termed ‘diffusion’. Rogers
explains diffusion as the process by which an innovation is communicated
over a period of time among members of a social system. In terms of
segmentation, five categories of adopter have been defined:
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