Marketing communication: principles and practice

COMMUNICATION AS A MODE OF EXCHANGE
In a sense, marketing communication is no different to other forms of human
communication and arises between people who communicate in their own
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Tells
The manager makes a decision and informs others
Sells
The manager makes the decision and explains it to others to get
their cooperation
Tests
The manager presents ideas and invites questions
Suggests
The manager presents a tentative decision, subject to change
Consults
The manager presents a problem, listens to suggestions, then
makes a decision
Shares
The manager defines limits and asks others to make the decision,
with the leader as an equal member
Delegates
The manager allows others to operate within defined limits
Figure 4.2
Management styles
Source
: Based on Tannenbaum and Schmidt, [1958] 1973

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right and on behalf of an employer. Decisions about how to communicate
are driven by assumptions about what motivates people to behave in certain
ways and how to satisfy their own needs and those of the corporation.
How do we get what we want? Locus of control refers to beliefs about our
own ability to determine what happens to us. An external locus of control
places the origin of events and situations outside our own control – they just
happen to us. An internal locus of control places the responsibility for control
with us. 
A competitive basis for accomplishment and benefit acquisition leads to a
belief that winning is necessary, and that this may be justifiably at the expense
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Violence
Erodes trust and evokes a response to contain it and to abate it, but has no
specific communicative purpose 
Threat
The conditional ‘do it or else’ – involves trust only to the extent that the
threatened party needs to believe both that the threatener can and will carry
out a threat unless the condition is fulfilled and that to fulfil the condition will
avert the threat
Bargain
Involves a greater shared assumption – each party has to be confident that
the other regards the situation as a bargain – the attempt to negotiate an
exchange on terms acceptable to all the parties – each must believe that the
other parties can and will carry out their undertakings if agreement is
reached – each is free to make not merely an acceptable bargain but the
best they can, or to withdraw from the negotiation
Information
The receiver must not only trust the giver’s competence and reliability, they
must also be assured that the giver’s appreciative system corresponds
sufficiently with their own to ensure that what is received fits the receiver’s
needs. Even if it does, it will, to some extent, alter the setting of their
appreciative system
Persuasion
The giver actively seeks to change the way in which the other perceives
some situation and thus to change the setting of their appreciative system
more radically