Marketing communication: principles and practice

MARKETER STANCES
Give them what profits them – we have no long-term business – we feel exploited
Give them what profits me – there is no long-term business – they feel exploited
Give them what profits us – a healthy prospect is brought about through negotiated
exchange.

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that communication is the process in which we create and maintain the
‘objective’ world.
Our assumption, given the nature of the biases of our Western 
mentalité
,
is that one first has a mind, and merely learns how to ‘express’ it in
words, or in communication; or that one has feelings, and then merely
learns how to ‘express’ them to others, or to comprehend others’
expression of ‘them’; or that one first somehow ‘knows’ something, and
then merely learns how to ‘communicate’ that knowledge to others.
This is not so. Minds and feelings and attitudes and thoughts are
literally communicated into existence; and then they have only that
existence that their communicability permits – enables or constrains.
It is not that we communicate the way we do because we are the way
we are; it is that we are the way we are because we communicate (or
not) the way we do.
(Thayer, 1997: 203)
Our communication attitude is largely determined by our assumptions about
human motivation and individual capabilities. We choose to include or
exclude other people in order to fulfil our own needs, seeking others as either
allies or enemies. The exchange basis for marketing should logically place
each customer (and other important stakeholders) within our social circle
rather than without. The commonly observed behaviours may be explained
in terms of a communication model in use (Table 4.1, note the similarity
with Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s managerial styles – see Figure 4.2 in this
volume, p. 75).