Marketing communication: principles and practice

MARKETING COMMUNICATION OBJECTIVES
What should the marketing manager pay attention to when facing the
communicative needs of the business? Most textbooks on marketing
communication treat the field as if only promotional message broadcasting
and related activities are communicative or necessary and relevant.
Take, for example, the hierarchy of effects (outlined in chapter three). This
and similar models can usefully be applied to explain how advertising may
work. Thus a potential customer may, through marketing activities, be
C O M M U N I C A T I O N I D E O L O G Y
82
Supplier’s
Value Star
Own Value Star
Customer’s
Value Star
Generative
Processes
Representative
Processes
Productive
Processes
Competitors
Other Suppliers
Other
Customers
Supplier’s
Suppliers
Partners
Other
Suppliers
Customer’s
Customers
Other Customers
Figure 4.7
The network as a knowledge-creating value star
Source
: Based on Wikström and Normann, 1994

---

encouraged to mentally pass through a series of steps from ignorance to
purchase, as each stage is fulfilled before passing on to the next. It is not
helpful, however, to apply such thinking to try to explain or predict how a
person will behave in response to communication activity in other situations.
How, for example, can such a model explain communication behaviour that
is initiated by the consumer? We need to look at consumption behaviour
from the consumer’s point of view.
A scale of degree of connectedness between two or more people is shown
in Figure 4.8. Of course, this applies both ways in a relationship. Perhaps,
C O M M U N I C A T I O N I D E O L O G Y