Marketing communication: principles and practice

representative marketing communication
activities include: adver-
tising, pricing, branding, various sales promotion inducements
•
productive marketing communication
activities include: manufac-
turing, servicing, distributing, delivering, tailoring, configuring
It seems that, often, the interaction of mix elements is a problem, producing
undesirable effects:
Too often a company will imply one thing about its product in its mass-
media ads and contradict it at point of sale, deny it with its direct-selling
tactics, and muddle it with its product service policy . . . In short, the
communications job which advertising and good product design so
laboriously and expensively undertook is scuttled by the customer’s
actual experience with the many other communications the company
send out. The overall message that will finally have got through to the
customer will be self-contradictory and confusing instead of self-
reinforcing and reassuring.
(Levitt, 1962)
S O C I A L C O M M U N I C A T O R
132
Table 7.3
(
continued
)
Promotion
Description
Examples
Impersonal communication Inducement to immediate 
Advertising, competitions, 
action by strengthening the 
samples, exhibitions, all 
mass communication of the 
efforts to generate 
basic offering for a short 
favourable media coverage
period
Personal communication
Inducement to immediate 
Salesforce contests, 
action by strengthening the 
temporary demonstrations
personal communication of 
the basic offering for a short 
period
Source
: Based on van Waterschoot and Van den Bulte (1992)

---

When unintended meanings arise in the minds of consumers and purchasers,
apparent contradictions will undermine the credibility (and thus believability)
of marketing communication activities. Levitt called this tendency for
business activities to shift away from the intended as centrifugal marketing.
When specific objectives are accomplished with specific customers,
centripetal marketing is practised. This requires coordination of intended
and unintended communication to ensure consistency and coherence in
positioning and actions. 
The primary job of the marketing manager is to manage the attraction,
satisfaction, and retention of those customers whose exchanges contribute to
the profits of the business. This requires attention to management practices,
marketing activities and associated means, and the key relationships within
which communication is the 
mode
of management and marketing. Thus we
can think of the marketing mix elements as communicators. Table 7.4 outlines
the communicative effect from the consumer/buyer perspective and highlights
the manager’s intention. By thinking of the marketing mix as a system of
communication, we emphasize the interlocking nature of the various aspects
of tangibles and intangibles that ‘say something’ to consumers/buyers. So,
each marketing mix decision should be considered to be a problem of
communicating with consumers so that a satisfying exchange will arise.
As Table 7.5 suggests, the successful marketing communication manage-
ment programme will enable and facilitate the economical and convenient
meeting of customer and provider needs.
One important problem that faces the marketing manager is that of
matching the marketing mix to the position of the provider and customer –
all marketing management decisions must consider the provider–customer
relationship and not either the provider position or the customer position in
isolation. Maile and Kizilbash (1977) examined the ability of marketing
communication activities to persuade consumers. Persuasive communicative
acts are attempts to influence buyer actions. These marketing communication
interventions feature some degree of discrepancy or attitude gap. A provider
of goods and services expresses a position on an issue with rational or
emotional argumentation. Their credibility as a provider stems from how
believable their messages are in terms of the expected veracity. Newly
established unknown providers have low credibility, while prominent, long-
established providers have high credibility. An attitude gap exists when there
is a discrepancy between the consumer’s initial attitude and that advocated
by the provider. The buyer’s self-esteem is their sense of their own value
and worth.
Research has shown that low-credibility providers can maximize their profit
by trading with low-esteem buyers, while high-credibility providers should
trade with high-self-esteem buyers. Persuasiveness increases with credibility.
The marketing manager wishes to know which buyers to make offers to and
how much to deviate from traditional forms of product, distribution, price,
and promotion. 
The degree of deviation of the offer from the expectation of the buyer will
affect the degree of persuasiveness. Low-esteem buyers should be offered