Marketing communication: principles and practice

The necessary reconception of communication
Buttle’s (1995) review of the treatment of marketing communications
marketing textbooks showed that very few marketing specialists have
attempted to produce comprehensive, integrative theory for marketing
communication at both the interpersonal and mediated levels. He found that
while all 101 texts surveyed did not try to provide some theoretical basis for
the development of managerial strategies, many did so only implicitly and
did not explicitly recognize the theoretical grounds of their discussion. Buttle
shows that the work of Wilbur Schramm (first published in 1948) has been
by far the most widely adopted in promoting a set of communication practices
designed to produce cognitive, affective or behavioural outcomes among a
specified internal or external target audience. 
Schramm’s work remains disproportionately influential and is still the main
basis of the prevailing orthodoxy in the consideration of the communication
aspects of marketing. Although Schramm did update his thinking (in 1971)
A C O M M U N I C A T I O N C O N C E P T
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BOX 2.1SIMPLISTIC MODELS OF THE ROLE OF
COMMUNICATION
‘I received a communication’
‘She is our Communications Manager’
‘Did they get our message?’
‘My perception of the company is that they are successful’
‘He perceived a change of emphasis’

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to spell the demise of the earlier ‘bullet theory of communication’, he still
retained the encoder–message–decoder model, and this has become firmly
entrenched in marketing texts. In fairness, Schramm’s thinking did shift to
communication as ‘a relationship, an act of sharing, rather than something
which someone does to someone else’ (1971: 8). This was a considerable
development from the earlier view that communication was a ‘magic bullet’
(Klapper’s [1960] term ‘hypodermic effect’ also become popular in mass
communication studies) that ‘transferred ideas or feelings or knowledge or
motivations from one mind to another’ (1971: 8). At last, communication
was seen as the study of people in relationship. Indeed, Schramm claimed
that all communication necessarily functions within a broader framework of
social relations: the physical/spatial relationship between sender and receiver;
the situational context; role expectations; and social norms. Yet, this
conclusion and essential orientation has not yet percolated into marketing
texts. Another problem is that some texts have taken an interpersonal or
mediated communication perspective, thus failing to cope with the diversity
of activities that fall within the field of marketing communication. 
Buttle (1995) concludes from his meta-analysis that marketing textbooks
share, because of the common ancestry for their theories of communication,
four themes and assumptions (Table 2.1).
Buttle highlights the problem that the very themes and assumptions upon
which marketing and marketing communication textbooks are designed (he
terms this ‘normal marketing communication theory’) have been questioned
by contemporary communication theorists. It seems that these fields do not
readily communicate! The wider communication literature can better deal
with the weaknesses and omissions of popular (textbook version of) marketing
communication theory. What resides in most textbooks is outdated, ill-
informed, and in need of revision. Perhaps marketing communication texts
should be (at least) co-authored by a communication and/or culture scholar
(perhaps an anthropologist untainted by managerialistic thinking?). 
Ray (1982) treats marketing as strategic communication. DeLozier’s
(1976) characterization of marketing communication is an example of this
outmoded thinking that is still prevalent:
The process of presenting an integrated set of stimuli to a market with
the intent of evoking a desired set of responses within that market set
and setting up channels to receive, interpret and act upon messages
from the market for the purposes of modifying present company
messages and identifying new communication opportunities.
(DeLozier, 1976: 168)
In fairness, DeLozier is one of the few clearly to identify both modes 
of communication: impression and expression. However, his definition of
communication is limiting because:
• it does not recognize that meaning and interpretation of messages are
framed in differing environments and widely differing fields of experience
• it says nothing about symbolism at product and producer levels