Marketing communication: principles and practice

C O M M U N I C A T I O N I D E O L O G Y
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Figure 4.1
Alternative underlying theories of communicating
Source
: Based on Grossberg 
et al
., 1998
Exploitation act
One-way influence
Somebody else’s propaganda is conveyed
• One party does something to the other
• The ‘communicator’ takes the initiative
• The effect is exclusively on the audience
[Morally asymmetrical, alienated]
Transactional process
Each person expects to give and take
equally
• A bargain is involved
• Not all exchanges are exactly equitable
• Inequities can favour either person
• People select what they attend to
• People evaluate credibility

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(if it were mostly selling, it would be called ‘selling’). The overall task is to
create and retain customers by defining, producing, and delivering value.
This is a social (joint) task, since people in the consumer role will adopt the
customer role with a particular supplier only so long as they believe that there
is real benefit from the instrumental relationship. As consumers, we do not
take kindly to impositions of what is right and good for us – we assume the
right to define what is good value in satisfying our needs.
We should, perhaps, be surprised that marketing thinking and practice has
not more generally adopted the participatory conception of communication
set out in chapter two. Marketing has long been seen as conceptually founded
on exchange, while assertive behaviour is premised on the possibility and
desirability of joint action to satisfy the needs and wants of both parties. We
will now examine the implications of these various orientations and their
associated attitudes. 
Vickers (1984) distinguished seven overlapping and coexisting ascending
levels of trust and shared appreciation (Figure 4.3).
Arguably, much marketing practice is superficial, even trivial. Although
military metaphors and analogies still prevail in some quarters, behaviours
are neither truly aggressive nor truly cooperative. Vickers would place much
marketing communication at the information and persuasion levels in Figure
4.3. It would appear that the marketing concept is not really the central 
focus of much marketing behaviour. Is that behaviour then legitimate as
marketing?