Marketing communication: principles and practice

P R E FA C E
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management from marketing communication as has been the tradition
(especially in US textbooks), a holistic communication management
approach is constructed. Care is taken to present marketing as a social process
and not merely a management technology. Rather than treating marketing
communication at an international level as a special case, all marketing com-
munication is treated as intercultural. This integrates consumption,
communication, culture, marketing, and management.
Thus, a contemporary approach to managing communication for
marketing purposes is presented that deals with the management of legitimate
commercial and social communicative acts of corporate and private actors,
and does not presume intentions and effects centred on consumption that
can be unsustainable or unethical. This critical view of marketing locates this
particular communication system as organized dialogical communication
acts in a dynamic network of stakeholder relationships.
This textbook is the first written by a UK scholar that transcends the
constraining dogma of orthodox marketing discipline to integrate a demo-
cratic managerial perspective with contemporary communication theory and
marketing theory. Academic rigour has been applied in setting out key
principles, and these are connected to relevant practices covering issues of
significance to SMEs (Small and medium enterprises), the public sector,
service providers, and MNEs (Multi-national enterprises) – i.e. the total
intercultural marketing system.
The book forwards the entire marketing mix as communicative – and
marketing as a particular set of communication behaviours operated in a
particular context for a particular purpose. Communication theory is
provided as a firm basis for a managerial framework, and this is contemporary,
incorporating an exchange relationship perspective to avoid the simplistic
‘informing’ notion of communicating.
Marketing communication is related to other communication behaviours
required in business enterprise. Marketing is seen as an algorithm (or way
of working) for exploiting opportunities to further the productive adoption
and diffusion of ideas in society.
I wish to acknowledge the encouragement of Michelle Gallagher
(Routledge), Dr Jim Blythe, and an anonymous second reviewer, in my
pursuit of a (somewhat intentionally) radical review of the orthodoxy. Thank
you for allowing me a voice in pushing forward the boundary. 
Dr Richard Varey
University of Salford, UK
January 2001