Marketing communication: principles and practice

THE MARKETING TASK
The term ‘marketing’ is not a modern invention, it has been in use in the
English language for some considerable time. 
Webster’s Dictionary
of 1880
gave a meaning as ‘the act of purchasing in a market’. Interestingly, this is
consistent with the idea that both producer and consumer can be a marketer! 
I N T R O D U C T I O N
2
Business
needs
Communication
needs
Communication
objectives
Theories to explain
and guide judgement
and decision-making
Marketing
needs
Figure 1.1
What to study for marketing communication management

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Profit is made from people, not products
(Anon)
The idea of ‘marketing’ first appeared in the economics literature at the end
of the nineteenth century and was developed as ‘merchandising and selling’
in the scientific management of Frederick Winslow Taylor (Taylor, 1929).
The concept became widely applied in the middle of the twentieth century.
Promotional communication gained emphasis with the emergence, initially
in the USA, of national product brands with widespread distribution.
In 1931 the American Association of Marketing and Advertising Professors
issued an official definition:
all
the business activities implicated in the flow of goods and service
from producer to consumer, with the sole exception of activities that
imply a change of form.
(Mattelart, 1996: 292, emphasis added)
This offers a historical insight that can be of great help to us in better under-
standing the communicative role of marketing. Marketing – as a managerial
discipline for organizing demand and supply – was preceded by advertising
by at least 100 years (see chapter thirteen for a brief historical account). 
The management practice of marketing has emerged as a coordinating
function (discipline) that acts as a bridge between the needs of the provider
(to stay in business and to prosper), and the needs of buyers and consumers
(for access to desirable value-for-money products), and other stakeholders
in a society that has normative, expressive, cognitive, as well as instrumental
institutions (see Figure 1.2).