The marketing comm system

Company communicates with middlemen, consumers, & various publics.

Its middlemen communicate with their consumers & various publics.

Consumers engage in word-of-mouth communication with other consumers & publics.

Each group provides communication feedback to every other group.

Company

Middlemen

Consumers

Public

Marktg comms/promotion mix

5 major tools Advertising Sales promotion Direct marketing Public Relations & Publicity Personal selling

Advertising

Any paid form of nonpersonal presentation & promotion of ideas, goods & services by identified sponsor.

Public mode of communication Pervasiveness - possibility of repetition Amplifying expressiveness -

dramatisation Impersonality - monologue / no direct

interaction vs. Personal selling Can be used both for building long-term

image & for quick sales

Advertising

Reprints of adsBillboardsDisplay signsPoint-of-purchase displaysAudiovisual materialSymbols & logos

Print & broadcast adsPackaging-outerPackaging insertsMotion picturesBrochures & bookletsPosters & leafletsDirectories

Direct marketing

Use of mail, telephone, & other non-personal contact tools to communicate with or solicit response from specific customers & prospects (direct mail, catalogues, telemarketing, TV shopping, electronic marketing)

Non public - specific receiver for the message

customised to appeal to the addressed individual

Up-to-date, can be prepared very quickly for delivery to an individual

Sales PromotionShort-term incentives to encourage trial or purchase of a product or service (coupons, contests, premiums)

Communication effectiveness - gain attention

Incentive - incorporate concession, inducement or contribution of value to customer

Invitation - to engage in the transaction now

Create stronger & quicker response - boost sagging sales

Short-run

Sales Promotion

CouponingRebatesLow-interest financingEntertainmentTrade-in allowancesTrading stampsTie-ins

Contests, games, sweepstakes, lotteriesPremiums & giftsSamplingFairs & trade showsExhibitsDemonstrations

PR and Publicity

Variety of programs designed to promote and/or protect a company's image or its individual products

High credibility- news stories & features semm more credible than ads

Off guard - can reach many prospects who might avoid salespeople & ads

Dramatisation & expressiveness

Public Relations

PublicationsCommunity relationsLobbyingIdentity mediaCompany magazineEvents

Press kitsSpeechesSeminarsAnnual reportsCharitable donationsSponsorships

Personal SellingFace-to-face interaction with one or more prospective purchasers for purpose of making sales (Sales presentations, Sales meeting, Incentive programs, Samples, Fairs & trade shows )

Personal confrontation - alive, immediate & interactive relationship. Possibility for observation of customers and adjustments

Cultivation - wide range of relationships from matter-of-fact selling to deep friendship

Response - Buyer feels under some obligation for having listened to the sales talk

The Communication processFor effective message, sender’s encoding process

must mesh with receiver’s decoding process Use signs familiar to receiver. Sender’s field of experience must overlap with that of receiver.

Problems:1. Marketing communicators often come from one

social stratum (ex: advertising people) & want to communicate effectively with another stratum (ex: factory workers).

2. Considerable noise in environment – people are bombarded by several hundred commercial messages a day.

Reception Problems Target audience may not receive intended

message for any of 3 reasons. 1. Selective attention they will not notice all of the

stimuli. 2. Selective distortion they will twist the message to

hear what they want to hear --> set attitudes, leading to expectations about what they will hear or see. Will hear what fits into belief system. Often add things to message (amplification) & do not notice other things that are there (levelling).

3. Selective recall they will retain in permanent memory only a small fraction of the messages that reach them.

Overcoming reception problems The communicator must design the message to win attention in spite of surrounding distractions.

Selective attention need to grab attention thru ads with bold headlines promising something (ex: “How to Make a Million”, along with arresting illustration & little copy)

Selective distortion Need to strive for simplicity, clarity, interest, & repetition to get main points across to audience.Selective recall need to get message into receiver’s long-term memory. (Long-term memory holds all info one has ever processed)

Degree of persuasibility

According to audience traits High education and/or intelligence are thought to be

less persuasive… Women more persuasible, but depends on woman’s

acceptance of prescribed female role. Those who value traditional sex roles more influenceable

Persons who accept external standards to guide their behaviour & with weak self-concept more persuasible. Same for persons with low in self-confidence.

However, research by Cox & Bauer showed curvilinear relation between self-confidence & persuasibility. Those moderate in self-confidence the most persuasible.

! Look for traits that correlate with persuasibility & use them to guide message & media development.

Factors moderating effects of communication (Fiske & Hartley) Greater monopoly of communication source over recipient

greater change or effect in favour of source. Effects are greatest where message is in line with receiver’s

existing opinions, beliefs & dispositions. Commn can produce most effective shifts on unfamiliar,

lightly felt, peripheral issues, which do not lie at centre of recipient’s value system.

Communication more likely to be effective where source is believed to have expertise, high status, objectivity, or likability, but particularly where source has power & can be identified with.

The social context, group, or reference group will mediate the Commn & influence whether or not it is accepted.

Developing Effective Comms

Identify the target audience

Determine the communication objectives

Design the message

Select the communication channels

Allocate the total promotion budget

Decide on the promotion mix

Measure the promotion’s results

Manage and co-ordinate the total marketing communication process

Identifying the target audience Start with clear target audience in mind.

Ex: potential buyers of company’s products, current users, deciders, or influencers.

Ex: individuals, groups, particular publics, or general public. Target audience will critically influence

decisions on what to say, how to say it, where to say it, & to whom to say it.

Use Image Analysis Assess audience’s current image of company, its products, & its competitors. People’s attitude & actions toward an object are

highly conditioned by their beliefs about the object. Image= the set of beliefs, ideas, & impressions a person holds of an object.

Image analysis Familiarity scale (audience’s knowledge of the object)

Know very well

Know fair amount

Know a little bit

Heard of only

Never heard of

Favourability scale (how they feel toward it)Very favourable

Somewhat favourable

Indifferent Somewhat unfavou-rable

Very unfavou-rable

If most circle first 2 categories, then challenge = build greater awareness.

If most circle first 2 categories, then challenge = overcome a negative image problem.

Image analysis The 2 scales can be combined to assess nature of

the communication challenge.

B A

C D

Favourable attitude

Unfavourable attitude

Low familiarity

High familiarity

Image analysis A = most positive image most know it & like it.

work at maintaining good reputation & high awareness. B =less familiar, but those who know it like it.

gain attention of more people as those who know it consider it as good

C =viewed negatively by those who know it, but not too many people know it. find out why people dislike it & take steps to improve

performance while keeping low profile D =very poor image & everybody knows it!

should lower profile (avoid news), improve its quality, & then seek public attention again.

Semantic differential (Osgood, Suci & Tannenbaum)

Used to research specific content of imageDevelop a set of relevant dimensions: Researcher

asks people to identify dimensions they would use in thinking about the object.

Ex: "What things do you think of when you consider this product?" If someone suggests "quality", use bipolar adjective scale ("inferior" at one end & "superior" at the other). Can be rendered as a five - or seven-point scale.

Example

Community oriented

•••••••Research oriented

Large•••••••Small

Friendly service••• ••••Impersonal service

Modern facilities•••••••Dated facilities

Full-service hospital

•••••••Specialised hospital

Superior medical care

•••••••Inferior medical care

ABC

Semantic differential

Reduce the set of relevant dimensions: Number of dimensions should be kept small to avoid respondent fatigue. 3 types of scales can be used:

Evaluation scales (good-bad qualities) Potency scales (strong-weak qualitites) Activity scales (active-passive qualities)

Administer the instrument to a sample of respondents: Respondents are asked to rate one object at a time. The bipolar adjectives should be randomly arranged so as not to list all of the unfavourable adjectives on one side.

Semantic differential

Average the results: Represent each by a vertical "line of means" that summarises the average perception (see example where hospital A = seen as large, modern, friendly, & superior vs. C =seen as small, dated, impersonal, & inferior)

Check on the image variance: Since each image profile is a line of means, it does not reveal how variable the image actually is.

Did everyone see B as exactly as shown, or was there considerable variation? In the first case image is highly specific. Otherwise highly diffused as different groups see the organisation in different ways.

Making choices Propose desired image vs. current image

Suppose hospital C would like to view more favourably the quality of the hospital's medical care, facilities, friendliness decide which image gaps to close first.

Is it more desirable to improve hospital's friendliness (thru staff training programs) or quality of facilities (thru renovation)?

Review each image dimension in terms of questions: What contribution to the organisation's overall favourable image

would be made by closing that particular image gap to the extent shown?

What strategy (combination of real changes and communication changes) would help close the particular image gap?

What would be the cost of closing that image gap? How long would it take to close that image gap?

Image stickiness

Images are "sticky“ persist long after organisation has changed.

Image persistence is explained by the fact once people have a certain image of an object, they selectively perceive further data perceive what is consistent with their image.

An image enjoys a life of its own, especially when people do not have continuous or new firsthand experiences with the changed object.