Integrated Marketing Communications Research Articles

The Role of Integrated Marketing Communications in Enhancement of SMEs Growth in South Africa

The intention of this paper is to discover and empirically test the knowledge gap exist with regard to the role that integrated marketing communication (IMC) plays in the enhancement of SMEs growth. A quantitative approach is followed in this paper, with a questionnaire as the research instrument and questionnaire items established through a literature review. A sample of 374 SMEs owners/managers agreed to complete the questionnaire. In order to give a descriptive overview of variables relevant to the objectives of the study, a Cronbach test was performed. Certain ability in marketing communication by SMEs was evident from the sample. However, very few marketing communication tools are fully applied in order to enhance SMEs growth. A significant starting point, in attaching importance to the role of IMC enhancement of SMEs growth, is constituted by this paper’s sample, even though it is restrictively small. Practitioners may, from this paper, understand where intervention guidelines are needed, in order to improve an IMC plan needed for SMEs. Compared to previous research done on large company practices, this paper represents an original trial to empirically apply the marketing communication approach within SMEs.

An Effort to Improve the Effectiveness of Integrated Marketing Communication on Anticorruption Campaign

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is often used as a promotional activity of brands, products or ideas. In Indonesia, Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (Corruption Eradication Commission) has been using IMC to disseminate anticorruption values to society in purpose to reduce and eliminate corruption acts in Indonesia. To improve the effectiveness of IMC on anticorruption campaign, particularly to the youth, this study aims to measure students’s attitude towards anticorruption values. It is also to describe the exposure of the agency’s IMC programs on anticorruption campaign to students, and to discuss the relationship between the two variables: anticorruption campaign exposure and students’s attitude towards anticorruption values. Quantitative approach is used by conducting a survey to Bina Nusantara University students. Descriptive and correlation analysis are used to analyze the data. It is found that students fairly accept the anticorruption values, although there is still lack of exposure to them on the IMC programs. The correlation analysis shows no significant relationship between the two variables. However, the students can accept the importance of anticorruption values which this fact can support the work of the initiator in doing their future campaign. Further research is suggested to conduct it in wider scope.

The Impact of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Towards the Occupancy Rate of Hotels in West Java (IMC in Practice)

This research aims to know, to analyze and to inform the impact of IMC or the performance of the promotion mix of occupancy rate of hotels in West Java. The research can be summed up as follows: implementation of IMC done by hotels in West Java, affects OR at 18,9%. If observe each element of the IMC turned out that the elements of marketing communication through the exhibition has the dominant influence towards the OR at 0,730 and followed by the Public Relation at 0,347, this happens because the majority of hotels in West Java still tend to use simple promotional approach, only a small portion use the advertising via on-line. The hotel room occupancy rates in West Java in the last five years experienced the rise and down but in general the average level of OR still below 50% (fifty percent), both for the quality rated and non rated hotels. The study method used was descriptive and verificative method with type a descriptive survey and research explanatory survey with total sample of 803 people.

IMC in an emerging economy: the Chinese perspective

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) planning and implementation vary greatly by market and country. This study, based on the survey data compiled from 135 Chinese marketing executives, focuses on IMC in China's emerging economy, with the goal of providing an outlook of IMC's current development in China while uncovering factors in the country's socioeconomic and business infrastructures that may cause IMC to deviate from the traditional Western model. The study also explores Chinese responses to the rising proliferation of digital media and its implications for IMC development.The study concludes that despite uneven business development and a current lack of training in IMC-related skills, IMC appears to be the inevitable course or the future of Chinese marketing communications. Due to factors unique to the Chinese business landscape, such as government-owned business structures, political nuances in marketing channel relationships, and uneven development of consumer culture, IMC in China will likely evolve differently than in the US. Survey respondents reveal that IMC is progressing much faster in local, privately owned firms than in their state-owned counterparts. The rise of digital media will also disrupt traditional media outlets, providing challenges to the Chinese marketer.

A Case Study of Teaching Integrated Marketing Communication Using an Innovative Group Internship Project

In recent years, many college campuses have moved to implement experiential learning projects in many disciplines. It is generally accepted that experiential learning projects or client projects (we will be using these two terms interchangeably throughout the paper) help students to communicate effectively, perform well in teams, solve problems, and acquire functional knowledge. We describe our experience of implementing an innovative experiential learning project that required students to form a company, and plan and execute an integrated marketing communication (IMC) plan for a real-life company on a tight budget. Finally, we compare the student assessment for this group internship project with traditional client projects that typically do not involve a full-fledged execution of an IMC plan.

Discovering prominent themes in integrated marketing communication research from 1991 to 2012: a co-word analytic approach

This paper analyses integrated marketing communications (IMC) research from its inception in 1991, up to 2012 (included). A bibliometric approach has been applied for the first time to detect and visualize conceptual sub-domains and identify the most salient themes within IMC research via combining co-word analysis and science mapping. The quantitative analysis of a corpus of IMC manuscripts contributes to complement the previous qualitative reviews by using the Wakita and Tsurumi agglomeration algorithm and two-dimensional graphs. The results enable the authors to provide a structure for the conceptual sub-domains, classification of the themes showing internal associations into four groups, and identification of the main research trends. This paper seeks to respond to the calls for greater theoretical clarification of the IMC discipline providing a snapshot of the thematic evolution of IMC research over time enabling researchers to better understand the current state of the art and suggesting future research directions.

The necessity to adjust traditional integrated marketing communications tools and techniques to new global trends

The concept of integrated marketing communications is an essential part of the overall strategic planning of business entities and its significance for proper positioning, gaining and maintaining competitive advantage, makes it one of the most important concepts. These are a set of strategic decisions that can not be made separately but must take into account the interdependence of key elements of the marketing mix and the criteria for the selection of tools and techniques of mass and direct communication in order to achieve a synergy effect and result in a score greater than the sum of individual factors. Although necessary, the traditional concept of integrated marketing communications materialized in the tools and techniques of mass and direct communication due to changed business conditions slowly loses out on both efficiency and effectiveness. The emergence of new concepts is the result of the functioning of global trends and aspirations of economic entities to achieve maintain or improve their competitive position and their position in the minds of consumers while dealing with changing business conditions.

Integrated Marketing Communication Capability and Brand Performance

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm this research investigates how an integrated marketing communication (IMC) capability drives a brand's financial performance through influencing the effectiveness of communication campaigns and the brand's market-based performance. The results illustrate that an IMC capability has a significant direct effect on campaign effectiveness and significant indirect effect on a brand's market-based performance and financial performance. The study highlights the role of IMC as a key firm-specific capability with significant impact on performance outcomes. Competitively, the more the firm is able to build its distinctive IMC capability, the greater its campaign effectiveness, which in turn leads to superior brand market-based and financial performance.

Dimensions of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) and Their Impact in Creating Brand Equity in the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) Industry in Coimbatore City

Brand Equity plays a major role in the highly competitive Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) industry in India. There are a variety of factors which affect the brand equity that a company commands in the market. Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is an emerging concept in marketing wherein all the major promotional activities are used to create a synergic output and send across a clear and consistent message to the customers. This study aims to find out the impact of five major tools of IMC namely Advertising, Word of Mouth, Sales Promotion, Event Sponsorships and Public Relations which are most applicable in the QSR industry on the four major dimensions namely Brand Awareness, Brand Association, Perceived Quality and Brand Loyalty which aid in creating Brand Equity.
 The study was conducted by collecting data from a sample and analyzing the data using statistical tools to find any relationships between the above mentioned variables. The findings suggest that marketers should focus on building favorable opinion about the brand amongst customers and take care regarding the news published about the brand since it affects brand image. Moreover, it was also found out that making people aware about the brand and the perceived quality about the brand play the major role in creating brand equity more than other factors.

The Changing Concept of Advertising and Promotional Technology

The study focuses on the various dimensions of advertising and promotional technologies in marketing. The concept of integrated marketing communications that provides an overview for advertising and promotion and its role in modern marketing were discussed along with the concept of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) and the factors that have influenced the growth and the roles advertising play in the overall marketing programmes of the intellectual outcomes for creative minds. Each element in the promotional mix, was also examined. The paper attempt to provide a model framework for developing IMC programme in a developing economy for effective distribution of creative works.

IMPLEMENTASI INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION (IMC) PADA MEDIA CETAK HARIAN RIAU POS DALAM MEMPERTAHANKAN PELANGGAN

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is a development process and impelentationof variety persuasive communication program to customer and customer to be ongoing. Theimportant of implementation IMC at the corporate is realizing by daily newspaper Riau Pos.Because of that the aims of this research are to analysis implementation of IMC at Riau Posdaily to keep their customers and to identification of barriers. Methode of this research isdescriptive qualitative with eight informans. The result of this research defined aktivities ofadvertising, direct marketing, sponsorship, merchandising, public relation and websites, thataim to keep the customers. Implementation of IMC at Riau Pos have two barriers, problem ofhuman resources and technical matter at printing process. Keywords : Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC), daily newspaper, keep thecustomers

A philosophical investigation of the transition from integrated marketing communications to metamodern meaning co-creation

This article contributes to the recent problematisation of the co-evolution of philosophy and marketing thought as we experience a transition from the deification of greed, individualism and hedonic consumption seen during the postmodern period of the twentieth century to the brutal class restructuring and shattering of a number of illusions of metamodernity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It examines the philosophical foundations of advertising and communication and demonstrates the ways in which current technological and socio-political advances are rendering traditional approaches obsolete. As marketing is now recognised to be the mechanism par excellence for value co-production, so advertising – and communication in general – are but mechanisms of meaning co-production through a dialogue between the disillusioned but empowered consumer and the brand and corporation on solidarity, responsibility, morality, dignity and the sense of belonging in a community. It is hereby argued that values are far more relevant to contemporary consumers than the pursuit of an idealised lifestyle based on celluloid images of the imaginary Joneses, and thus it is advocated that discipline-wide changes need to be made.

Using interdisciplinary teams to develop comprehensive integrated digital marketing communication campaigns

The need for interdisciplinary experiences has been well documented by policymakers, governmental agencies, higher education stakeholders and major funding organizations. The goal of these groups h...

Online brand community within the integrated marketing communication system: When chocolate becomes seductive like a person

This study proposes brand communities as an effective tool within the integrated marketing communication (IMC) system. The paper utilizes the Brand Concept Map quali-quantitative technique in order to represent and compare mental association texture within one group of non-members of a brand community versus one group of people engaged in the same community. Brand stimulus is Nutella (chocolate cream) which boasts a crowded and lively online brand community: Nutellaville. Results show that brand community is effective in terms of contribution, commonality, and complementarity within the IMC system. In particular, Nutella brand image within the online community participants is composed of some mental associations overlapping other communication tools (commonality), and by new mental associations (complementarity) referred to the brand image dimension named ‘brand as person’ (seductive, popular, reassuring); second, this anthropomorphism effect solves the issue of sense of guilt excited by chocolate (contribution).

How can integrated marketing communications and advanced technology influence the creation of customer-based brand equity? Evidence from the hospitality industry

As the most recent approach of communication management, the integrated marketing communication (IMC) programmes, enhanced by the advancements in information and communication technology (ICT), are considered an important contribution to the brand equity building. However, hardly any research has been done on the role of this new communication practice in the hospitality industry. Moreover, previous studies have mainly focused on managers’ opinions, overlooking customers’ perceptions of both marketing communications and advanced technology. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to examine, from the customer perspective, the impact of integrated marketing communications on hotel brand equity, considered as a multidimensional construct composed of brand image, perceived quality, and brand loyalty. In addition, the moderating role of advanced technology on these relationships is tested. While the findings show positive relationships between the studied constructs, the moderating role of technology is not corroborated.

STRATEGY TO IMPROVE BRAND AWARENESS

Brand strategy is an important thing that has to be built by the company to strengthen the relationship between a company and its customers to provide benefits for the company so that the company is able to win the competition in the industry (Sadat, 2009). Wheeler (2013) explains that the company can create a brand strategy to provide a strong sense so that it can compete with the competitors. The development of creative industries in Indonesia made a great contribution in the economy of Indonesia where the craft sector became the biggest contributor (Indonesia Kreatif, 2014). Companies which engaged in the craft sector are increasing, so that the companies face intense competition. It means that the company needs to build a brand that build good perception and gain the trust of the customers. This study aims to find strategies that can increase brand awareness by conducting case study on Empress Box company. Empress Box that founded in January 2014 is a company engaged in the creative industries. The company produce exclusive jewelry made of silver. The method used in this study is a qualitative with case study approach. The result of this study suggest three strategies. The first strategy that can increase brand awareness is the brand building characteristics that determine the segmenting, targetting, and positioning. The second strategy is to do integrated marketing communication (IMC), by using social media, joining competitions and exhibitions. The third strategy is product placement by doing endorsements and displaying the products in multibrand stores.

Strategy in Direct and Interactive Marketing and Integrated Marketing Communications

Continuing advances in database management and communication technologies have greatly accelerated the ability of marketing to become more direct, highly focused, and increasingly interactive. Academic programs must be able to provide students with both the theoretical knowledge and the applied skills to meet the business expectations and provide students with distinctive and sustainable career advantages. Professionals in direct and interactive marketing (DIM) and integrated marketing communications (IMC) have worked to reach a profitable balance between science and art as well as technique and creativity. At its best, DIM in IMC combines the freedom to explore new worlds of creativity with the discipline of measured response. This paper offers an overview of direct and interactive marketing strategy concepts, presented in ways that encourage effective teaching and learning.

Unhealthy food, integrated marketing communication and power: a critical analysis

Public health advocates have repeatedly highlighted parallels between food marketing and childhood obesity. Yet existing literature has not explored the connection between the promotion of unhealthy foods and beverages, certain characteristics of integrated marketing communication (IMC) and the power of multinational food and beverage companies. This is problematic because IMC represents the dominant marketing paradigm in use today. This article draws on critical theory and literature from across public health, marketing, business and related fields. By focusing on macro-level antecedents and interactions, this discussion highlights a previously unarticulated dimension of the promotion of unhealthy foods and beverages to children and adolescents. In doing so, this discussion aims to generate greater recognition of the broader environmental circumstances and processes that surround food marketing tactics and their consequences for public health nutrition. This perspective will also contribute to an expanded understanding of unhealthy food marketing and its unintended consequences, among an audience of nutrition, public health and policy communities.

Integrated marketing communications paradigm in digital environment: The five pillars of integration

This paper is focused on the paradigm of integrated marketing communications (IMC) in digital environment. The integration is analysed through five aspects. First, integration in terms of media; it means that IMC are performed through the mix of traditional media (print - newspapers, magazines; radio; television; direct-response media - telephone, direct mail, catalogue marketing; billboards; other 'specific media': product - especially brand, packaging; price; place; people; process; physical evidence; traditional/offline consumers - WOM communications) and digital media ( the Internet; mobile phones and other mobile devices; digital newspapers and magazines through the Internet and mobile devices; digital radio; digital TV; digital consumers - digital WOM communications). Second, integration in terms of communication methods, it means that IMC are a mix of traditional promotion (advertising, personal selling, public relations & publicity, direct marketing, sales promotion), digital communications/interactions (Internet communications, mobile communications, communications via digital radio and TV) and WOM communications/interactions (offline and online). Third, integration in terms of time of communications and possibilities for interaction, it means that IMC are a mix of traditionalstatic communications ('monologue' towards the target audience) and dynamic communications ('dialogue') in real time. Fourth, integration in terms of actors, it means that IMC are a mix of communications initiated both by consumers (WOM communications - offline and online/e/digital) and organizations. Fifth, integration in terms of content creation, it means that IMC are a mix of communications based on consumer generated content and marketing content (created by organisations).

The Implementation of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Principles in Branding and Advertising: A Conceptual Exploration

Theorists and advocates of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) behold that IMC was an innovation to rescue the downward of advertisement industry and to strengthen the strategic and tactical power of branding. IMC offer the option of integrating several marketing communication approaches in one message content for the purpose of developing effective brand equity. However, IMC is a theoretically celebrated panacea that has experienced a longstanding conceptual and practical muddling, which includes the practicality, definitions, implementations and measurement of its effectiveness. Pertinently, an explicit strategy and tactics of implementing the principles of IMC in advertisement still remain obscure. In a quest to quench the conceptual haziness of IMC and its implementation in advertisement-being one of the very crucial tool in marketing communications, this paper presents the review of the implementation process of IMC in the general marketing communication fields, advertisement and branding in particular. Relevant theoretical and practical gaps were deduced from past studies to inform future studies of possible ways to resolve the theoretical and practical inconsistencies in implementing the principles of IMC in an effective advertisement and brand equity. Keywords: Integrated Marketing Communication; Brand Equity; Advertisement Effectiveness; Message Strategy.