The emergence of integrated marketing communications (IMC) has become a significant example of development in the marketing discipline. It has influenced thinking and acting among…
Abstract
Purpose
The emergence of integrated marketing communications (IMC) has become a significant example of development in the marketing discipline. It has influenced thinking and acting among all types of companies and organizations facing the realities of competition in an open economy. From the beginning of the 1990s IMC became a real hot topic in the field of marketing. Four stages of IMC have been identified, starting from tactical coordination to financial and strategic integration. However, the majority of firms are anchored in the first stages and very few have moved to a strategic level. One conclusion is that there are barriers to developing IMC from tactics to strategy. The main purpose of this paper is to identify obstacles to further developing IMC.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of relevant literature during the 1990s and a study of four large Swedish companies.
Findings
Results show that decisions concerning IMC are rooted on the advertising agency level and have failed to appear on management level, whose communicative ability has remained insufficient, mainly due to obsolete tradition.
Originality/value
Indicates a need for international research and a reconsideration of educational programs regarding management, marketing and marketing communications.
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Keywords
To identify factors of decisive importance relating to communicative processes within companies and organisations, where communication across levels is essential not only for…
Abstract
Purpose
To identify factors of decisive importance relating to communicative processes within companies and organisations, where communication across levels is essential not only for efficiency and effectiveness, but also because conditions are particularly challenging.
Design/methodology/approach
A literature review leads to an ethnographic study of internal communication in a “critical system” in which decisions are crucial and the margin of error very small: a naval vessel.
Findings
Common educational and empirical backgrounds, coded language, and mutual understanding of context and goals are necessary prerequisites for the attainment of organisational goals and the avoidance of mistakes with potentially serious consequences. At the professional management level, they achieve fully functioning communications, but the concomitant uniformity and homogeneity can create difficulties in communication with other systems, organisations and individuals. There were few problems with horizontal communication at the strategic management level, but vertical flows between strategy and operational levels were prone to distortion and malfunction.
Research limitations/implications
This study may initiate further research concerning communication theory and its relation to marketing leadership and management.
Practical implications
The findings and research procedure can be adapted to analysis of the developmental needs of organisations operating in complex, dynamic and uncertain marketing environments.
Originality/value
Reports a study in an environment well beyond the normal setting of marketing research, in which the complexities and challenges faced by all participants in the system exceed those normally faced by marketing organisations. Thereby allows lessons to be learnt about effective communication under difficult operating conditions, such as those faced by marketers in a turbulent and uncertain future.
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Presents an overview of how traditional marketing communications have changed, and discusses the importance of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC).
Abstract
Purpose
Presents an overview of how traditional marketing communications have changed, and discusses the importance of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC).
Design/methodology/approach
The author discusses how changing market environments and the emergence of new IT have led to the emergence of new marketing tools. The author stresses the importance Integrated Marketing Communications and features case studies on four Swedish companies which fail to embrace new marketing concepts.
Findings
Demonstrates that companies who ignore IMC will not gain the competitive edge required over their rivals.
Practical implications
Offers clear advice on the importance of IMC.
Originality/value
Provides clear guidance as to the importance of strategically focused IMC. The Swedish case studies are a clear warning of the consequences of failing to embrace IMC.
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Enrico Baraldi, Francesco Ciabuschi, Olof Lindahl, Andrea Perna and Gian Luca Gregori
The purpose of this paper is to explore two specific areas pertaining to industrial networks and international business (IB). First, the authors look at how business relationships…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore two specific areas pertaining to industrial networks and international business (IB). First, the authors look at how business relationships influence the internationalization in time, from the establishment of the first subsidiary in a foreign market to the following ones, and in space, that is, across different markets. Second, the authors investigate how an increasing external network dependence of subsidiaries in their internationalization may cause a detachment of a subsidiary from the mother company as its knowledge becomes insufficient to guide a subsidiary’s internationalization.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper utilizes an exploratory, longitudinal, single-case study of Loccioni – a manufacturer of measuring and automatic control systems for industrial customers – to illustrate the specific dynamics of the influences of industrial networks on the internationalization of subsidiaries.
Findings
The case study helps to elucidate the roles, entailing also free will and own initiative, of small suppliers’ subsidiaries which operate inside several global factories, and how “surfing” on many different global factories, by means of several local subsidiaries, actually supports these suppliers’ own international developments. This notion adds to our understanding of the global factory phenomenon a supplier focus that stresses how the role of suppliers is not merely that of being passive recipients of activities and directions from a focal orchestrating firm, but can also be that of initiative-takers themselves.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the IMP tradition by providing a multi-layered and geographically more fine-grained view of the network embedding companies that operate on internationalized markets. This paper thereby sheds light on a less investigated area of research within the IMP tradition: the link between internationalization in different countries and the interconnectedness between the industrial networks spanning these countries. At the same time, this paper contributes to IB theories by showing how a late-internationalizing SME can enter highly international markets by “plugging into” several established “Global Factories” as a way to exploit further opportunities for international expansion.
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Xiaojun Yang, Ping Qin and Jintao Xu
The purpose of this paper is to attempt to investigate farmer’s positional concerns in rural China, and how the positional concerns correlate with household expenditures on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to attempt to investigate farmer’s positional concerns in rural China, and how the positional concerns correlate with household expenditures on visible goods.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conduct a survey-based experiment to measure farmers’ positional concerns, and employ econometric models to examine the determinants of the degree of positional concern and how the positional concern affects household expenditures on visible goods.
Findings
The authors find that Chinese farmers have strong positional concerns for income, and high-income households are more concerned with relative position. Furthermore, there is a significant difference between males and females with respect to correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on visible goods. For females, there is a positive correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on clothes, restaurants, and mobile phones, respectively. For males, there is a positive correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on mobile phones.
Social implications
The government policy thus should pay attention to the positional goods, and the relevant consumption tax by increasing the prices of visible goods could be considered or suggested in the future even in the rural areas.
Originality/value
This paper provides complementary evidence on Chinese farmers’ positional concerns, and how the degree of positional concern relates to household expenditures on visible goods.
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Stefan Jonsson and Michael Lounsbury
Recent empirical and theoretical developments related to the microprocesses of institutional logics have helped to cultivate a powerful theory of agency. We build on these…
Abstract
Recent empirical and theoretical developments related to the microprocesses of institutional logics have helped to cultivate a powerful theory of agency. We build on these developments to show how the institutional logics perspective can shed light on important questions related to frame construction and how institutions matter. In particular, we show how the emergence of an economic democracy frame in post-war Sweden generated different efforts to define that frame with concrete ideas and practices linked to different logics – socialism and neoliberalism. We show how socialists tried to define economic democracy as requiring a radical transformation in the nature of ownership and control embedded in the innovative financial practice of wage earner’s funds. In contradistinction, conservatives drew on neoliberal ideas and extant mutual fund practices to construct alternative meanings and practices related to economic democracy that enrolled citizens in Capitalism without challenging extant Capitalist ownership structures. While mutual funds and wage earner’s funds initially existed in a state of parabiosis – existing side by side without much interrelationship – struggles over the meaning of economic democracy led these practices to become competing solutions in a framing contest. Implications for the study of institutional logics, frames and the social organization of society are discussed.