Basic Marketing: A Global Managerial Approach

Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/e

14. Promotion −
    Introduction to Integrated
    Marketing
    Communications

Text © The McGraw−Hill

Companies, 2002

Promotion_Introduction to Integrated Marketing Communications 405

Even so, marketers often think of the buyer as a more or less passive message

receiver in the communication process—at least until the marketer has done some-

thing to stimulate attention, interest, and desire. That’s one reason that targeting

is so important—so that the promotion effort and expense isn’t wasted on someone

who isn’t at all interested. Moreover, the need for a blend of promotion methods is

built on the idea that at any given moment you can get a customer’s attention and

interest for only a few seconds—or a few minutes if you’re really lucky. Even with

highly targeted direct-response promotion, the marketer typically has taken the first

step with promotion to get the interaction started.

However, this is changing. In the information age, it is much easier for customers

to search for information on their own. In fact, buyers can access a great deal of

information and place an order without the seller having been directly involved at

all. The new interactive information technologies enabling this change take many

different forms, but some of the most important are websites, e-mail list-servers,

caller-controlled fax-on-demand, computerized telephone voice-messaging systems,

video kiosks in malls, CD-ROM and DVD disks on personal computers, and

WebTV.

New variations on these interactive technologies are being developed all of the

time. For example, in England, where interactive cable TV systems have been oper-

ating for a decade, consumers have access to a system called Teletext. With Teletext,

they can use their standard TV remote control unit to search through thousands of

on-screen pages of information—ranging from the schedule for flights from London’s

airports and the current weather to advertising for automobiles and specials at the

local supermarket. The benefits of Teletext are very similar to the benefits of the

World Wide Web on the Internet, but it uses a standard TV. Similar systems will

become more available in other countries as government regulations change and as

cable companies upgrade their equipment.

New electronic media

enable interactive

communication

Consumer initiates

communication with a

search process

Internet

Internet Exercise Visit the Campbell’s Soup website (www.campbellsoup.com).

Does the website make it easy for you to get information? Does it make you

want to spend more time and get more information? Explain your answer.

Work is underway to develop broadcast systems in which icons will appear on-

screen as consumers watch a program or movie. For example, an icon might appear

on a jacket worn by a talk show guest. A consumer who is interested in the prod-

uct will be able to press a button on a remote control to get more information about

the product or where to buy it—or even to place an order. The same concept is

already implemented on DVDs for some movies. When this type of system is avail-

able via cable (or with streaming video over the Internet), it will provide a powerful

new tool for marketers and, over time, reshape the way many marketing communi-

cations are handled.

This type of customer-initiated information search and/or communication repre-

sents a change that will become prevalent for more types of purchases in the future,

so we should think about it in more detail. Let’s start by contrasting the simple

model of customer (“receiver”) initiated interactive communication shown in

Exhibit 14-7. At first it doesn’t seem very different from the traditional communi-

cation model we considered earlier (Exhibit 14-5). However, the differences are

significant.

In the model in Exhibit 14-7, a customer initiates the communication process

with a decision to search for information in a particular message channel. The most

far-reaching message channel to search is the Internet. The message channel is still

the carrier of the message, as was the case before, but “searchable” message channels