Chapter 12: Market Communication

Front 1

What is the promotion mix?

Back 1

The promotion mix is the marketer’s bag of tools for communicating with customers and other stakeholders:
- Advertising: any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor
- Sales promotion: short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service
- Personal selling: making and building relationships
- Public relations: building good relations with the company’s various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and handling or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories and events
- Direct marketing: direct connections with carefully targeted individual consumers to both obtain and cultivate lasting customer relationships

Front 2

What is integrated marketing communications?

Back 2

Integrated marketing communications (IMC): carefully integrating and coordinating the company’s many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its products.

Front 3

List the parts in communicating a message.

Back 3

- Sender: the party sending the message
- Encoding: the process of putting thought into symbolic form
- Message: the set of symbols that the sender transmits
- Media: the communication channels through which the message moves from sender to receiver
- Decoding: the process by which the receiver assigns meaning to the symbols encoded by the sender
- Receiving: the party receiving the message sent by another party – the customer who watches the advert
- Response: the reactions of the receiver after being exposed to the message
- Feedback: the part of the receiver’s response communicated back to the sender – research shows that consumer remember the advert
- Noise: the unplanned static of distortion during the communication process , which results in the receiver getting a different message from the one sent by the sender – the consumer is distracted while watching the commercial or misses its key points

Front 4

Identify the first two steps in developing effective marketing communication.

Back 4

1. Identifying the target audience: the target audience will heavily affect the communicator’s decisions on what will be said, how it will be said, when it will be said, where it will be said, and who will say it
2. Determining the communication objectives: marketers have to decide what response they seek. The target audience may be in any of the six buyer-readiness stages: the stages consumer’s normally pass through on their way to purchase, including awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and purchase

Front 5

Identify the third step in developing effective marketing communication.

Back 5

3. Designing a message:

a. Message content: an appeal or theme that will produce the desired response. There are three types of appeals: rational, emotional and moral. Rational appeals relate to the audience’s self-interest, emotional appeals attempt to stir up either negative or positive emotions that can motivate purchase. Moral appeals are directed to the audience’s sense of what is right and proper.
b. Message structure: three message structure issues:
i. Whether to draw a conclusion or leave it to the audience
ii. Whether to present the strongest argument first or last
iii. Whether to present a one-sided argument or a two-sided argument
c. Message format: A strong format is needed

Front 6

Identify the fourth step in developing effective marketing communication.

Back 6

4. Choosing media: personal or non-personal
a. Personal communication channels: channels through which two or more people communicate directly with each other: face to face, on the phone, through e-mail or even through an internet chat
b. Non-personal communication channels: media that carry messages without personal contact or feedback (newspapers, websites, posters, television)

Front 7

Identify the fifth and sixth step in developing effective marketing communication.

Back 7

5. Selecting the message source: messages delivered by highly credible sources are more persuasive. Choose the right spokesperson
6. Collecting feedback: the effect on the target audience needs to be researched

Front 8

Explain word-of mouth influence.

Back 8

Word-of-mouth influence: personal communication about a product between target buyers and neighbors, friends, family members and associates

Front 9

Explain buzz marketing.

Back 9

Buzz marketing: cultivating opinion leaders and getting them to spread information about a product or service to others in their communities

Front 10

Explain the affordable method when setting the total promotion budget and mix.

Back 10

Affordable method: setting the promotion budget at the level management thinks the company can afford → can lead to deprioritizing promotion

Front 11

Explain the percentage-of-sales method when setting the total promotion budget and mix.

Back 11

Percentage-of-sales method: setting their promotion budget at a certain percentage of current or forecasted sales or as a percentage of the unit sales price → long-range planning is difficult

Front 12

Explain the competitive-parity method when setting the total promotion budget and mix.

Back 12

Competitive-parity method: setting their promotion budgets to match competitors’ outlays. → there are no grounds for believing that the competition has a better idea of what a company should be spending on promotion than the company itself

Front 13

Explain the objective-and-task method when setting the total promotion budget and mix.

Back 13

Objective-and-task method: the company sets its promotional budget based on what is wants to accomplish with promotion → most difficult but also the best and most logic method

Front 14

Explain advertising.

Back 14

Advertising:
- Can reach masses of geographically dispersed buyers at a low cost per exposure
- Enables the seller to repeat a message many time
- Says something positive about the seller’s size, popularity and success
- Very expressive
- Can trigger quick sales
- Impersonal, one way communication
- Companies tend to spend too much as an insurance to spending too little

Front 15

Explain personal selling.

Back 15

- Can be the most effective tool
- Nurtures customer relationships
- Requires a longer-term commitment than advertising
- The most expensive tool

Front 16

Explain sales promotion

Back 16

Sales promotion:
- Coupons, contests, premiums etc.
- Attract customer attention, offer strong incentives to purchase, and can be used to dramatize product offers

Front 17

What is public relations?

Back 17

Public relations:
- Is very believable
- Can reach many prospects who avoid “classic” promotion

Front 18

What is direct marketing?

Back 18

Direct marketing:
- Less public, immediate, customized, interactive

Front 19

Explain the push and pull strategies.

Back 19

- Push strategy: involves pushing the product through marketing channels to final consumers. The producer directs its marketing activities towards channel members to induce them to carry the product and promote it to final customer
- Pull strategy: the producer directs its marketing activities towards final consumers to induce them to buy the product. If the pull strategy is effective, consumers will then demand the product from channel members, who will in turn demand it from producers

Front 20

Describe the advertising process.

Back 20

1. Objectives setting:
a. Communication objectives
b. Sales objectives
2. Budget decisions:
a. Affordable approach
b. Percentage of sales
c. Competitive parity
d. Objective and task
3. Message decisions
a. Message strategy
b. Message execution
Or Media decisions: Reach, frequency, impact, major media types, specific media vehicles or media timing
4. Advertising evaluation:
a. Communication impact
b. Sales and profit impact
c. Return on advertising

Front 21

What is informative advertising?

Back 21

- Communicating customer value
- Building a brand and company image
- Telling the market about a new product
- Explaining how the product works

Front 22

What is persuasive advertising? Reminder advertising?Comparative advertising?

Back 22

Persuasive advertising:
- Building brand preference
- Encouraging switching to your brand
- Changing customer’s perception of product value
Reminder advertising:
- Reminding consumers that the product may be needed in the near future
Comparative advertising:
- A company directly or indirectly compares its brand with one or more other brands

Front 23

What is the message strategy?

Back 23

Message strategy: to decide what the general message will be communicating to consumers → main purpose is to get consumer to react or think of the product/company in a certain way

Front 24

Which two major elements is crucial regarding developing advertising strategy.

Back 24

- Creating advertising messages
- Selecting advertising media

Front 25

Explain selecting advertising media, return on advertisement and international advertising decisions.

Back 25

Selecting advertising media:
- Deciding on reach, frequency and impact: the advertiser must decide on the reach and frequency needed to achieve advertising objectives
- Choosing among major media types: each medium has advantages and limitations. Read about them on page 395. Media vehicles – specific media within each general media type

Return on advertisement: there are different ways to decide on this.

International advertising decisions: standardization is cheap but different countries have different markets. A company needs to get the balance right – think globally but act locally

Front 26

Explain public relations.

Back 26

Building good relations with the company’s various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and heading off unfavorable rumors, stories and events. There are following functions:
- Press relations or press agency
- Product publicity
- Public affairs: building and maintaining national or local community relations
- Lobbying: building and maintaining relations with legislators and government officials to influence legislation and regulation
- Investor relations
- Development: PR with donors or members of non-profit organizations to gain financial or volunteer support

Front 27

Explain personal selling.

Back 27

Is the interpersonal arm of the promotion mix. The role of the sales force:
- Linking the company with its customers
- Coordinating marketing and sales
- Recruiting and selecting salespeople

Front 28

Explain sales promotion and event marketing.

Back 28

Sales promotion
The most short-term of the promotion mix tools, which say to consumers “buy now”.
- Samples
- Coupons
- Cash refunds
- Price packs
- Premiums
- Point-of-purchase
- Contests, sweepstakes and games

Event marketing: creating a brand-marketing event or serving as a sole or participating sponsor of events created by others