Date of Award

1998

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Business Administration

Department

Business

First Advisor

Michael Castro

Second Advisor

Joe Silverio

Abstract

This thesis will focus on the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) in the United States and Thailand.

The new world of IMC provides a radically different way for companies to promote themselves. Throughout marketing history companies promoted a product by advertising. Advertising stated the "reason" people should purchase the product. You advertise it heavily. Consumers buy it. Advertising was king.

Integrated Communication and integrated marketing is good to reach the same amount of consumers that had been reached in the past. The vast amount of media available, such as the World Wide Web, trade shows, television, periodicals and outdoor advertising, make it necessary to reach consumers in several different ways. It is difficult to provide integrated marketing in 1997 because of the different aims that each marketing medium has.

The integration of marketing and marketing communications is inevitable, impelled by the technological revolution that is happening throughout the world Two main factors underlie the need for integration, namely, the shift to a view of advertising that is reflective of holistic information systems and the diagonal movement of information technology from the manufacturer to the retailer to the consumer. Marketers and advertisers should thus understand the integration process and adopt those approaches and concepts, which would allow them to maximize the return on integration.

Marketers find that it is difficult to develop an integrated marketing communications (IMC) program because they are not used to organizing from the outside in. Most marketing initiatives are usually based on what managers want to communicate and how much the company is willing to spend. Marketers then formulate messages and decide how they are going to be communicated. ln IMC, communication is determined by an outside-in perspective so that what consumers want to buy takes precedence over what marketers want to sell. Marketing communication then becomes a dialogue between the buyer and seller instead of a monologue by the seller. Another barrier to the shift to IMC is the vertical structure of most organizations. Integration requires a horizontal set- up, which many companies find difficult to adopt.

A long-term partnership between a client company and a small number of advertising agencies is the best way to support integrated communications. Companies with multiple product lines or brands can consolidate the number of agencies using two approaches: One is to assign one agency for each communication medium and another is to assign one agency to each business unit. The first approach integrates communication media " horizontally" across business units while the second integrates business units ''vertically" across communication media within the unit.

Comments

Copyright 1998, Nareerat Kesaraphong.

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