Discussion Questions - Essay Example

INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS (Discussion Questions) of Introduction Marketing as a profession is a fairly-wide practice and encompasses many other things. It is the activity associated with getting the product or service out to potential buyers and let the people know about these and the most obvious term connected with marketing is advertising. It is still more art than science though because there are no precise metrics by which to evaluate all the results, given so many factors associated with successful marketing that includes fickle buyer behaviors, shopping patterns and consumer preferences.

Be that as it may, it is still a big field for most business people and academics to be concerned with it, especially in todays connected and digital world, enhanced by advanced information and communications technologies like the cell phone and the Internet. These inventions in improved communications has also presented a new set of challenges for marketing professionals because of the rapidity of these changes and with it, the speed by which information travels in the World Wide Web by way of dissemination.

Discussion The influence of the Internet today reaches far and wide; it also influences daily lives in many ways because it has become ubiquitous as more people get connected on-line with the rise or growth in the Internet penetration. The sheer omnipresence of the Internet has presented new opportunities and problems for marketeers as they struggle to connect with their consumers in a digital world. An example of this is the rise of so-called on-line communities put up by the firms to help them connect with buyers but has presented some difficulties for them in most instances, because of their failure to recognize the four pillars of a successful hyper-sociality in tribalization efforts (Moran & Gossieaux, 2010, p. 238) and the primary reason for shutting these sites down.

Many big firms, especially global enterprises, have resorted to use of a fancy integrated marketing communications (IMC) but the practice also has its drawbacks. In particular, not many people know or understand what it actually means, because it is still an emerging discipline. It is still in infancy and there is a dearth of literature on the subject (Kitchen, Kim & Schultz, 2008, p. 532) such that what happened is that practice has instead gone ahead of the theories on IMC. The way to counter this seeming ignorance is that proposed by using a consumer-centric perspective that combines both IMC and relationship marketing to sustain loyalty (Finne & Gronroos, 2009, p. 180) among consumers of the company which transcends the idea of IMC being just a fad.

Question 1 – social media networks like Facebook has real value in terms of a captured audience or market for potential advertisers. Its close to a billion subscribers represent, if it were a country, the third most populous nation on Earth, after China and India. However, the price of its stock from the recent initial public offering (IPO) may encourage people to close FB accounts because they are disappointed by a failure to earn quick profits. Its software can slice and dice its subscriber base into segments for targeted branded advertising campaigns (Vega, 2012, p. 1). Question 2 – although at present the Internet merely supplements traditional media, it is expected it will eventually supplant it as more and more people prefer to go on-line.

This is what is happening today with the continued growth of digital hand-held devices like cellphones, iPads, laptops and netbooks where Internet portability is in one device (Khosrow-Pour, 2007, p. 277). ConclusionThe Internet is considered as one disruptive but beneficial technological innovation and it has transformed how people shop, buy, bank and perform a myriad of daily activities. It is the new challenge for marketing to find ways to fully exploit this digital world (Keillor, 2007, p. 62). Reference ListFinne, A.

& Gronroos, C. (2009, April-July). Rethinking marketing communication: From integrated marketing communication to relationship communication. Journal of Marketing Communications, 15(2-3), 179-195.Keillor, B. D. (2007). Marketing in the 21st century: Inter-active and multi-channel marketing. Santa Barbara, CA, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group. Khosrow-Pour, M. (2006). Emerging trends and challenges in information technology management. Hershey, PA, USA: Idea Group, Incorporated. Kitchen, P. J., Kim, I. & Schultz, D. E. (2008, December).

Integrated marketing communications: Practice leads theory. Journal of Advertising Research, 531-546.Moran, E. & Gossieaux, F. (2010, September). Marketing in a hyper-social world: The tribalization of business study and characteristics of successful on-line communities. Journal of Advertising Research, 232-239.Vega, T. (2012, March 01). “Facebooks big ad push.” The New York Times. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/daily-report-facebooks-big-ad-push/