1 Marketing communications in the digital age
All over the world there are countless publications on marketing communications. Books, articles, conference proceedings and websites explore its different features and provide suggestions on how to communicate effectively. Since the early years of the 21st century, academics, researchers and marketing practitioners have shown a growing interest in marketing communications on social media and eWOM. Among over 300 articles from academic journals reviewed for this study, over 80% were published within the last 15 years and, on average, every year the number of articles has grown by nearly 25%. Unfortunately, most publications on marketing communications, social media and WOM present the subjective opinions of authors, rather than reliable scientific evidence. The first three chapters of this book fill this gap by providing up-to-date and reliable findings of the most-cited empirical research. By presenting an overview of the extant academic literature, they enable a better understanding to be reached of what marketing communications, social media and WOM really are and why they are so important in todayâs world. The overview moves from the macro level of marketing communications to the micro level of eWOM on social media.
Marketing communication is a dialogue between a company and its environment â current and potential customers and other stakeholders (Bajdak, 2013). This definition, as well as the origin of the term âcommunicationâ (from the Latin âcommunicareâ â to share), emphasizes bilateralism, interaction, relationship and exchange, which constitute the essence of marketing communications and lay the foundations of social media.
This suggests that social media can be an ideal environment to pursue the goals of marketing communications (Batra & Keller, 2016):
⢠creating awareness and salience
⢠conveying detailed information
⢠creating imagery and personality
⢠building trust
⢠eliciting emotions
⢠inspiring action
⢠instilling loyalty
⢠connecting people (i.e., creating brand advocacy and WOM)
The last point is particularly important. While being one of its goals, WOM plays a fundamental role in marketing communications, a role that is not limited to product promotion.
As marketing communications and promotion are often used as synonyms, it is worth underlining the differences between the two terms. Promotion is a rather unidirectional influence of a company (Wiktor, 2002), related to the product and directed at consumers, while marketing communications is a broader term, a dialogue which includes all stakeholders (Kijewska & Mantura, 2017; Koniorczyk & Sztangret, 2000; Wiktor, 2013). For instance, marketing communications can be used to attract new employees or to motivate the current ones. WOM can contribute to a companyâs image as a good employer. Marketing information deployment within market research is also regarded as marketing communications, but its purposes are cognitive (e.g., examining customersâ needs) rather than promotional (Kijewska & Mantura, 2017).
Marketing communications faces a crisis. Marketing communication expenditure and the number of advertising messages are constantly growing, thus leading to a constant decrease in advertising effectiveness and a constant increase in spending to make it effective (Godin, 1999; van den Putte, 2009). In a world full of advertisements, âa wealth of information creates a poverty of attentionâ (Simon, 1971, p. 40). As Godin (1999, p. 38) sums up: âThe more they spend, the less it works. The less it works, the more they spendâ. Prior research on advertising highlights a decline of trust (Godes et al., 2005) and negative attitudes toward advertising among consumers (Internet Standard, 2012; Szubra & Trojanowski, 2018; Taranko, 2018). People do not like and avoid advertisements. Therefore, one of the major challenges for marketers today is to find a new way to capture peopleâs attention and position a brand in the consumerâs mind (Kotler, 2012).
How can this major challenge highlighted by Kotler be addressed on the basis of existing theories in marketing and communication research? Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory is deemed particularly relevant in this case for three main reasons. Firstly, it assumes the active role of consumers, who of their own volition decide to participate in the communication process. Secondly, its individual-centric perspective is consistent with the personal dimension of WOM. Thirdly, U&G theory is functionalist in its approach, and is thus likely to develop general guidelines and concrete problem-solving ideas applicable in marketing practice (Morgan, 1984), which is consistent with the purpose of this study from a practical perspective.
U&G theory has its origins in media effects research (McQuail, 1983). In the 1940s, the initial studies of communications developed an approach to examine the âgratificationsâ which attract and retain audiences to the specific media and content types that satisfy their psychological and social needs (Katz, Hass, & Gurevitch, 1973). Diverging from other media effect theories that examine âwhat do the media do to peopleâ, the U&G approach is focused on âwhat do people do with the mediaâ, thus providing an insight into functions served by a specific medium or content (Katz, 1959, p. 2). âThe message of even the most potent of the media cannot ordinarily influence an individual who has no âuseâ for it in the social and psychological context in which he livesâ (Katz, 1959, p. 2). U&G researchers distinguish gratifications sought from gratifications obtained (outcomes), and media consumption is related to the discrepancy between the two (Palmgreen & Rayburn, 1979). The more the gratifications obtained correspond to the gratifications sought, the more people will continue the consumption of a medium. The assumptions of U&G theory include (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974; Ruggiero, 2000):
⢠active audiences with varying levels of activity and goal-directed media use
⢠media selection initiated by the audience members
⢠media competing with other sources that can satisfy the same need
⢠self-awareness of the audience members and their ability to articulate many of the goals of media use
⢠no value judgments about the cultural impact of mass communication; focus on how and why people use media
In sum, in order to find a new way to capture peopleâs attention â a new medium of marketing communications â we need to explore why people use media. Consistent with the essence of marketing, we need to look at peopleâs needs, we need to give them a reason to pay attention, and we need to give them a reason to listen. The prominence of consumersâ needs is a recurrent theme in this book and constitutes the core of the following sections and chapters.
Katz, Hass, and Gurevitch (1973) provide a list of psychological and social needs satisfied by exposure to mass media, which includes five categories of needs:
⢠cognitive (related to information, knowledge and understanding)
⢠personal integrative (strengthening proper credibility, confidence, stability, and status)
⢠affective (or hedonic; related to aesthetic, pleasurable and emotional experience)
⢠escape or tension release
⢠social integrative (keeping in contact with family, friends and other people)
Since 1990, the media have experienced a huge transformation; however the essential needs they satisfy have remained basically the same (Nambisan & Baron, 2007).
Hoffman and Novak (1996) explain this media transformation by showing the evolution from a traditional one-to-many marketing communications model for mass media and an interpersonal communication model in the computer-mediated environment to a new model of many-to-many marketing communications in a hypermedia computer-mediated environment where users co-create content. In the traditional model of marketing communications, communication content is transmitted from a firm to consumers through a medium. There is no interaction between consumers and firms. On the contrary, in the interpersonal and computer-mediated communication model, content is transmitted through a medium from one consumer to another but this model includes interaction, so through the medium the recipient provides feedback to the sender. This model is implicit in eWOM on social media. In the new model of marketing communications in a hypermedia computermediated environment, the content is hypermedia (i.e., combining text, images, audio and video with hypertext links) and the medium is a distributed computer network (Internet). In this model, interactivity can take place both with and through the medium. Therefore, this model can be viewed as a mix of the two previous models. Consumers and firms can interact with the medium (e.g., navigate the Internet), firms can provide content (e.g., on their websites) and transmit it to consumers, but consumers can also add product-related content to the medium. Additionally, because of such interaction, the sender is also the receiver. The primary relationship is not between the sender and the receiver, but rather with the âmediated environmentâ they interact with. Using this new model of marketing communications in a hypermedia computer-mediated environment, it would be interesting to explore how the content provided by the firm to the medium (on the Internet) influences the additional content consumers provide (eWOM). This issue is covered by the scope of this study (Figure 1.1).
One could argue that the Internet is merely another medium of marketing communication (like television, radio or newspapers); however, the interactive nature of the Internet creates an entirely new environment that changes the traditional parameters of mass communication.
The interactivity of the Internet strengthens the core U&G theory assumption of an active audience (Johnson & Kaye, 2003; Sundar & Limperos, 2013). âParticipants in the communication process have control over and can exchange roles in their mutual discourseâ (Williams, Rice, & Roge...