Development of an integrated marketing communication mix strategy for an IT brand such as HP or intel planning to enter a new but very competitive market such as Russia or China - Essay Example

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Integrated Marketing Communication (UMC) has shown substantial effects on business world especially with respect to the international networks of multinational companies (Gould, Grein, & Lerman, 1999; Kitchen & Schultz, 2003). It has been considered as one of the major developments of communication of the last phase of the 20th century (Kitchen & Schultz, 1999, p.34) and thus most organizations claim it as the key competitive advantage of their marketing strategies. Duncan (2005) defines the terms IMC as a “collective term for all the various types of planned messages used to build a brand”, marketing communication integrates advertising, public relations, sales promotion, direct marketing, personal selling, packaging, events and sponsorships, and customer service” (Duncan, 2005, p.7). Due to numbers of factors, the significance and recognition of IMC has grown up. These factors include the increasing trends in media fragmentations (Kotler et al. 2005), increasing segmentation of consumer needs (Schwartz, 2001), easy access to consumer database (McGoon, 1999 & Reich, 1998), and the development of a brand’s image-based equity (Schultz 1999 & Wood 1997). Besides application of IMC related to consumers, most of the authors agree that it has significant application to target non-consumer stakeholders as well like employers, investors, and regulators (Belch, 2002). Kitchen (2003) argues that corporate communication and IMC has substantial implications for the cost-effectiveness of particular organizations. Corporate communication targets the stakeholders by applying advertising campaigns, financial relations, and by offering corporate sponsorships (Semenik, 2002), while non-customer stakeholders are targeted to brief ...Download file to see next pagesRead More