Ch. 16 - Integrated Marketing Communications

The role of promotion is important in the marketing mix. The ultimate goal of promotion is to get someone to buy a good or service or, in the case of nonprofit organization, to take some actions. Marketers use different strategies to achieve the promotion such as advertising, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion. Using the promotion strategies is the vital way that marketers convince the consumers about their competitive advantages. For example, whole foods markets, convinces the consumers about their competitive advantage by advertising the high quality of their organic and natural foods. There is no doubt that it makes great sense for attracting consumers who want to have a healthy diet.

Moreover, promotional strategy is closely related to the process of communication. Communication is the process by which meanings are exchanged or shared through a common set of symbols. There are two types of the communication: interpersonal communication and mass communication. Whole foods market does well in the communication with customers. For the interpersonal communication, Whole foods market thinks highly of the personal selling. Employees can explain the new production to their customers face-to- face which is vital for customer to understand their productions well. A competitive advantage can sometimes be created by personal selling, or based on the extend and diversity of channels of distribution. Because the most important advantage is that personal selling is considerably more effective than other forms of promotion in obtaining a sale and gaining a satisfied customers. For the mass communication, the whole foods market also invest great amount of money on the advertising.

Furthermore, the AIDA concept is important for marketer to attain the promotional goals. Firstly, the attention, marketers must gain it from their target market. They need use different strategies to attract customers’ attention such as advertising so that people will know the existing of the products. Secondly, interest, simple awareness of a brand seldom leads to a sale. Thirdly, desire, finding what customers’ needs is the effective way for promotion. Lastly, action, motivating potential customers to take action to buy their products is the other important key.