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To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

Artificial intelligence–enabled voice assistants (VAs), such as Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple's Siri, are available in smartphones, smart speakers, and other digital devices and channels. Use of these VAs is growing rapidly and are expected to significantly impact purchase intentions. This article focuses on how the communications enabled and provided by these VAs influence VA evaluations and usage intentions, contingent on the stage of the customer journey.

This paper builds from work on VAs, work on artificial intelligence (AI) and work on communications, to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of how VA evaluations and usage intentions may be impacted by the communications from VAs, contingent on the stage of the customer journey.

This paper proposes a model for VA enabled communications impact VA evaluations. It builds from work on VAs, AI, communications, and customer journey management. In the proposed model, VA evaluations are not only impacted by source, message and recipient characteristics (per prior communication models), but also by (1) VA/AI specific features, like perceptions of humanness and perceptions of artificiality, and (2) stage of the customer journey.

This paper provides guidance to firms, as regards how VA communications may influence VA evaluations and usage intentions. As an initial conjecture, (1) increasing perceptions of humanness, (2) decreasing perceptions of artificiality (3) a better fit between communications style (e.g. abstract vs concrete), and request type (e.g. transactional vs informational) (4) a better fit between VA communications (e.g. information vs banter), and consumer perceptions of the VA (servant vs partner) and (5) a better fit between VA communications and the stage of the customer journey may positively influence VA evaluations and VA usage intentions.

This paper provides a fresh look at the impact of VA communications, clarifying how such communications impact VA evaluations and usage intentions at various stages of the customer journey.

This paper develops and tests a model depicting the drivers of organizational leaders' intentions to use social media for in‐bound customer communications in a political marketing context. This model improves practitioners and researchers understanding of what influence leaders' attitudes and intentions toward using social media to enhance marketing communications.

The paper uses mediated OLS regression analysis with survey data collected from a national sample of political candidates running for the US House of Representatives in 2010.

Overall satisfaction with social media for marketing communications and customers' normative expectations that organizations use social media for marketing communications drive leaders' future intentions to use social media for in‐bound customer communications. Perceived ease of use, and perceived social media usefulness for in‐bound and out‐bound customer communications drive overall satisfaction with social media for marketing communications.

Leaders support social media as a tool to enhance marketing communications if they perceive relevant social influence and technical applicability. Whereas we find empirical support of our model in a US political context, future research should test our model in other cultural and organizational contexts.

This paper addresses a gap between what research addresses in regards to new media and what is happing in practice. This paper adds to the body of research in marketing and other disciplines that explains the integration and use of social media for marketing communications.

The purpose of this research is to investigate industrial marketing communications tools and the role of digital channels. The research draws from the literature on industrial marketing communications to examine its goals and intended utilization in industrial firms.

An empirical multiple case study conducted among six industrial firms examines the current state of digital marketing communications (DMC).

The study gleans three research insights. First, although DMC is one of the most important industrial marketing communication tools, firms have not yet used it to its full potential. Second, firms use DMC to enhance customer relationship communications, support sales and create awareness. Third, firms have not used social media tools as a part of DMC as widely as traditional digital tools.

Although the findings mirror those in DMC literature in general and industrial marketing communications in particular, they put more emphasis on the role of DMC in customer relationship communications and sales support.

DMC provides an opportunity to deliver various marketing objectives, such as creating brand awareness, increasing and supporting sales and improving communication with existing customers. Different DMC tools are required for each of these objectives.

This study is among the first ones examining the rapidly changing communications landscape and the spread of digital channels in industrial marketing communication.

A central theme that has always separated C‐suite executives from communications practitioners – the ability to operate within the parameters of immutable data – is beginning to unravel as uncontrollable external forces challenge traditional business approaches. However, while communicators' skills are being recognized as essential to building and maintaining strong reputations and bottom lines, the importance of data‐driven accountability has by no means dissipated; on the contrary, it has only grown as resources dwindle in today's business climate. This paper's purpose is two‐fold: giving communications executives a roadmap for achieving data‐wielding parity in the C‐suite, and offering senior management teams a process through which they can leverage this function's strategic value to a much greater effect – all by applying techniques drawn from Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology.

The article introduces executives who are not LSS experts – who may even be wary of the concept – to “communications process improvement,” effective LSS methods that can be executed by non‐experts. It details a process for applying communications process improvement (CPI) to various business functions and activities in the context of LSS‐derived procedures.

The article examines the application of CPI to specific organizational activities, including marketing, communications planning and customer service. When applied as a step‐by‐step procedure mirroring that of LSS (where the steps are define, measure, analyze, improve, control), CPI generates constant, cross‐functional awareness of how things should happen, why they're not happening that way now, and how to make sure they are done properly on a continuously improving basis going forward.

Lean Six Sigma is an established business management strategy that seeks to identify and remove inefficiencies in manufacturing processes. While it is well known in this context, there is very little evidence that management teams are applying the same methodologies to more intangible functions within the other departments – specifically, corporate communications. This article offers executives a standard, step‐by‐step process for doing just that, which they can begin implementing today to transform their communications departments into customer‐facing, data‐driven, proactive cultures of excellence, based on accountability and focused on demonstrable results.

The predominant role played by large-scale retailers in consumer goods markets has led to substantial changes in the promotion and advertising flows of companies operating in this sector. Manufacturing companies are in fact investing an increasingly larger share of their resources in communication strategies managed by retailers by way of in-store communications, taking advantage of both traditional and digital media. As a result, besides being a place of purchase, the point of sale has become an environment where customer relationships are being built and developed over time. In this book chapter, we take a closer look at current in-store communications via cutting-edge digital media solutions designed to boost customer experience and brand loyalty. To gain a better understanding of these new forms of communication, we have also conducted a qualitative case study on “The Supermarket of the Future,” a new retail format recently launched by Coop Italia in Milan, using data from different sources, including internal and external document reviews and in-store observations. Overall, this study outlines an innovative customer relationship format consistent with an omni-channel approach and informative in-store communications integrating traditional and new digital media.

Mobile messaging applications (MMAs) have surpassed top social media platforms. Recent and rapid use of MMAs has made it extremely difficult to ignore the existence of customer-to-customer (C2C) mobile information. This study, therefore, aims to expand the knowledge of customers' adoption behaviour of such information.

Through applying and utilizing social support theory (SST) and the information adoption model (IAM), this study introduces a holistic theoretical model, explaining customers' adoption of information derived from MMAs and exploring the antecedents of IAM. Based on the data collected from 305 UK MMA users, this study empirically tests the research model using structural equation modelling estimation.

The results of this study reveal that social support is a key antecedent of information quality and credibility and support IAM in terms of its ability to explain MMAs' information adoption.

The insights are valuable for businesses and marketers to understand customers' mobile communications and be socially support-oriented while developing marketing communication strategies.

The study integrates SST and IAM to improve the understanding of customers' information adoption behaviour. It is the first attempt that establishes that social support is a key antecedent of IAM.

The purpose of this paper is to create a new understanding of industrial business-to-business (B2B) relationships by connecting the theoretical streams of marketing communications and relationship marketing. This study tests how various marketing communication channels and communication quality increase the transformation of customer-perceived value into customer loyalty.

The theoretical framework consists of links between customer-perceived value, marketing communication quality, channel effectiveness, and customer loyalty. The age of the business relationship is also taken into consideration. Empirical testing is based on global survey data (n=121) collected from customers of Finnish manufacturing companies operating in the paper, mineral, and metal-processing industries.

The effects of customer-perceived value on customer loyalty are both direct and indirect, as marketing communications partially mediate this relationship. The customer-perceived effectiveness of various marketing communication channels adds more to loyalty formation than the perceived quality of marketing communications.

Of special interest for marketing practitioners is the channel-specific approach to the effectiveness of marketing communications. Results suggest that personalized channels would be the most important mediators of the effects of perceived value on loyalty and also bring up the possibility of combining personalized direct communication with new cost-effective digital channels.

Relatively little research has examined the mediating role of marketing communications in the relationship between perceived value and loyalty in the B2B context.

The purpose of this study is to establish, drawing upon the indirect effects of customer reactance from an emerging economy perspective, the marketing implications of policy induced Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) in Financial Services.

The study employed a quantitative research approach, relying on data from 517 customers of M&A banks in Ghana. Purposive sampling technique was used in selecting respondents for the study. Hypotheses were tested using a structural equation modelling.

A positive and significant relationship between immersive marketing communication and consumer intention is revealed in the study. The presence of consumer reactance highly influenced the relationship. As a public policy tool, forced mergers and acquisitions was found to increase customer reactance. However, when customers are frequently engaged with relevant and consistent marketing communications through appropriate channels, such reactance would only be partial.

Although some of the information were collected, they were not the main focus of our analysis. We acknowledge, from the sample demographics perspective, the study did not consider certain other confounding factors that could influence customers' decisions to remain or switch such as customers' level of banking, type of account, income level, banking experiences in relation to service fees, online banking etc., as these could also potentially influence customers' reactance. Perhaps these may have to be considered in future studies.

When timely and relevant marketing communications are targeted at the customers who are directly impacted by the M&A process, they would experience reactance, but only partially. This has a range of marketing implications for policy-induced M&A and its impact on consumer intention, reactance and attitudes towards the new entity.

The marketing of financial services literature has been silent on the implications of M&A from a policy induced perspective. This study, therefore, contributes to theory by highlighting that the “destruction” of brand value of the affected firms is relatively high in a policy induced M&A and thus increases the level of customer reactance. This is because a regulator enforced M&A, as public policy, usually generates high public interest and public discourse, leading to a heightened customer reactance. However, when immersive marketing communications are targeted at the customers directly impacted by the M&A, they would experience reactance, but only partially.

This study reviewed three customer-perceived components of integrated marketing communications (IMCs): consistency, interactivity and connectivity, as predictors of positive customer evaluation (product and retail service satisfaction).

The customer data from 260 surveys were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The data were collected from the emerging economy in the Moscow region (Russia).

The results reported that IMC consistency positively impacts product and service satisfaction. However, the effect of IMC interactivity was only significant in the case of service satisfaction. Meanwhile, IMC connectivity positively influenced only product satisfaction.

The study contributes to the marketing communications theory by defining three components of omnichannel IMC. It also adds to the customer behaviour theory by confirming the diverse nature of product and service evaluation. This study focuses on the retail industry.

This research suggests that three components of IMC should be applied together towards enhancing the customer's positive post-purchase evaluation. Meanwhile, consistency enhances product and service satisfaction, interactive impacts satisfaction with the organization and connectivity with the retail service.

The shift toward omnichannel marketing requires a broader perspective on communication integration. This research reports a novelty result of estimating the separate effect of each component of omnichannel IMC (consistency, interactivity and connectivity) on product and service satisfaction.