Content area
Full Text
1. Introduction
The introduction of integrated marketing communication (IMC) with its concept of helping senders to speak with one voice was a step forward in the development of marketing communication. However, what remained unclear was whether the receiver, such as a current or potential customer, recognized what was communicated as one voice, or recognized it as different voices, or recognized it at all. For this reason, in an earlier article (Finne and Grönroos, 2009), we suggested a relationship communication model, where the focus on how the voice of a sender is perceived is shifted from the sender to the receiver. In the present article, we take this a step further by introducing the communication-in-use concept, which is based on the value that emerges for a customer of messages sent by a communicator. We define communication-in-use as:
[…] the customer’s integration and sense making of all messages from any source, company-driven or stemming from other sources, the customer perceives as communication, forming value-in-use for him/her for a specific purpose.
Based on this, IMC is developed into outside-in-oriented customer-integrated marketing communication (CIMC).
Indeed, there has been a call for a more customer-oriented view of IMC (Schultz and Barnes, 1999; Schultz, 2003, 2006; Kitchen et al., 2004a, 2004b; Shimp, 2007; Finne and Grönroos, 2009). Schultz (1996) was among the first to argue in favour of this. Subsequent attempts to implement such a view included Finne and Grönroos’ (2009) relationship communication model. This model addresses the changing view of customer activity in the contemporary world, which is considered one reason for this call for a change in emphasis (Finne and Strandvik, 2012). Lately, changes in the range of channels, use of media and technical development have been rapid, with customers using several devices online regularly. The customer has access to multiple forms of media and can interact with several of these simultaneously, choosing or rejecting sources, receiving and sending messages and being simultaneously active in some media and passive in others. In addition, the customer is influenced by several forms of social media and, as demonstrated by relationship communication, by a host of other sources (Duncan and Moriarty, 1997) and factors, such as situational ones that are internal and external to the customer (Mick and Buhl, 1992)...