Intergrated Marketing Communication
In this modern marketing age, consumers begin to take utilize the technological advancement in order to demand and express their point of view on a particular product or service. As a result, online shopping, product reviews or company online surveys are just a click away. Social network and other types of web-based channels have created a significant impact on how consumers communicate with organization. This can be illustrated as a random consumer with several negative tweets about the service of a restaurant, along with a video blog and a facebook status update can create more harm to a brand than a well-planned marketing campaign. Social media has clearly provided the consumers with extraordinary power to raise their voice with organization. This particular communication platform also highlights the significance and practicality of Duncan’s communication model whilst building up a new marketing communication environment. Furthermore, social platform can be seen as a perfect venue where the consumer’s segment continue to grow and feels comfortable in sharing ideas, opinions, interests and personal experiences.
Real-life application
Organizations are taking a more consumer-centric approach and monitoring their marketing activities to suit the way consumers seek for product or service. In fact, with the transparent nature, together with the size of the social media and citizen journalism population, businesses are able to monitor and measure what is being said about their products and services on the above platforms as well as taking this opportunity to further accumulating repositories of uninhibited customer initiated communication (Scott, 2010). These communication platforms provide information that assists organization to better understand who their target consumers are in conjunction with their needs and wants, and enable marketers in uncovering changes in relevant marketplace as well as allowing for more effective efficient and dynamic marketing strategies. An example of this is the Apple iwatch whereby online consumers communicate with other consumers via uploading a quantitative data regarding the heart beat measurement activities that are recorded via the iwatch device. This type of communication can be linked to social media platform that allow friends and followers to view and comment on this information. Apple then uses this information to formulate certain business strategies to help the company with a direction in the future as well as improving that product based on the collected information.
Duncan’s model of communication and the digital technology indeed has the important implications on the relationship between businesses and consumers. Digital technology can be referred as social media platform not only provide organization with relevant databases about products, services and consumers, but also an ideal medium to develop consumer relationship management. With an effort of growing further, organization also aim to establish a relationship with consumers through affinities and customized communication channels. According to Duncan (2005), businesses are beginning to realize that building up the relationships based on trust is more likely to increase the financial results. In the light of this, businesses are using social media and citizen journalism to product positive PR while reducing the operation allocated to traditional media. By changing the way consumers seek information and many advantages of social media, it is imperative for businesses to participate in the digital communication era as an active member and listeners and together develop better relationships with consumers and stakeholders