IMC: a consumer psychological perspective

IMC: a consumer psychological perspective Christopher Hackley Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Oxford Brookes University School of Business, Oxford, UK Philip Kitchen Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

The concept of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is receiving increasing attention in many academic and practitioner media, primarily from an organisational perspective. Yet, influence of integrated communications programmes on consumers is difficult to establish in the literature. Consideration of IMC seems unpromising unless the concept itself can be grounded within a psychological perspective of consumer cognition. This paper is an attempt to conceptually explore these concerns. The paper commences with a discussion of broad issues facing contemporary research in marketing communications and strongly suggests that multidisciplinary approaches may offer greater insight than unidisciplinary ones. The authors then briefly, and selectively, introduce questions concerning the psychological assumptions underpinning theoretical work in marketing communications and speculate on implications these assumptions may have for a consumer psychology of IMC. The final strand of the argument considers the cognitivist notion of social cognition and contrasts this with the social constructionist view with regard to theoretical implications both views may have for a psychology of integrated marketing communications. We conclude by suggesting possible interpretations with practical implications for marketing communications practitioners.

Marketing Intelligence & Planning 16/3 [1998] 229–235 © MCB University Press [ISSN 0263-4503]

Introduction IMC – a broader contextual approach Conceptual discussion in marketing communications usually takes place within what appears to be a mist of indeterminacy concerning constructs and conceptual boundaries of the field, notably because many theoretical foundations are borrowed from other older disciplines within the social sciences. For example, marketing communications may or may not be ethically sound (Hackley and Kitchen, 1997a); may, or may not be an increasing form of social pollution (Hackley and Kitchen, 1998; Kitchen, 1994); may or may not be increasingly integrative as an organisational function (Phelps and Johnson, 1996; Schultz, 1991; Schultz et al., 1994; Kitchen and Schultz, 1997); and, may or may not be in need of radical theoretical and practical reconceptualisation (Buttle, 1995; Kitchen, 1993). One thing, however, can be uncontroversially agreed upon concerning marketing communications. That is, there is a lot of it about! Marketing communications appears to be the main bulwark of sustainable competitive advantage as firms move toward the twentyfirst century (Kitchen and Schultz, 1997). Consumers in most parts of the developed world are faced continuously with a multiplicity of potentially intrusive (mainly irrelevant) marketing communications (Kitchen, 1994). In respect of message appeals for more consumption, and, in the variety of available media technologies, this aspect of daily repetitive experience is historically unprecedented. From a managerial context, response to this apparently cluttered and amorphous marketing environment has led many organisations to the desirable integration of their communications efforts under the umbrella of one strategic marketing communications function – namely integrated marketing communications. The logic of this strategic move would seem to rest partly on assumptions concerning the desire for organisational influence of consumer perceptions. If contemporary consumers are subject to more marketing communications interventions, and if these interventions are increasingly intrusive, partly since they are

carried on an increasing variety of forms of marketing communications media technologies (Dawson, 1996), a perceived need for more managerial control of organisational communications seems to rest upon the implied possibility of more or greater influence over consumer perceptions. The drive for organisational integration of marketing communications contributes to greater influence over what is perceived and/or decoded in relation to consumer knowledge organisation structures. However, this response, which intuitively “makes sense”, rests on unexamined assumptions concerning the psychology of marketing communications, and in particular upon an embryonic consumer psychology of integrated marketing communications. It is worth asking: just what might these assumptions be; and, how can they be articulated? One avenue of exploration is to draw upon social psychology to discuss possible conceptualisations of marketing communications. Before doing that, however, it is necessary to clarify the legitimacy of this perspective by developing an argument in favour of multidisciplinarity in management research.

Multidisciplinarity in marketing and management research In attempting to explain the influence of integrated marketing communications on consumer perceptions and behaviour it is necessary to tackle psychological concepts. As stated previously, marketing is a synthetic discipline and rests upon older disciplines in the social sciences. For example, the corpus of managerially-orientated theory on communications in marketing derives its assumptions principly from psychology. There are, however, questions concerning contemporary relevance and explanatory power of many popular assumptions. These questions have been addressed in a number of alternative ways of conceptualising the psychology of marketing communications (see for example, Buttle, 1996; van Raaj, 1989). If it is accepted that there are reasonable grounds for a critical reappraisal of the psychology of marketing communications within academic managerial marketing this begs the questions of which psychological concepts and

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theories can offer marketing researchers explanatory frameworks within which to explore the possible impact of IMC? This question clearly has an empirical dimension, since consumer behaviour or attitudes in response to marketing communications can, with varying degrees of credibility, be measured (IPA, 1997). However, as Wittgenstein (1968) noted, psychology itself has empirical method and also conceptual confusion, rather like academic management. The conceptual issues of a field may, on Wittgenstein’s reasoning, constitute as important an area for research on a rationalist model of research as the empirical studies which flow from often unstated conceptual assumptions, assuming that thought is prior to action. Management research in general has been subject to a call for greater multidisciplinarity in research[1], partially on the grounds that unidisciplinarity can result in intellectual solipsism. This result, according to critical management theorists, tends to afflict a number of functional management areas, among them marketing communications[2]. Multidisciplinarity is suggested as a cure for potential solipsism in the sense that a reflexive awareness of alternative interpretations by researchers and theorists can reduce the tendency for academic work in functional management areas such as marketing to seem logically self-confirming because of unstated assumptions (Hackley, 1998a). Multidisciplinarity opens the door for psychology of marketing communications to be examined through a variety of theoretical perspectives which are not necessarily pre-eminent within the marketing communications disciplinary field. These theoretical perspectives directly inform the normative dimension of management research which, in this case, is concerned with the question of whether marketing communications really ought to be integrated within the organisation, and, if so, how such communications can best be designed for maximal effect. Following, we explore a number of views of the psychological assumptions underlying popular treatments of marketing communications and this leads on to the discussion of possible alternatives.

Marketing communications theory and IMC Van Raaj (1989), in emphasising the importance of primary affective response to marketing communications, alludes to the pre-eminent linear processing model which is often found underlying academic research in marketing communications, advertising, and consumer behaviour. Admittedly,

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van Raaij is tackling an old subject which views consumers as information processors. While this paradigm is an elegant synthesis of economics’ rational man and cognitive psychology’s metaphorical model of man as a computer (Belk, 1987), it simply has proven illusory in illuminating the mysteries of consumer behaviour. Doubtless, the model of information processing has been highly influential in mainstream experimental psychology, but relies overmuch on the “man as machine” metaphor to construct explanatory schemes concerning how communications work. For van Raaj (1989) the weakness of this once governing metaphor lies in emphasising rational message appeals based on knowledge or cognition. Despite the recognisable paucity in the approach, Buttle (1995) also alluded to this continuing tendency to conceive of consumers as rational information processors who exist in a social vacuum and who process communications serially. A particular limiting characteristic of this assumption is the tendency to place knowledge as something logically, and temporally, prior to affective reaction or more succinctly to see affective response as being capable of being measured rationally, for example by Likert scales (Hirschmann and Holbrook, 1982; Valentine and Evans, 1993). This approach, reflected in common models of the communications process such as hierarchy of effects, implies that the most important features of marketing communication content are rational appeals based on product features. If knowledge is the prime mover in consumer reaction to advertising or other forms of marketing communication, then favourable product information would seem to be the most powerful element of message content. Buttle (1995) further went on to review a number of texts primarily associated with marketing communications reading lists. His review serves to describe a broad process of theoretical adjustment which has moved over time from a naive position which Schramm (1971) described as a “bullet theory of communication” and Klapper (1960) as the “hypodermic effect”, towards a theoretical perspective which conceives of communication as a process which is socially mediated and concerns the construction of meaning. The use and interpretation of communication theory in marketing communication was criticised by Buttle (1995) on several grounds. For example, the dominant behavioural orientation of much theorising is criticised on the grounds that the individual may not be regarded as an appropriate unit of analysis given that “marketing communication has effects at the household, family, institutional and cultural

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levels” (Buttle, 1995). Further criticism is based on the assumption of passivity in the audience (notwithstanding the stated movement away from this position by communications theorists), the focus on individual messages to the exclusion of possible effects deriving from the totality of messages (Kitchen, 1994), and the focus on the source’s intent based on message content. The general, but recognisably emergent, case made by Buttle and others is that marketing communications theory has not kept up to date with developments in its informing field of communications theory, and by implication with psyschology. Notwithstanding irresolvable and potentially circular arguments about what constitutes the “mainstream” in academic marketing communications and whether there are genuine grounds for criticising it, there are a number of approaches which might offer the possibility of insight into a consumer psychology of IMC while eschewing, or at least reducing, the influence of the linear information-processing model of cognition. For example, some theorists have examined the way consumers might construct meaning from the symbolic content of advertisements through a semiotic perspective (for example, Hackley, 1998c). The authors have taken a phenomenological perspective on marketing communications in a discussion on ethical issues in the field (as reported in Hackley and Kitchen, 1997a). The phenomenological perspective takes, as its starting point, subjective experience as it appears to the subject. The discussion referred to examined possible logical implications of this perspective for ethics in marketing communications, given that the notion of ethics presupposes a form of rationality which may not be present in the phenomenological experience of the contemporary consumer. This theme is reflected in the present discussion, since the same basic assumption (of rationality) may be present in many models of marketing communications. The question to be addressed here is partly concerned with the rationality of the contemporary consumer. Is this a form of rationality which is meaningfully represented by models of communication in marketing communications? Are there alternatives with which to conceptualise integrated approaches in terms of potential consumer effects? What might these conceptualisations imply for marketing communications praxis? In order to begin to examine these questions the discussion will turn now to a consideration of the idea of social cognition and its possible relation to IMC.

Social cognition and IMC The term “social cognition” implies several things. Firstly, it implies a cognitivist position in psychology: that is, cognition is taken as something which takes place in a social vacuum but which is mediated through a social context. Thus, individual reasoning may be faulty because of misinterpretation and miscategorisation. This tendency to misattribution might, for example, entail a consumer wanting a product because of the way they perceive a celebrity who endorses it. The meanings of “celebrity”, “authority”, “success” and so on are are socially mediated but constructed by the individual consumer. Thus, while individuals construct their meanings internally, privately, they are highly influenced by the social context. Individual myths can sustain forms of social action such as particular forms of consumer behaviour and these myths may be socially mediated, on this view, but meaning is constructed by the experiencer. This general position accords with that taken latterly by the leading communications theorists but which has not, according to Buttle (1995), been widely adopted in popular marketing communications texts. The power of personal myths has been alluded to by the experimental psychologist Aronson (1995) with respect to the way people rationalise their actions and make sense of their world. Aronson (1995) draws examples from the world of marketing communications to illustrate the principle of cognitive economy, i.e. the philosophical problem of categorisation. For example, consumers may try to cut through competing challenges to their identity from the multiplicity of advertising exhortations by taking what he calls “cognitive shortcuts”. This can be manifested in attributing associations of technological integrity and reliability to a product because a middle-aged man wearing glasses and white coat is pictured holding it. This effect, still seen daily on TV and in press (for example soap powder) advertisements, is based on (private, but socially derived) meanings concerning gender, science, power and authority. The same general principle is seen at work with celebrity endorsement and, in a slightly different way, product placement. With celebrity endorsement, the consumer, faced with the daily barrage of marketing communications, tries to make sense of their world as a consumer by attending to a particular message because it is delivered by a sporting or film celebrity with whom the consumer identifies in some way. The consumer is constructing meaning here from the message by

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association with the message context, i.e. the message emerges from the celebrity. Consumers probably would not argue that any resultant product purchase takes place on rational grounds. Most people know very well that celebrities are paid large sums to endorse products which they do not necessarily use. Nevertheless, the association of the product with the celebrity seems to have a powerful effect in making the message meaningful, as for example with the apparently highly successful BT campaign in the UK in which film star Bob Hoskins told people to talk more on the telephone[3]. They did. In the case of product placement (i.e. the prominent use of branded products and brand symbols in film and television productions), the social context of the message is perhaps broader and less identified with an individual, but nevertheless the association with a film and the stars of the film gives a message, or in the case of a product placement, a symbol, meaning for the consumer. Cigarettes, for example, have received more than their fair share of product placement in Hollywood films over the years. This (past) association of cigarettes with glamour, sex and toughness may be speculated upon as a salient variable in the continued popularity of cigarette smoking in spite of mounting evidence of significant damage to health. On a rational level, cigarette smoking cannot be regarded as sexy, glamorous etc. Even enthusiastic smokers would usually scorn this suggestion, just as a telephone user would be likely to scorn suggestions that they use the telephone more because they want to be approved of by Bob Hoskins. As an explanatory device, the rational basis of product appeals in these few examples seems difficult to sustain. An explanatory scheme for the process of the consumer relation to integrated marketing communications must, it seems, look at the construction of meaning from messages by consumers as a nonrational, unarticulated process which, nevertheless, can be explained by recourse to rational, articulated schemes. The cognitivist perspective on social cognition may offer some insights in the reinterpretation of consumer behaviour as resulting from conceptual miscategorisation. The behaviourist stance also offers some penetration into how this process of irrational attribution may be learned through conditioning and reinforcement. However, the cognitivist perspective has its limitations in that individual reasoning is taken as something essentially private. In this respect it seems to accord with the naive view of linear information-processing cognition. The data input, socially mediated

in the sense that notions like celebrity, authority, science and status are social constructions, is nevertheless processed serially and privately on the cognitivist social cognition model. In order to seek a more conceptually sophisticated elaboration on this principle we now turn to a brief examination of social constructionism, and speculate on some possible implications this perspective in social psychology may have for a consumer psychology of IMC.

The social constructionist perspective and IMC Undoubtedly, an all embracing social constructionist perspective would eschew the notion of private constructions of meaning altogether. Meanings, on the social constructionist perspective, are social, rather than individual (Bruner, 1990; Buttny, 1993). Personal identity is constructed through the social world, and meanings are constructed as adjuncts to the sense of personal identity. The sense of personhood is seen as something embedded in culture (Mauss 1985). The notion of selfhood has no meaning when abstracted from the social matrix. Consumers partake in meanings in their various social discourses. The social constructionist viewpoint holds that, in a most profound sense, consumers are social and not merely individual beings. This view might have implications for the way marketing communications specialists conceptualise and design marketing communications. Speculatively, if marketers were to abandon the assumptions of linear information processing, private consumer rationality and serial message decoding, then the advertising and marketing communications designer must reconsider the nature of their task to a significant extent. It is clear that, within this perspective, a marketing communication cannot be conceived of as a “message” which is categorically independent from both the encoder and the decoder and which is “transmitted” through neutral media “to” the target individual (Hackley, 1998d). Indeed, if this way of conceiving of marketing communications ever had a rationale in psychology, it would have been lost with the demise of behaviourism. Further logical arguments seem to flow from this proposition. The assumption of managerialism which underlies so much theory in management, and in marketing, and which carries implications of power and control, would seem more difficult to establish on a social constructionist basis. That is, how can one be said to be exercising a form of social influence through marketing

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communications if the marketing communication symbolising an exchange between the organisation and the consumer is seen as a mutually constructed meaning? It would seem that, if the communication is to be considered meaningful by other social actors, then organisations consider their communications from within a perspective which shares some mutuality with the consumer often referred to as an overlapping field of experience, which fields themselves are socially constructed over time. This line of argument seems consistent with the broader notion that marketing, and marketing communications, can serve functions which are benign rather than purely persuasive. That is, marketing, and marketing communications, is the business of meanings. On this argument, the consumer is a partner in the construction of meaning, exactly the form of argument which can be used to justify the development of IMC. There are aspects to this view which may appear unsatisfying to some. For example, the ethical concerns of value are difficult to ascertain from within a constructionist position of conceptual framework (not moral) relativism. If socially constituted meanings are the currency of consumer selfhood, what is the role of value? What is the meaning of value? However, notwithstanding these ethical questions, the social constructionist view would seem to make theoretical issues in marketing communications more conceptually complicated (than the common naïve encode-message-decode communication model of the texts) while also opening up some possibilities for a more thorough understanding of how the concept of IMC might be developed. One possible view is that the social constructionist perspective might be seen to legitimise the concept of IMC. If meanings are socially constituted, then it becomes more difficult to see consumer behaviour in terms of an elicited “response” to a “targeted” “message”. The organisation as a social entity might see a rationale in bringing its communications under one managerial function, i.e. “integrating” them, the better to co-ordinate, monitor and control the constructed meanings which emerge from organisational communication. On the other hand, if a particular message has a very powerful meaning it might transcend all other influences. Attempts to measure advertising success are based on the idea that a single communication campaign can be isolated from other aspects of organisational communication in the consumer’s environment, as with the Bob Hoskins BT campaign mentioned above. There is apparent evidence (for example from the IPA) that single

advertising communication campaigns (linked to other integrated facets) can work to change the fortunes of a company. For example, Levi Strauss and Co’s fortunes changed dramatically for the better in the 1980s once they moved away from benefit (i.e. cognitive) – oriented communications, to a focus on social discourse, for example in the launderette advertisement, and more recently with the Mermaids series of integrated communications. However, such examples, succeed, albeit temporarily, because they offer meanings which are more powerful then those constructed through other sources, whilst linked inextricably to socially constructed meanings, rather than product benefits. Thus, creatively powerful promotional campaigns may be conceived as something which can slice through the cognitive debris of other half remembered campaigns, memories of product trials and popular myths, to create a new or more persuasive sense of meaning for consumers. This possibility could be seen as an argument supporting the advertisers’ call for “creativity” in advertising, if creativity is seen as the elusive but tangible capability of designing communications which offer the possibility of being constructed as especially powerful meanings by consumers. However, on this argument, the rationale for the integration of organisational communications seems stronger rather than weaker since the prospect of greater managerial influence in relation to consumer perceptions (constructed meanings) through integration may be advantageous if a single, creatively integrative campaign can offer consumers constructed meanings so powerful that they work in overcoming impediments occasioned by other environmental sources of meaning. If “creativity” can be an explanatory shorthand for the design of communications which are socially constructed as powerful meanings, and if organisational control can be counterproductive to creativity (e.g. Paper and Johnson, 1997), then seeking greater managerial control over communications output might serve to render organisational communications more, rather then less meaningful, to consumers.

Concluding comments This paper has explored the idea of IMC with regard to the underpinning psychological assumptions which could be called upon to help give IMC an operational rationale, from a consumer standpoint. The discussion has reviewed some theoretical developments in marketing communications and has

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suggested that contemporary psychological positions on social constructionism might be under-represented in marketing communications theory. Some possible implications for the concept of IMC which may be entailed in the social constructionist perspective have been discussed. These implications may be taken to imply that IMC has a rationale in consumer psychology from two perspectives: the first is dependent on whether consumers construct their meanings from within a flow of organisational communications over time as individuals; the second on whether they do so through one creatively inspired communication which finds some metaphorical basis for the construction of a particularly powerful sense of meaning, and which transcends all other sources of meaning in relation to the object concerned (brand, organisation) in the consumer’s social environment. These speculations are offered as initial contributions to the reflexivity of marketing communications practitioners who, in designing organisational communications and in arguing their creative case to clients and colleagues, can draw upon the richer conceptual vocabulary of sociological social psychology to supplement the cognitivist model which has proved enduring yet empirically problematic

Notes 1 See British Journal of Management (1997), Vol. 8 No. 1. 2 See references to Buttle (1995) for marketing communications critique. For critical perspectives on mainstream academic marketing, see for example, Hackley, 1997a, 1997b; Hackley and Kitchen, 1997b; Hunt, 1991; O’Shaughnessy, 1992. For critical perspectives on academic management in general see, for example, British Journal of Management, Vol. 8 No. 1, 1997, Grey, 1996; Nodoushani, 1996. 3 IPA Conference (1997), London, UK

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