Running head: How does IMC differ from mass marketing?

How IMC differs from mass marketing

Integrated marketing communications can be defined as the harmonization of various marketing tools to achieve maximum informational and convincing impact to consumers (William, 2008). On the other hand, mass marketing main focus is the sales transaction, with the goal to sell a single product to as many customers as possible (Frank, 1996).

Integrated marketing communications seeks to set the goals and objectives of the company’s promotional approach with the overall organizational objectives and marketing goals in mind based on these objectives, various elements of the strategy are incorporated these are: personal selling, advertising publicity and sales promotion into an integrated communications plan (David, 2009). In mass marketing the company’s objective is simply to save money by producing a product collectively and marketing it amass.

Although integrated marketing communication requires sufficient investment to allow for stretching or maximizing the overall budget in promotion it is able to capture the interest of a large number of consumers and it creates competition in market sections (Paul, 2004). Whereas, mass marketing there is great savings when it comes to promotions however, (Gerber, 2008) the advertisements usually are boring and there is risk of competitors taking over divisions.

Mass Marketing can be used successfully in agricultural products, for example all apples are the same and competitors cannot really categories the market into different sectors (Gerber, 2008), whereas the target group does not need to be researched in detail. Integrated marketing seeks to implement the marketing mix which is the grouping of the four Ps; product, price, place and promotion in such a way that consumers will be more acclimatized to choosing your product over the competitors.

In conclusion Integrated Marketing communication looks at the marketing procedure from the perspective of the customer and requires a lot of effort set in promotional activities targeted at a market sector. While in mass marketing the marketing process seeks to appeal a large market with a single marketing tactic. When we compare this marketing strategy to IMC we can conclude that this kind of marketing tactic is outdated since customers don’t have the same needs and their ideas and perceptions on a product vary.

References

David, K. (2009). Contemporary Business 2009 update. New York: Cengage Learning .

Frank, D. (1996). Customer-responsive management: the flexible advantage. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers.

Gerber, B. (2008). Consumer Behaviour. Cape Town: Pearson South Africa.

Paul, S. (2004). Marketing communications: an integrated approach . Virginia : Kogan Page Limited.

William, P. (2008). Marketing. New York: Cengage Learninc, Inc.