Utilizing integrated marketing communications to advance purchase intention of customers by improving digital marketing content and channels
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2018
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Marketing
Language
en
Pages
105
Series
Abstract
Modern customers and their widespread use of digital media offer new opportunities for companies to gather revenues. Companies have therefore started to invest increasingly in digital growth and visibility (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Trainor (2012) stated that customers are no longer satisfied with only being passive targets of marketing actions, but want instead to serve as co-creators of value, engage with the company and connect with other customers having valuable insights (Trainor, 2012; Garretson, 2008). To succeed in customer empowered world companies need a holistic and customer-centric communication strategy such as integrated marketing communications (IMC) to attract potential customers with a relevant and consistent message across channels. According to Wymbs (2011), digital marketing is actually the most effective when integrated with traditional channels such as face-to-face, the phone or direct mail. The theoretical model in this thesis is based on a combination of the four pillars of integrated marketing communications by Kliathcko (2008) and the AIDAS-model, which can be used in planning customer-centric advertising activities as it refers to a generalized customer purchasing journey, including following stages: awareness, interest, desire, action and satisfaction (Rawal, 2013). The objective of this thesis is to provide understanding of how companies can trigger purchase intention of customers with integrated digital marketing by understanding the values and channel and content preferences of customers. The main focus is on channel and content pillars of IMC. According to the literature review, previous IMC and value research are mainly focused on retail or product context. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to bring insight into the service context. This research is provided for the needs of Fortum HorsePower and collecting the data was implemented by interviewing existing customers of Fortum HorsePower-service, which is the main limitation in this study. As the IMC aims at providing customer-centric communications, it was a rational choice to collect data by interviewing customers. Altogether, ten in-depth interviews were carried out to obtain understanding of the research phenomena. The findings suggested that channel choices and content may affect the purchase intention of customers. It seems that the information needs and preferred channels may vary depending on the stage of purchasing journey. The interviewees named content topics they find interesting and also values that guide their decision-making, and these topics and values should be utilized in content creation and customer value proposition to provide attractive and relevant advertising. Several interviewees stated that they look for user reviews on digital channels or call their acquaintances as pre-purchase investigation and actually more than half of the interviewees could make the purchase based on reviews. Websites, email and Facebook were the most preferred digital channels among the interviewees, but despite the digital context of the research, traditional phone calls and face-to-face meetings with sales representatives are wished for. The theoretical contribution of this research provides understanding of channel choices and content topics that may advance purchase intention towards action. Future research could deepen the understanding of IMC at different stages of the customer journey, which would help to customize advertising and to use attribution modeling to understand the effectiveness of different customer touch points.Description
Thesis advisor
Mitronen, LasseLindblom, Arto
Keywords
Integrated Marketing Communications, IMC, AIDAS-model, digital marketing, marketing channels, advertising, advertising content, customer value