Marketing Communications Classics

Citation

Martin, B. (2002), "Marketing Communications Classics", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 36 No. 7/8, pp. 951-953. https://doi.org/10.1108/ejm.2002.36.7_8.951.2

The field of marketing communications represents a fertile yet potentially vast domain from which to select classic articles. This book, by FitzGerald and Arnott, represents such an anthology, seeking to present a collection of seminal articles which will be of value to students of marketing communication courses at undergraduate, MBA and postgraduate levels.

After a foreword by Terry Shimp which presents a clear and concise argument for why the book is of value, eight sections of papers are introduced. Each section is prefaced by an introduction by FitzGerald and Arnott explaining the rationale for paper selection. The eight sections covered are:

1. 1.

   (1) integrated marketing communications;

2. 2.

   (2) advertising – creativity and effectiveness;

3. 3.

   (3) advertising – media channel management;

4. 4.

   (4) direct marketing;

5. 5.

   (5) electronic media;

6. 6.

   (6) public relations, publicity and crisis management;

7. 7.

   (7) sales promotion; and

8. 8.

   (8) personal selling.

Upon reading, there are two key strengths of the book which are readily apparent. First, the majority of the articles have been published in the last ten years. While seminal papers from early years are of interest in showing genuine insight at the inception of an idea, and how conceptual thinking has evolved over time, they do run the risk of giving a book a “dated” feel if there is not enough recent material. Furthermore, from a teaching perspective most students like to feel that they are learning cutting edge material so the inclusion of important recent research works well.

Second, a section of papers is included that deals with the Internet, although this is perhaps unsurprising given David Arnott’s recent interesting work in this area. In a similar vein to point one, a potential pitfall of a book of classics is if it has too much of a retrospective focus, thereby ignoring more recent technological developments in the field. Obviously with the Internet’s comparatively recent emergence, and given the research and organisational interest it has generated, it is well suited to a section in a text on marketing communications. Regarding the papers in this section, academic researchers will be familiar with the seminal work of Hoffman and Novak (1996), and Alba et al. (1997) in this field. The other papers in this section are of interest, but perhaps more benefit would have been to include some of the more recent work by researchers such as Deighton, and to draw upon the Journal of Interactive Marketing. Overall though, a strong section.

Likewise, from a teaching perspective the final section on personal selling is useful. This is an area which I feel is at times underrepresented in texts that look at the broader field of communications. Thus, its inclusion here is a strength. Having said that, one might have expected work from the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, such as the work by Wotruba on stages of personal selling.

Equally, for a field which includes so such a wide variety of research, the sections on advertising appear to represent a particular view. To explain, these sections adopt a strong practitioner focus, more akin to the Journal of Advertising Research than the Journal of Consumer Research. Indeed, there are five works from the former journal, and none from the latter included in the advertising sections. Thus, works by Mitchell, Keller, Batra, and research on the states of consumers that exist when people are exposed to advertisements and making sense of them, such as mood (e.g. Gardener) are not included. The apparent exception, a paper by Jaffe and Berger, represents a surprising choice for gender effects, given other papers such as Meyers‐Levy (1988) on sex roles, and Meyers‐Levy and Sternthal (1991) on gender and differing elaboration levels. The authors justify this perspective at the outset in their introduction, by saying that “a need for currency, coverage and practicality” was an important criterion for paper selection derived from a similar concern expressed by students. Fair enough, but the result still does appear to be more suitable for use with MBAs than postgraduates. If considered for use with postgraduates, a supplement of theoretical papers on these issues would probably be required.

On the other hand, a clear effort has been made throughout the book to include research from other cultural perspectives than simply the North American school. For example, there are studies by Marshall and Na (1994) on advertising agency selection, for the channel management section, and studies by Fletcher for direct marketing that include a New Zealand and UK view respectively.

The book is also well formatted. The thesis section style where papers are represented with bold numbers (e.g. 6.2) in large font work well. This may seem a minor point but personally, if viewed as a reference text as might be expected of an anthology, then this format avoids constantly having to consult the index for page numbers.

Overall, FitzGerald and Arnott should be applauded for providing a book of this nature. The result is a useful reference text, and one that makes a welcome contribution to the field of marketing communications.