Pushing and Pulling

Chesterfield suggests that the traditional hierarchical model of planning which places communications alongside the other marketing mix variables is due for a ......

All marketing communication is not elevated to a strategic role, though; a distinction exists between tactical communications supporting individual marketing initiatives and strategic communications that inform all of a company's activities ..... from the highest levels.

Communication is qualitatively different from the other ingredients of the marketing mix; increasingly, the traditional marketing functions of price, product and distribution are hygiene factors, while communications is becoming a higher ..... tool.

This is especially true for companies with ..... brand values, but it likely means a change in how every marketing department sees itself.

More and more, corporations need to pursue strategic vertical integration, speaking with a single voice from the shop shelf right up to the CEO's office, even though this realignment might ..... the latter's former preeminent role.

Push' strategies give incentives to distributors and retailers to stock and push their products, but this metaphor ..... the received marketing wisdom of finding and satisfying a need, not imposing the product on the customer.

On the other hand, pull' strategies utilize consumer-directed techniques like sales ..... and advertising to stimulate demand in an effort to pull the product or the service through the channel to the consumer.

Pull and push strategies are not mutually exclusive; for example, an advertising campaign pointed directly at the consumer will be viewed by intermediaries, which will presumably ..... their confidence in stocking the product advertised.

The likelihood is that a vertically-integrated approach to communications will incorporate a ..... of the demarcation lines between the intermediary and the marketer.

However, the staff responsible for each kind of strategy are likely to work independently in most companies, and this situation is probably the main barrier to effective vertical integration of the sort ..... by Chesterfield.