Speaking with one voice : integrated marketing communication from a Swedish retail perspective

In today’s global society, marketers are faced with the difficult task of becoming more effective with their promotion and at the same time they have less money at their disposal. Moreover, it is also more difficult for companies to reach their target group due to the technology advancements and due to the increased number of competitors at the market, therefore, companies are forced to become even more effective. In order for companies to manage the increased effectiveness, they need to find their own specific niche and Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is one way. The purpose with IMC is to integrate all promotional tools and have a client perspective where companies recognize the fact that all messages have impact on customer’s overall impression of the company. Nevertheless, it does not matter if the message originates from an advertisement or any other promotional tool. The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of how Integrated Marketing Communication is used strategically within the Swedish retail industry. To be able to answer this research purpose we made us of a case study- Kappahl, where we conducted a telephone interview were we looked into the IMC process, the non-personal promotional tools and on how the benefits of IMC can be described. We found that the IMC process is not utilized in the way that theory suggests, additionally, we also discovered that some promotional tools were favored. All things considered, we believe that Kappahl is very successful in their IMC implementation.Validerat; 20101217 (root