The Evolution of Integrated Marketing Communications: The Customer-driven Marketplace

This book reviews, updates and enhances the basic concepts surrounding the academic theory and practice of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC). Since the introduction of IMC in the late 1980s, the concept has spread around the world. In that expansion, many authors have written about IMC; practitioners have adopted and adapted the concept to fit their own market situations. Further, dramatic changes have occurred in the technologies used in marketing communications which consumers have accepted and employed in their consumption of marketers' messages and incentives. Thus, there have been dramatic changes in how IMC was initially envisioned and how it has developed over time.

This book identifies and discusses these changes, how they have occurred and what they mean going forward for all types of marketers around the world. Thus, IMC, and indeed integration of communications at all organisational levels is an essential in the 21st century organisations.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Communications.

Don E. Schultz, Emeritus Professor-in-Service, The Medill School, Northwestern University is generally acknowledged as the founding father of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC). He was the founding editor of the Journal of Direct Marketing, has researched and written extensively in the trade and academic press, while publishing 24 books and over 150 journal articles.

Charles H. Patti, James M. Cox Professor of Customer Experience Management, University of Denver, and Professor Emeritus, Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia). He is the author of ten books and dozens of articles, book chapters, and cases on integrated marketing communication, marketing management, and customer experience. He serves on thirteen editorial boards and was named the Marketing Educator of the Year by the Marketing Educators’ Association.

Philip J. Kitchen is Dean of the Faculty of Business and Professor of Marketing at Brock University in Canada. Previously he has held Professorships at Hull University and Queen’s University, UK. He is the Founder and current Editor of the Journal of Marketing Communications (Taylor & Francis). He has published 13 books, and over 100 academic journal articles. He is also Associate Professor of Marketing at ESC Rennes, France.