Communication Theory and Marketing

One of the central preoccupations of marketing management concerned with media selection, or in media/advertising research is the development of effective persuasive communications which will successfully accomplish some marketing objective. Unfortunately two of the major problems of marketing management have been to determine which persuasive communications will be most effective, in advance of use, and to measure to what extent the persuasive communication has been successful in achieving its marketing objective. This chapter is addressed to an analysis of the body of theory originating predominantly in social psychology and communications research, which has been applied to the two problems identified here. First, however, a definition.