MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY

Marketing Communications Strategy

Marketing Communications Strategy

Introduction

SME's are a significant proportion (99.9 per cent) of companies in the UK (Department of Trade and Industry Small Business Service, 2005). This means that they make a significant contribution to the economy, globalisation, employment and innovation (PIU and SBS, 2001). On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that the business success of SME's might be enhanced through greater attention to marketing issues (Blankson and Stokes, 2002; Brooksbank et al., 2004). Small firms are perceived to be valuable to the economy, but they have been shown to have inherent weaknesses with respect to capitalisation and marketing awareness and practice, which make them vulnerable (McCarton-Quinn and Carson, 2003; Kirby, 2003).

Literature review

There is considerable research evidence that suggests that marketing in small- to medium-sized businesses is different, and that to benchmark or even discuss marketing in these firms in conventional marketing terms is unlikely to generate any real insights into how SME's engage with their customers, find out about their competitors and other factors affecting their marketplaces, and develop their marketing mix. This literature review summarises this literature in order to offer a contextual backdrop for this research. This involves reviewing the literature on SME marketing, and the related literature on entrepreneurial marketing. Further, as a foundation for the research design, approaches to the measurement of marketing in SME's are reviewed, and Carson's (1990) model is proposed as a framework for design and analysis in this work. The literature review concludes with a summary of research on hotel marketing.

There is considerable evidence which shows that small business success (Smith, 1990) and survival (Blankson and Stokes, 2002; Brooksbank et al., 1999, 2004) is dependent on the firms marketing efficiency, with many authors citing lack of marketing awareness as a key cause of company failure (Fuller, 1994; Gadenne, 1994; Hogarth-Scott et al., 1996; McLarty, 1998; Murdoch et al., 2001). Several authors argue the importance of planning for SME's since it clarifies management thinking, provides a sense of direction and introduces a marketing perspective to activities such as setting objectives, motivating and directing staff, establishing priorities and improving the quality of market knowledge (Analoui and Karami, 2003; Carson and Cromie, 1989; Hill and McGowan, 1999). On the other hand, there is an ever strengthening recognition that the formal approach to marketing planning that is embedded in marketing theory and promoted by marketing educators is not appropriate for many SME's (Lewis et al., 2001; Blankson and Omar, 2002; Hill, 2001a, b; McCarton-Quinn and Carson, 2003).

This research focuses on marketing in small hotels. This is a particularly important sector in which to explore marketing strategies. Hotels, and specifically small hotels, make a significant contribution to the economy, yet in common with other small business are very dependent on the owner/managers expertises and aspirations. As services, hotels exhibit the characteristics of services, such as intangibility, inseparability, variability, perishability, and lack of transference of ownership (Fisk and Tansuhaj, 1985; Kotler et al., 2002; Lovelock, 1983), which impact on both their ...