ABSTRACT
The term ‘promotion’ refers to the range of methods used by an organisation to communicate with actual and potential customers in order to evoke an attitudinal position and an appropriate behavioural response. A commonly used alternative description of this activity is ‘marketing communications’ (marcoms) and for many this is a better term as it captures the breadth of this element of the marketing mix. As explained in Chapter 3, internal marketing and specifi cally communications with staff play a key role in the delivery of high quality service. Thus, the ‘promotion’ aspect of the marketing mix focuses attention on employees as well as customers. And, of course, with the development of social networking, communication and promotion maybe occurring between consumers and separately from the product or service provider. Word-of-mouth (whether positive or negative) has always been recognised as an important method of communication but developments in digital technology mean that it is happening in a way and on a scale that are very different to traditional one-to-one exchanges.
