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ogram and making the final decisions
regarding the advertising and
promotional program to be employed,
while advertising agencies are expected
to assist them in developing,
preparing, and executing promotional
plans. (p. 14)
Client-based research, despite inherent
methodological difficulties, will yet represent
the “gold standard” of what IMC is,
or what is perceived to be. For, despite the
focus on agencies servicing client needs, this
does not mean that IMC has passed to any
level beyond stage 1 as shown in Figure 2.
And, there are still many barriers standing
in the way of IMC development.
BARRIERS TO FURTHER
DEVELOPING IMC
Schultz and Kitchen (2000b) identified four
stages of IMC starting from tactical coordination
of promotional elements, redefining
the scope of marketing communications,
application of information technology, to
financial and strategic integration. They argued,
based on the empirical findings from
their research with advertising agencies that
develop and implement marketing communication
plans for their clients, that the
majority of clients are anchored in either
stage 1 or stage 2 scenarios. Some are moving
into stage 3, but very few (a handful in
today’s world) have moved to stage 4 (see
Figure 2).
Major questions here are: What are the
primary barriers hindering the diffusion
of the concept of IMC into companies?
What are the major problems preventing
further development of IMC in practice?
And what can be done to accelerate the
implementation of IMC from lower stages
to higher stages? Since IMC is to enable
various messages from different communication
channels coming together to
create a coherent corporate and brand
image, Moriarty (1994) considered the
cross-disciplinary managerial skills the
biggest barrier to IMC, while Duncan
and Everett (1993) reported that egos
and turf battles were primary obstacles
to integration. Eagle and Kitchen (2000)
identified four groups of potential barriers
to IMC success in their study of
the New Zealand advertising and marketing
industry: power, coordination, and
(Source: Schultz and Kitchen, 2000b)
Figure 2 Stages in IMC Development (Source: Schultz and Kitchen, 2000b)
THE EMERGENCE OF IMC
26 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH March 2004
control issues; client skills, centralization/
organization, and cultural issues; agency
skills/talents and overall time/resources
issues; and flexibility/modification issues.
Schultz (2000) saw structure—the
way the firm is put together—as the most
challenging problem of integration. He
argued that the traditional command-andcontrol
structures should be replaced by
the quick-response model in new economy
firms, and only when management
starts to focus on outcomes rather than
outputs do most of the integration problems
go away. Schultz (2001) further noted
that one of the problems with the current
approach to marketing and marketing
communications is likely the concept
of a campaign, which is contrary to the
customer-focused idea and the long-term
relationship building purpose of IMC because
campaigns generally are developed
and executed for a limited time
period . . . to achieve some type of advantage
during some timeframe. Although
there are difficulties of ensuring
the full integration of marketi