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en, 2000a). Cornelissen and Lock
(2000, p. 9) doubted IMC’s theoretical robustness
as well as its actual significance
for marketing and advertising thought and
practice. They viewed IMC as “simple
rhetoric” and, from their point of view,
IMC was a management fashion, apparent
in its lack of definition and transient
influence. Schultz and Kitchen (2000a) rebutted
this challenge by arguing that Cornelissen
and Lock’s citations were “selected
and incomplete” by focus and location
almost completely (i.e., inside the public
relations discipline), and that IMC itself
was in a preparadigm stage of development
and thus not bound by an accepted
definition. Their views were supported
by Gould (2000) who argued that
. . . IMC as a major strategic concept is
not much different from other marketing
or managerial concepts, methodologies,
or strategies that have arisen.
All have an evolutionary, discursive
and behavioural history in which the
particular concept is defined and redefined,
often many times. (p. 22)
Gould further argued
. . . that theory may take many forms and
Cornelissen and Lock are holding to one
version of the theory, which postulates
relationships among well-defined con-
THE EMERGENCE OF IMC
24 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH March 2004
structs and then deductively develops
hypotheses for empirical testing. (p. 23)
Needless to say, Schultz and Kitchen’s
earlier work, and indeed much of the
work by many authors to date, have indeed
focused on an inductive approach,
representative of an emergent paradigmatical
development.
Another criticism to IMC centers on the
lack of measurement to the effectiveness
of IMC programs. While urging that more
attention should be paid on measuring
“outcomes” rather than “outputs” of marketing
communication activities, Schultz
and Kitchen (2000b) raised concerns that
many marketing activities cannot be measured,
and the value of communication effects
and impacts are even more tenuous. Therefore,
measurability is not only the problem
of IMC, but the primary concern of
all marketing communication activities.
Schultz and Kitchen (2000b) proposed an
IGMC Communication Planning Matrix
that divided marketing communication
programs into two categories, one to serve
the purpose of business building and the
other to serve the purpose of brand building.
Current inflows from customers and
prospects will be measured for the short
term, which will be turned into marginal
returns and incremental revenue; whereas
the return of investment on brand building
will be measured based on the brand
equity among customers and prospects.
Semenik (2002) introduced yet further but
still basic approaches to measuring the effectiveness
of an overall IMC program:
. . . one approach is to merely take on
the measurement of each of the promotional
tools used in a campaign, another
approach is to use single-source
tracking measures, and the third alternative
is to measure media exposures,
product (brand) impressions, and personal
contacts. (p. 29)
However, he also acknowledged that
. . . measuring the complex interaction
of all the promotional mix elements is
very, very complicated and may be
beyond the methodological tools available
at this time. (p. 545)
Despite the fact that there are a