Customer perceived integrated marketing communications: A segmentation of the soda market

Abstract

Integrated marketing communication (IMC) plays a key role in current marketing communications landscape and further empirical research is called for to examine customer perceived IMC. To fill this gap, this paper examines how customers perceive the IMC of two global brands (Coke and Pepsi). The aim is to shed light on the relationship between customer characteristics and the perceived level of marketing integration. Finite mixture models were applied to analyze the data and three types of customers were identified: ‘friends’, ‘strangers’, and ‘flighty’. For both brands, consumers in the ‘flighty’ segment have the highest level of customer perceived IMC, which might be owed to this segment’s exposure to a wider variety of media and communication messages. Managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.