The Impact of Integrated Marketing Communications on Hotel Brand Equity: Does National Culture Matter?

Introduction

During the last decade the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) approach has received a great interest within the marketing and branding literature (Delgado-Ballester, Navarro, & Sicilia, 2012). The advocates of IMC believe that the concept is “the major communications development of the last decade of the 20th century” (Kitchen, Brignell, Li, & Jones, 2004a, p. 20), “absolutely imperative for success” (Shimp, 2003, p. 6) that “evidently, is here to stay” (Kitchen et al., 2004a, p. 19). Undoubtedly, the IMC acceptance is growing rapidly (Kitchen & Schultz, 2009) since both academics and researchers have recognized significant challenges in its future (Fitzpatrick, 2005) and competitive advantages it can provide.

However, further contributions are needed to consolidate this new approach (McGrath, 2005). The IMC literature suggested that future research should concentrate on business practice (Kitchen, Schultz, Kim, Han, & Li, 2004b), that is, in organizations themselves, rather than in the agencies which service their needs (e.g. Eagle, Kitchen, & Balmer, 2007). In particular, there is little empirical evidence on IMC in hotel companies (Šerić & Gil-Saura, 2011), where the need for integration has proven to be as necessary as in other industries (Hudson, 2008). In addition, it seems that consumers’ perceptions of marketing communications are often forgotten in IMC research (Gould, 2004), as a considerable amount of literature has centered on managers opinions regarding the IMC implementation, rather than on customer perception of integration (Šerić & Gil-Saura, 2012b). This is why we decide to examine IMC in the hotel context, while adopting a consumer-centric approach.

Moreover, academics and practitioners in the field of marketing and branding have supported the notion that IMC plays an important role in building and maintaining stakeholder relationships, and in leveraging these relationships to create customer-brand equity (Keller, 1993; Duncan & Moriarty, 1998; Duncan, 2002; Anantachart, 2004; Madhavaram, Badrinarayanan, & McDonald, 2005; Baidya & Maity, 2010; Delgado-Ballester et al., 2012; Šerić & Gil-Saura, 2012b). The most recent literature suggests that further research is necessary to show a greater alignment between the brand and IMC when generating customer loyalty (Kitchen & Schultz, 2009). Besides, there is a need to consider the impact of message consistency on brand equity creation in a specific context (Delgado-Ballester et al., 2012).

If we centre on the hotel environment, we observe that previous studies into marketing communication effects on brand equity have mainly focused on the impact of advertising (e.g. Israeli, Alder, Mehrez, & Sundali, 2000; Daun & Klinger, 2006). Although these contributions are important, we believe that considering communication effects only in terms of advertising is limited as it is usually not the only marketing communication tool which can create and manage brand equity, nor the most important one (Keller, 2009). Therefore, we believe that the holistic view of IMC should be taken when examining how marketing communications affect brand equity and its dimensions.