Push and Pull Communication PDF

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Push and Pull Communication...

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Push and Pull Communication The term push identifies corporate policies based on flows that depart from the company and are directed to the market. The pull policies are based on flows departing from the market and turning to the company, looking for offers and/or information. The pushed external communication flows are sent according to plans established by the company to reach an audience, often passive with respect to corporate communications, and in any case identified as a target to “hit”. Pulled corporate communications the receiver of the communication becomes an active part in the search for information that is not pushed by the company. These two distinct push and pull corporate policies, are not alternatives, but required different market conditions. These conditions may be classified according to the following factors: 1) technology, 2) cost and 3) competition. 1) The availability of different technologies allows the activation of push and pull communication. For the push communication, namely the communication that is pushed by the company in the market, both analog and digital technologies can be used; for the development of pull communication instead digital technologies are a facilitating factor. In fact, in order to help the recipient of the corporate communication to acquire the interesting information, it must be a “place” where to find this information; 2) Cost is another important factor in choosing between push and pull policies and it is not just related to the use of a particular technology. Push and pull policies costs are different in their composition and in their dynamics. Push corporate communication has a very rigid cost structure, and can be developed in sufficiently stable and predictable relationship conditions with final and intermediate demand. The business costs of external communication are thus planned in advance for two main reasons: on the one hand, the need to convey their corporate communication in defined time periods and through specific media requires companies to early plan and buy enough advertising space-time; on the other hand, the choice of spending in advertising for a specific period of time have significant implications on the spending patterns of the following periods. 3) The predictability of the competitive environment allows the use of advertising which, working on a passive audience, must repeat the message many times in association with specific frequency schedules, in order to produce defined recall levels in the audience, which is not spontaneously interested in the advertising itself but is interrupted by advertising while using a media. A rigid cost structure of communication thus follows.

Pull communication flows develop in opposite situations, where the market is characterised by high levels of dynamism in competitive actions and reactions. Traditional economies of scale and experience are not working in these contexts. The competitive advantage of firms lies in the ability to respond correctly and quickly to the market. Experience does not originate from the cumulated communication. The competitive effectiveness of pull policies is to respond before and better than competitors to an everchanging demand, which is mostly unpredictable in its variability. Overcrowding is of both horizontal and vertical. The first type of overcrowding refers to the presence of an excessive number of advertisements on the same communication medium, for which the communication of a company merges with the communication of any other which, in the same or other product classes, promote their brand. This is the context of all forms of business communication where the communication receivers move spontaneously: such as finding information on the internet, registering on the company websites, answering to profiling questions, buying business offerings, participating at events and fairs, demanding for loyalty cards, searching for discounts and special prices, activating viral communications, etc. The cost to reach these objectives, however, are very high and very different in nature from those that are incurred for the activation of push communications. Very significant is the investment in the development of corporate market knowledge by adequate information systems. Pull communication is realised in order to stimulate the audience to start and continue a relationship with the company. The company objective, in this situation is to enrich the knowledge of its clients by using profiling processes activated to refine the relationship over time....