Integrated Marketing Communications : A quantitative study of the perceptions of integrated marketing communications in the Swedish market

Abstract: When planning to implement a marketing tool such as Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) into ones company, marketers need to know what IMC means or is perceived to be in their environment. The definition of IMC is shown in the background chapter of this study and more definitions are stated in the theoretical frame chapter as well. Months of research lead to the conduction of a study, that is to test the perception of IMC in the Swedish market by sampling and sending questionnaires to Swedish marketers. Five Hypotheses were formed to test if each factor has a positive or negative relation with IMC. A questionnaire was formulated that tested all of the five main success factors (customer focus, targeted communication, customer-brand relationship, synergy and communication channels) in relation to IMC and how the Swedish marketers perceived each one of the factor’s connection to IMC. The marketers were chosen due to the fact that they would know most about IMC since it’s within the field of marketing.  It was found that Swedish marketers support 2 out of the 5 hypotheses. This means that the results showed that Swedish marketers perceive that there is a positive relationship between both channels of communication and IMC, and customer brand relationship and IMC, while targeted communication, customer focus and synergy were denied to be as positively related to IMC. This study would be of great help to a Swedish company trying to implement IMC because it gives directions to the Swedish perception of it, thereby making it more clear to know exactly what they are implementing, which help them find out in what way they should implement IMC, in order to avoid failures that could be very expensive.