INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS (IMC) ON AIRTEL CUSTOMER LOYALTY

Abstract

The concept of marketing communications covers a wide range of promotional activities targeted at one or more specified audiences to build and sustain customer loyalty. Over time, the need to create its greatest impact on customers has led to the rise of various developments. One of such developments is the integration of all elements involved in the promotional mix (advertising, public relations, direct marketing, sales promotion, sponsorship, personal selling among others) and making it a unified whole to work in synergy and achieve a goal. This is referred to as Integrated Marketing Communications. Although, this notion is not seen as new in the marketing industry, it has grown to be much more popular in recent years as organisations continue to adopt it and tap into its advantages. As such various studies have been carried out to show the extent to which Integrated Marketing Communications influence consumers on different levels. This they do using various products and services of brands as case studies. It is on this ground that this study arises as it seeks to find out the influence of Integrated Marketing Communications on customer loyalty using Airtel Nigeria – a telecommunications company. The study is hinged on the Attribution and Impression Management theories which both deal with reasons attributed to consumer behaviour and strategies employed by firms to influence customers purchase decisions and in the long run their loyalty. The study adopted the Survey method to gather responses from its population to find out if the use of Integrated Marketing Communications by Airtel positively influences their loyalty to the brand. Four hundred (400) questionnaires were administered to respondents and the data collected was analysed using the standard deviation analysis. The findings of the research showed that IMC provides knowledge about the service and majority of the respondents agreed that they knew about Airtel and have remained loyal to Airtel brand through the various IMC programmes, despite its transition over the years. It also showed that Airtel users were able to imitate or act in accordance to the message in which they were exposed to.Based on the findings, the researcher recommends that IMC messages should be carefully put together, in terms of central theme, media planning and usage. Integrated Marketing Communications should also be applied to brand building as a combination of advertising, public relations, direct marketing, event sponsorship, sales promotion, personal selling among others is required in building customer loyalty.