The purpose of this study is to analyse the international online marketing communication strategies of a mobile communications provider that has recently ‘gone global’ from a linguistic point of view.
This field of business has so far operated on a local level; through the merger of various companies operating on a national level to form the global player T-Mobile this has become an international business.
The present study will compare the linguistic implementation of T-Mobile’s online marketing communication strategies on the corporate as well as two local Internet sites and attempt to filter out possible cross-cultural differences.
Since an analysis of all relevant media would deserve more consideration than the purpose and length of this thesis allow, I wish to focus on just one media, the Internet, as this communication channel is exemplar of the ‘open-strategy’ approach of international marketing communications.
Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
1.2 OUTLINE
2. THE FUNDAMENTALS OF INTERNATIONAL MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS APPLIED TO T-MOBILE’S MARKETING COMMUNICATION SITUATION
2.1 INTERNATIONAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION DEFINED
2.2 INTERNAL VS. EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
2.3 STANDARDISATION VS. ADAPTATION
2.3.1 Strategy alternatives of global marketing communication
2.3.2 Advantages vs. disadvantages of standardization
2.3.3 Opportunities vs. limitations of standardization
2.4 DECISIONS IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION
2.4.1 Object of marketing communications
2.4.2 Branding
2.4.3 Target group
2.4.4 Objectives of marketing communications
2.4.5 International marketing communications implementation strategy
2.5 FACTORS INFLUENCING INTERNATIONAL MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
2.5.1 Selected sociocultural factors
2.5.1.1 Language
2.5.1.2 Values and norms
2.5.2 Other factors influencing global marketing communication
2.6 SELECTED TOOLS OF INTERNATIONAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION
2.6.1 Advertising
2.6.1.1 Advertising strategy and execution
2.6.1.2 Product vs. corporate advertising
2.6.2 Public Relations
2.6.3 Sponsoring
3. TRADITIONAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION
3.1 THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS
3.2 BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION
3.3 FORMS OF COMMUNICATION
4. INTERNATIONAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION – A LINGUISTIC APPROACH
4.1 THE COMMUNICATION MODEL APPLIED TO MARKETING COMMUNICATION
4.2 CHALLENGES FOR INTERNATIONAL MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
4.3 MARKETING COMMUNICATION PLANNING
4.3.1 Types of marketing communication strategies
4.3.1.1 The persuasive strategy
4.3.1.2 The image-building strategy
4.3.1.3 The informative strategy
4.3.2 Choice of medium
5. ONLINE MARKETING COMMUNICATION
5.1 THE WORLD WIDE WEB
5.1.1 The hypertext
5.1.2 Language use on the World Wide Web
5.2 KEY PRINCIPLES OF ONLINE MARKETING
5.2.1 Interactivity
5.2.2 Interconnection
5.2.3 Interface
5.2.4 Involvement
5.2.5 Information
5.2.6 Individualism
5.2.7 Integrity
5.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INTERNET AS AN IMPORTANT MARKETING COMMUNICATION CHANNEL IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING
5.3.1 Traditional marketing vs. online marketing
5.3.2 Types of marketing communications on the Internet
6. CASE STUDY: T-MOBILE
6.1 MARKET BACKGROUND
6.2 T-MOBILE’S GLOBAL MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
6.3 T-MOBILE: CORPUS DESCRIPTION
7. T-MOBILE’S INTERNATIONAL ONLINE MARKETING COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES AND THEIR LINGUISTIC IMPLEMENTATION
7.1 PART I: ANALYSIS OF THE ONLINE PRODUCT ADVERTISING
7.1.1 Discourse and layout features
7.1.1.1 The headline
7.1.1.2 The body copy
7.1.1.3 Text-based rhetorical devices – product and/or brand name repetition
7.1.2 Stylistic features
7.1.2.1 Precision
7.1.2.2 Tone
7.1.3 Lexico-syntactic features
7.1.3.1 Compounds
7.1.3.2 Pronouns
7.1.3.3 Verbs
7.1.3.4 Active and passive
7.1.3.5 Modal verbs
7.1.3.6 Sentence length
7.1.3.7 Sentence structure
7.1.3.8 Word-based rhetorical devices
7.1.3.8.1 Comparative
7.1.3.8.2 Superlative
7.1.3.8.3 Deconcretisation
7.1.3.9 Sentence-based rhetorical devices
7.1.3.9.1 Hyperbole
7.1.3.9.2 Ellipsis
7.1.3.9.3 Repetition
7.1.3.9.3.1 Doubling
7.1.3.9.3.2 Parallelism
7.1.3.9.3.3 Sequence
7.1.3.9.4 Commands
7.1.3.9.5 Direct address
7.1.3.9.6 Understatements
7.1.3.9.7 Antithesis
7.1.3.9.8 Two-part figure
7.1.4 Visual aids
7.1.4.1 Typography
7.1.4.2 Image and text
7.1.4.3 Other visual aids
7.1.5 Summary of findings
7.2 PART II: ANALYSIS OF THE ONLINE CORPORATE ADVERTISING
7.2.1 Discourse and layout features
7.2.1.1 The headline
7.2.1.2 The body copy
7.2.1.3 Text-based rhetorical devices – brand name repetition
7.2.2 Stylistic features
7.2.2.1 Precision
7.2.2.2 Tone
7.2.3 Lexico-syntactic features
7.2.3.1 Compounds
7.2.3.2 Pronouns
7.2.3.3 Verbs
7.2.3.4 Active and passive
7.2.3.5 Modal verbs
7.2.3.6 Sentence length
7.2.3.7 Sentence structure
7.2.3.8 Word-based rhetorical devices
7.2.3.8.1 Comparative
7.2.3.8.2 Superlative
7.2.3.8.3 Deconcretisation
7.2.3.9 Sentence-based rhetorical devices
7.2.3.9.1 Hyperbole
7.2.3.9.2 Ellipsis
7.2.3.9.3 Repetition
7.2.3.9.3.1 Doubling
7.2.3.9.3.2 Parallelism
7.2.3.9.3.3 Sequence
7.2.3.9.4 Commands
7.2.3.9.5 Direct Address
7.2.3.9.6 Understatements
7.2.3.9.7 Antithesis
7.2.3.9.8 Two-part figure
7.2.4 Visual aids
7.2.4.1 Typography
7.2.4.2 Image and text
7.2.4.3 Other visual aids
7.2.5 Summary of findings
8. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Objectives and Topics
This study aims to analyze the international online marketing communication strategies of the mobile communications provider T-Mobile from a linguistic perspective. The primary objective is to compare how T-Mobile implements its marketing goals linguistically on its corporate and local websites, focusing on whether a standardized or adapted strategy is employed to manage cross-cultural differences.
- Fundamentals of international marketing communications and the specific situation of T-Mobile.
- The influence of culture and language on marketing communications design.
- Comparative analysis of online product advertising across different national markets (U.S. and U.K.).
- In-depth investigation of corporate advertising and its role in building brand image.
- Examination of linguistic and visual strategies, including rhetorical devices, lexico-syntactic features, and typography.
Excerpt from the Book
1.1 Background and purpose
Looking at the status quo of marketing communications practice a turbulent picture opens up. The substitutability of products and quality requirements of consumers render a differentiation by means of product benefits increasingly difficult. Thus businesses compete ever less on the basis of products, but more and more on the basis of communication. Today marketing communication is a central factor for success. However, societal, technological, economic and global changes create complicating circumstances for marketing communication. A constantly changing business environment thus requires communication problem solutions that will adapt to new market requirements. Moreover, due to the increasing information overload, a dynamic development in the area of media, and a reduced interest in traditional organizational communication it becomes ever more difficult to communicate effectively with potential customers. This task of marketing communications becomes an even more complex exercise in an international environment because it means communicating with consumers across the world. Despite the difficulties of communicating across borders international marketing communication strategies have gained importance because of market globalisation. Since the costs of advertising campaigns are high, marketers are increasingly hoping to be able to implement one strategic concept including visual presentation in different markets (Smith/Klein-Braley, 1997, cf. Smith, 1998: 238). However, this requires knowledge of different market environments, cultural empathy and the willingness to adapt the communication programmes and processes to local requirements. While business management disciplines have investigated into this topic, there has been little linguistic research so far on international marketing communications.
The purpose of this study is to analyse the international online marketing communication strategies of a mobile communications provider that has recently ‘gone global’ from a linguistic point of view. This field of business has so far operated on a local level; through the merger of various companies operating on a national level to form the global player T-Mobile this has become an international business. The present study will compare the linguistic implementation of T-Mobile’s online marketing
Summary of Chapters
1. INTRODUCTION: Outlines the background of the study, highlighting the increasing complexity of international marketing communications and the purpose of analyzing T-Mobile's online strategies.
2. THE FUNDAMENTALS OF INTERNATIONAL MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS APPLIED TO T-MOBILE’S MARKETING COMMUNICATION SITUATION: Provides a theoretical foundation for international marketing, defining core concepts like standardization versus adaptation and examining factors that influence global communication.
3. TRADITIONAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION: Discusses the basic communication process, stages of transmission, and potential barriers that can impede successful communication in international contexts.
4. INTERNATIONAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION – A LINGUISTIC APPROACH: Relates marketing to discourse analysis and applies communication models to the marketing situation, while addressing specific challenges like cross-cultural differences.
5. ONLINE MARKETING COMMUNICATION: Examines the characteristics of the Internet as a marketing medium, defining key principles such as interactivity, individualization, and the shift from marketplace to marketspace.
6. CASE STUDY: T-MOBILE: Describes the market background of the mobile telecommunications industry, T-Mobile’s global merger, and the corpus used for the linguistic analysis.
7. T-MOBILE’S INTERNATIONAL ONLINE MARKETING COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES AND THEIR LINGUISTIC IMPLEMENTATION: Conducts a detailed comparative analysis of product and corporate advertising strategies on T-Mobile’s websites, evaluating linguistic features like rhetorical devices and visual aids.
8. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION: Synthesizes the study’s findings, concluding that while visual strategies often lend themselves to standardization, verbal strategies require adaptation to reflect cultural nuances.
Keywords
International marketing communication, T-Mobile, online marketing, linguistic implementation, standardization, adaptation, rhetorical devices, discourse analysis, internet communication, corporate identity, cross-cultural differences, mobile communications, product advertising, corporate advertising, marketspace.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this research?
The research investigates the international online marketing communication strategies of the global mobile provider T-Mobile from a linguistic perspective to understand how global and local marketing goals are linguistically implemented.
What are the primary themes analyzed in the study?
Key themes include the balance between standardization and adaptation in global marketing, the characteristics of the Internet as a medium, the role of rhetorical devices in persuasive vs. informative discourse, and how brand image is constructed.
What is the ultimate research question?
The study aims to determine the extent to which T-Mobile’s international online marketing communication strategies can be standardized versus adapted to meet the cultural requirements of diverse national markets.
Which scientific methods are employed?
The work utilizes a linguistic, discourse-based approach, analyzing specific corpus data from websites (discourse/layout, stylistic, lexico-syntactic features) combined with theoretical models from communication studies and marketing science.
What does the main body of the work cover?
It covers theoretical frameworks for communication and marketing, characteristics of the Internet, a detailed case study of T-Mobile’s corporate history, and an extensive empirical analysis of the linguistic features used in their online advertisements.
How can the key characteristics of the work be summarized?
The work is characterized by its interdisciplinary nature, blending marketing management theory with linguistic discourse analysis to provide insights into effective cross-cultural online communication.
How does the Internet facilitate T-Mobile’s "open strategy" approach?
The Internet allows for a flexible structure where standardized elements (like a uniform brand identity) can be integrated with localized content, allowing T-Mobile to communicate consistently globally while adapting to specific local user needs.
What specific finding does the analysis offer regarding U.S. versus European marketing styles?
The analysis suggests that U.S. online communication tends to be more persuasive and 'hard sell' oriented with frequent rhetorical devices, while European sites (corporate/U.K.) lean more towards informative, 'matter-of-fact' styles to convey reliability and professionalism.
- Quote paper
- Christina Kuttnig (Author), 2002, International Online Marketing Communication Strategies of Global Players. A Linguistic Study with Special Reference to T-Mobile, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/115996
