The Study of Managerial Perception of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Concept and Practices on the Russian Market

Integrated marketing communications as a new approach for planning advertising campaigns first appeared more than 30 years ago. This approach has advanced and it is still widespread among advertisers. But there are definitional issues of IMC and as a result there still remains disagreement between the perception of scholars and practitioners on the content of this concept. This study is conducted to explore the managerial perception of IMC concept and practices on the Russian market. The research methods are the semi-structured interviews and the online survey of representatives of advertising agencies and their clients that operate in FMCG industry. The results show that there is a consensus among practitioners and academics on the understanding of IMC concept. Although this approach is actively practiced within organizations, the term “Integrated marketing communications” is rarely used among representatives of the advertising industry. However, the level of theoretical knowledge about the IMC concept is at an above-average level. In addition, clients and agency respondents also reported that they actively use in practice the second level of IMC integration that involves a lot of coordination work among external actors they work with. And it is widespread to use efficiency model, which is based on media metrics to measure the effectiveness of integrated marketing programs. And finally, only 3 hypotheses are confirmed in the survey that assesses the effectiveness of marketing communication tools at different stages of the sales funnel. Contextual advertising and search engine optimization are the most frequently used means of communication.