A New Consumer Relationship Model: The Marketing Communications Application

The article investigates empowered consumer behavior and explores its evolutionary nature and contemporary contexts in developed countries. Through a comprehensive literature review multi-perspective analysis, it finally develops a prescriptive marketing communication model in the context of an evolving business-consumer relationship and its corresponding marketing philosophy. The findings identify a rising symbiotic equilibrium between consumers’ power and businesses’ influence on consumers’ perceptions. Consumer “needs” are found to be increasingly manifested into “wants” which are intangible, of obscure value, affective in nature and vulnerable to marketing communications; the latter being increasingly oriented towards “perception management” and with “branding” as a primary vehicle.