Services Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communications: An Empirical Examination

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) potentially can create synergy and produce a consistent front among communication tools and to help generate customer databases that can lead to effective target marketing. Such outcomes are desirable goals for service organizations who struggle with promoting intangible offerings. This study examines the incidence and nature of IMC in services advertising. Following Nowak and Phelps (1994), we inspected the degree of IMC utilization by service organizations at the tactical, i.e., advertisement, level. Our results indicate that IMC is a reality among services advertisements, yet there is room for further development.