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`Marketing Communication: Principles and Practice' Richard Varey
(Routledge 2002; ISBN 0-415-23040-3; 416pp; paperback; L24.99)
A public announcement loudspeaker illustrates the front cover of the paperback edition. The back cover challenges the reader with the question `What connects communication, relationships, brand and management?' and goes on to claim that "Marketing Communication challenges the orthodox view of marketing communication"' which is an invitation to read the book with interest and expectation.
In the book cover's words, the book `provides a contemporary examination of marketing as a social process. The scope of communication theory is broadened and a dialogical conception of communication is introduced. The existing model of marketing communication is replaced with a new and exciting concept that integrates the relational and the social emphases of the twenty-first century.'
The book attempts to reorient the academic perspective of marketing communication from that based on a rarefied abstract economic truth to one where marketing and marketing communication are best understood as social processes taking place in cultural contexts.
Dr Richard Varey is reader in Communication and Management at the University of Salford and his wide range of publication topics include customer service quality, corporate communication and marketing management. This textbook works towards a synthesis of the perspective: `All products are cultural artefacts - selling them is mostly a matter of communication.' The nub is `Most marketing textbooks and even marketing communications textbooks, include a discussion of "communication"...