The Role of Measurement in Integrated Marketing Communication; Turkish Pension Funds

ABSTRACT: The current literature has shown that organizations need to complete the entire progressive stages of integrated marketing communication (IMC) to be able to measure the return on customer investment (ROCI) of IMC campaigns. Due to the lack of well-documented IMC research in most “non-English” speaking countries, the validity and universality of the above claims had never been tested for conformity. The aim of this research is to contribute to the literature by examining the theoretical and practical applicability of measurement of IMC in Turkish pension funds as a “non-English” speaking country by developing a model and measuring ROCI. Although Turkey is a developing country, it is a good ground because there is a healthy competition among organizations. The findings of the research has brought us into two important conclusions: 1) As a developing market, the Turkish financial organizations are capable of practicing IMC and are able to measure ROCI. 2) Regardless of the development status of the country they operate, financial organizations such as banks, insurance organizations and pension funds are capable of measuring ROCI. This research has been conducted in two stages. Secondary data was used in the first stage of the research and primary data was used in the second stage. The result of these analyses, aided the development of an IMC model for pension funds in Turkey and then measured one of the pension funds ROCI. As for the secondary source, Turkish market statistics had been analyzed according to the TUIK (Statistics Institution of Turkey) statistics and pension funds investments from pension monitoring center (EGM). In secondary data, it was discovered that the banks heavily invest in their marketing communication activities and pension funds, which are mostly sub-divisions of these banks, thus gaining benefit. Since the pension fund system is a recently developed sector, the organizations in the system have a more dynamic approach to marketing communications than the banks that support them. The primary data was collected in two stages. In the first stage, a survey method was used. Two different questionnaires were prepared for Turkish pension funds and their communication agencies, to understand the theoretical and practical applicability of IMC in Turkey. Then, an in-depth interview was used in a case study for Finans Emeklilik to calculate ROCI in which revealed that the company was in the first stage of IMC, and was able to apply the fourth stage by calculating ROCI without passing through the second and third stage. The findings show that most pension funds and their agencies operate within the first stage of IMC and conceptually developing towards the second or third stages. The organizations can measure the return on customer investment while practicing integrated marketing communication regardless of their company’s ranking in the stages of IMC. On the other hand their advertising and public relations agencies practice corporate & marketing communications and use IMC in their campaigns according to their clients’ wants. Keywords: Integrated marketing communication, return on customer investment, pension fund, Turkey market. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………