Planning of online and offline B2B promotion with conjoint analysis

Abstract

Even though many people have been searching for the holy grail of holistic marketing communication planning, no one seems to have succeeded. Communication planners are often left with data that only cover individual disciplines like advertising or with performance measures that cannot be deconstructed to a sufficiently low level. In business-to-business (B2B) markets in particular, where advertising is only a marginal part of the promotional mix, marketers must often rely on their instinct. This is only further complicated by the last decade's diffusion of online communication, which has added an entire new range of communication possibilities. This study builds on the premise that the target audiences' preferences for communication matter, and shows that conjoint analysis is an excellent tool for the measurement of such communication and channel preferences. The validation takes place in a B2B setting with specific focus on the prioritisation of offline versus online communication.Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing (2008) 16, 203-213. doi:10.1057/jt.2008.11