Understanding Communication in Disaster Response: A Marketing Strategy Formulation and Implementation Perspective—An Abstract

Abstract

Natural disasters are a rare, yet inevitable part of living on Earth. As a result, disaster planning and preparedness are crucial for the continued safety and well-being of a city or nation’s population. Planning and preparedness are also important for organizational well-being and success, and for the cohesive synergy of the individuals in a company. The success of the response to a disaster can be the direct result of the formulation and execution of the plan; however, poor response can also be attributed to a lack of adoption of a plan that contributes to the failure of its implementation. Similarly, effective plan formulation, implementation, but perhaps most importantly adoption are imperative for a successful response to an organizational failure. In this chapter we use Bonoma’s (1984) marketing strategy implementation framework to diagnose communication successes and failures in the case of four well-known international natural disasters to provide further insight into the difficulties, but also the positive impact of strong organizational preparedness and plan implementation. Using the framework, we identify four possible outcomes of the planning and implementation process that result from the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the processes of disaster plan formulation and implementation. The implications of each of the outcomes are then discussed. Using literature from marketing strategy and emergency response communication, and the four case studies of natural disasters, we then provide seven common reasons why plans are often not successfully implemented and present several lessons and takeaways that can be learned from these. These takeaways have implications to improve disaster communication plans, especially in the implementation and adoption phases.