Abstract
In the past couple of decades, following the advancements in communication technologies, alternative marketing communications such as consumer generated content, influencer marketing and native advertising, have emerged as a viable and gainful tactic. These alternative marketing communications blur the boundaries between the roles of consumer and marketer. The possibility of duplicity and deception in marketing relationships is fueled by the ambiguity of these roles and the lack of clarity in persuasion knowledge when alternative marketing communications are utilized. In this paper, we illustrate the various types of duplicity in marketing relationships that use alternative marketing communications. We adopt a conceptual framework previously developed in this budding literature stream by Pehlivan et al. (2015), and use it to suggest that the notion of ‘unidirectional deception’ (i.e. marketer deceives consumer) needs to be updated to ‘omni-directional deception’, in order to better explain duplicity in current marketing relationships. We use examples encountered in contemporary marketing practices to derive managerial implications and best practices as well as ethical implications or questionable practices for these types of communications. More importantly, this paper suggests that future research should examine duplicity in marketing by minding the new omni-directional dynamic of marketing relationships.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Nistor, Cristina; Yalcin, Taylan; and Pehlivan, Ekin
(2018)
"Duplicity in Alternative Marketing Communications,"
Markets, Globalization & Development Review:
Vol. 3:
No.
2, Article 4.
DOI: 10.23860/MGDR-2018-03-02-04
Available at:
Author Bio
Cristina Nistor is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Marketing at Chapman University. She received her PhD from MIT Sloan. Her current research focuses on social media, relationships in a channel and healthcare markets.
Taylan Yalcin is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at CSU Channel Islands. He received his DBA from Harvard Business School. His current research focuses on digital advertising, relationships in a channel and marketing pedagogy.
Ekin Pehlivan is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics at California State University Channel. She started researching advertising strategies geared towards skeptical consumers at Bentley University while working towards her PhD in Business with a specialization in Marketing. Currently her research is focused on relationship dynamics of trust, duplicity and skepticism in marketing contexts.