Communicational strategy and resource integration

The QMC model, the quality management model for the communication industry, began with four enablers. Two of them, communicational strategy and resource integration, rested on a broad body of literature and came through the pre-test with one deletion each. In the survey of 209 contractors, both remained weak. Resource integration showed no significant relationship with perceived quality and dropped out of the model. The communicational strategy remained in the final model but did not reach significance there.

Communicational strategy in the specialist literature

According to Mintzberg, strategy is a pattern of action that develops from a sequence of decisions under uncertainty and adapts continuously. In the media business this pattern changes particularly quickly, because the environment and the parties involved are constantly changing (Strannegård and Pallas). For service providers there is the added fact that their output is intangible, tied to the customer, heterogeneous and perishable (Zeithaml and colleagues). Mohr and Nevin describe communication strategy by four variables, namely the frequency, direction, form and content of communication. Berry relies on customer loyalty rather than on short campaigns that are meant to bring quick sales. The study sums up the state of research by saying that the central strategy in the communication business is to build and strengthen relationships with customers and the public.

Among the 31 empirical studies in the literature review, eight deal with strategy. Simkin finds in two case studies that involving all hierarchical levels and a clear timetable increase effectiveness. In more than 200 relationships between customers and suppliers, trust and commitment prove to be the most important sources of value creation (Walter and colleagues). Ritter considers competence-based communication effective, especially when new ideas are meant to reach customers who are initially little involved. Ballantyne and colleagues stress that good communication strategies involve customers as dialogue partners instead of transmitting one-sidedly.

The study condensed these findings into four categories: conveying informational competence, individual customer appeal, building customer loyalty and trust, and bi-directional, lasting customer involvement.

Resource integration in the specialist literature

The resource-based view goes back to Penrose. Barney adds that key resources must be heterogeneous and not freely mobile in order to secure a competitive advantage. The VRIN criteria require them to be valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable. The knowledge-based view declares knowledge to be the most important resource. For agencies, whose raw material is information and whose tangible assets carry hardly any weight, this idea suggests itself. Finally, transaction cost theory, following Coase and Williamson, clarifies when a company buys resources on the market and when it ties them closely to itself.

The empirical studies name three sources. The first is internal knowledge. In a survey of more than 900 Korean organizations, decentralized, informal processes promoted knowledge sharing, creativity and returns (Lee and Choi). The second is electronic systems. Web-based knowledge resources that companies share with partners and customers strengthen competitiveness (Barua and colleagues), and e-business improves the management of suppliers (Croom). The third source is the customers themselves. According to the literature on relationship marketing, for instance in Gummesson and Hennig-Thurau, they are possibly the most valuable resource, because communication products develop according to their wishes. Word of mouth amplifies messages and has a longer-lasting effect than classical advertising (Trusov and colleagues, Godes and Mayzlin).

The four categories were frictionless internal knowledge management, electronic supply-chain management, integration of customers into the agency process, and use of word of mouth.

Two deletions in the pre-test

Of the eight categories for strategy and resources, two were clearly below the total mean of 1.70 in the pre-test and were discarded. According to several interviewees, individual customer appeal overlapped with customer trust; one saw it more as a characteristic of the product than as a strategy. Word of mouth received the lowest value among the resources. Several interviewees assigned it to strategy or saw it as a sub-form of customer integration.

Customer integration stands out. In the pre-test it received 2.00, the highest value of all enabler categories, and the agencies’ executives considered it particularly relevant. The contractors rated it lowest of the six strategy and resource characteristics, at 3.45, and the resource factor remained without a significant effect.

What the survey of the contractors shows

Judged by the means, the contractors rated the strategy and resources of their agency well. Knowledge management reached 3.75, the highest value of all twelve enabler statements. It was followed by customer commitment and trust at 3.66, electronic supply-chain management at 3.63 and informational competence at 3.59. Customer involvement and customer integration stood at 3.46 and 3.45.

The structural equation model (SEM) tests whether the judgments about an enabler are related to the communication quality that the model estimates from all the answers. For the resources, no such relationship could be demonstrated. The path to communication quality was −0.04 (p = 0.67), and none of the three indicators was significant. For the strategy, the path was 0.12 (p = 0.17), not significant. Within the strategy, the partial hypotheses on two characteristics were accepted, customer commitment and trust as well as the bi-directional involvement of the customers (reference). The partial hypothesis on informational competence was rejected.

Unstandardized estimates of the initial model. The study counts a path with p < 0.10 as significant.

How the model was reduced

The study drew consequences from this in three steps, which are set out in detail on the Results page. In the first amendment, resource integration was dropped entirely. Informational competence moved, together with the employees’ entrepreneurial orientation, into a new factor, which was likewise not significant (p = 0.95) and was dropped in the second amendment.

The communicational strategy was retained with two indicators up to the final model. There its standardized weight is 0.12 at p = 0.17, not significant. The factor rests almost entirely on bi-directional customer involvement, with a standardized weight of 0.87. Customer commitment and trust come to 0.15 (p = 0.065). The thesis lists the strategy in the amended model as the third most important variable for quality, without significance for this sample.

How the thesis interprets the deviation

For informational competence, the thesis suspects a shift in the contractors’ expectations. According to this, rational factors such as the factual conveyance of product information lose weight, while emotional factors gain weight, for instance the feeling of being integrated into a committed communication network. The study did not test this conjecture; the strategy factor itself is not significant in the final model.

For the resources, the thesis offers two explanations. The studies from which the categories are taken mostly examine business processes in virtual space. Their findings possibly cannot be transferred to the relationship between agency and contractor. In addition, contractors possibly see an agency as a whole as a personal partner. Their trust then applies less to the agency’s network than to a specific leader. That leadership efficiency was by far the strongest factor in the same survey supports this reading.

For the contractors surveyed, the person-related qualities of an agency, leadership and employees, count for more than its strategic positioning and its network.

What remains open

Part of the question lies in the model itself. The literature assumes that leadership shapes strategy and the use of resources and that employees, strategy and resources influence one another. The estimated model does not contain these cross-relationships, and the thesis considers them possibly more important than originally assumed. According to its account, committed agency leaders develop effective strategies and manage resources effectively. Part of what strategy and resources achieve could therefore be contained in the leadership factor. Whether this is the case would have to be clarified by further studies, as described on the Limitations and outlook page.

The thesis nevertheless draws no conclusion against strategy. In its assessment, trust and reputation depend on an idiosyncratic communication strategy, implemented above all through collaboration within the agency itself and less through a network of partners (Practice).