Comunicação integrada de marketing e inovação de marketing: relações, interfaces e conexões na instituição de ensino superior

Abstract

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) and Marketing Innovation (MI) are two topics of interest to the organization and academia. However, a survey of the literature suggests that IMC and MI are fragmented and distant from each other in the academic production of Business Administration, with few articles that explore their relationships, interfaces and connections. Why explore IMC and IM, in an integrated way, in the Higher Education Institution (HEI)? Firstly, due to the gaps in existing knowledge; secondly, to broaden the understanding of the relationships between the two constructs outside the business context, where investigations are concentrated; lastly, because HEIs face a challenging scenario. Fierce competition requires decisions and strategies that are related to the fields of marketing and innovation for the HEI to differentiate itself in the market, attract new students and retain current ones. The general objective of this research is to understand how IMC is able to foster and trigger MI in HEI. To this end, a conceptual and detailed scheme, developed from the relationships, interfaces and connections identified between IMC and MI in the literature, was proposed and applied in the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Sul de Minas Gerais (IFSULDEMINAS), where this exploratory case study was conducted. This research is justified by the theoretical, practical and social contributions it aims to provide. As for the theoretical justification, the study seeks to fill the gaps in the literature exposed. The practical justification is related to the absence of methodologies available to HEIs that encourage innovation, particularly MI, from processes such as IMC. The availability of the proposed conceptual and detailed scheme, and how to operationalize it, aims to fill this gap. Finally, from the discussion on the use of the field of marketing and innovation as possible instruments for the HEI to be able to identify and interact with its stakeholders and to reach out, even to the most vulnerable, the free opportunities it offers (in the case of the public HEI), the social justification of this research can be glimpsed. Based on the results found in this study, supported by the descriptive and qualitative analysis of the data, it was concluded that the IMC was able to foster and trigger MI in the HEI investigated, whether through the product/design, place, promotion or strategy and that the conceptual and detailed scheme proposed was able to demonstrate how this process occurs. The study had limitations, the main one being that it did not include the Price dimension of MI during the operationalization of the conceptual and detailed scheme, as the research was carried out in a public HEI. Therefore, it is recommended, as a future agenda, to apply the proposed scheme, with the five dimensions of MI identified in the literature, to apply the scheme in a private higher education organization, to see how it behaves and how IMC fosters and triggers MI in this other context.