Research co-authored by the associate professor of marketing is published in the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing.
In a research study published in the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Lawrence Garber, associate professor of marketing in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, tests the proposition that integrated marketing communications (IMC) practice is lagging in the trucking industry behind business to consumer IMC practice.
Garber co-authored “The IMC mixes that trucking managers use” with Kacy Kim, Bryant University, and Michael Dotson, Appalachian State University.
The authors surveyed more than 100 trucking managers attending an American Trucking Association annual meeting to gauge which communications tools the managers use and for which strategic purposes. They applied the new product adoption model (NPAM) as a means of measuring efficient IMC practice.
The authors write in the paper’s abstract, “Joint space perceptual maps generated by correspondence analysis reveal the association between trucking managers’ IMC mixes and the stages of the NPAM. Inspection shows that trucking managers deploy a relatively large number of traditional and digital tools to support all stages of the NPAM, indicating a sophisticated level of IMC knowledge and practice, contrary to the proposition that IMC practice is lagging in the trucking industry.
“This contrary result suggests that IMC practice proceeds at different rates across B2B industries and must be examined on a per-industry basis. In combination with Garber and Dotson’s (2002) trucking IMC study, this study provides a second data point from which the evolution of IMC practice in the trucking industry can be tracked into the future. Additionally, this paper demonstrates the efficacy of the NPAM as a means of measuring the efficiency of IMC mixes, as well as for monitoring and training. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.”
Prior to joining Elon in 2006, Garber taught at Appalachian State University and held roles at Glaxo Pharmaceuticals and BBDO Advertising. He earned his doctorate in business administrations with a concentration in marketing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include visual information processing and persuasion, marketing communication and branding, nonprofit and arts marketing, marketing education, and the visual presentation of statistical data.