The Development of an Intergrated Marketing Communication Strategy Model Affecting Customer Loyalty of BEE Products, Agricultural Occupation Development Promotion Center, Chanthaburi Province in the New Normal

Abstract

The research aimed to study aimed 1) to study level of integrated marketing communication strategy and the loyalty of customers who purchase bee products from the Center for the Promotion of Agricultural Occupational Development, Chanthaburi Province; 2) to study an integrated marketing communication strategy model that affects the loyalty of customers who purchase bee products from the Center for the Promotion of Agricultural Occupational Development, Chanthaburi Province which was causally developed, and 3) to propose an integrated marketing communication guideline for bee products, the Center for the Promotion of Agricultural Occupational Development, Chanthaburi Province. Integrated Research Methodology was applied in this study where the main part is Quantitative Research, followed by Qualitative Research. The research instruments were both questionnaires and interviews. The questionnaire collected data from 640 customers who purchase bee products from the Center for the Promotion of Agricultural Occupational Development, Chanthaburi Province. SPSS version 16.0 and Lisrel version 8.72 were used for data analysis and the statistics applied in this research consisted of frequency distribution, percentage, mean, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis and structural equation model analysis (SEM). The results showed that the sample group had a high level of opinion on the integrated marketing communication strategy ( =3.70), with a high level of opinion on the employee sales strategy, direct marketing, promotion, public relations and moderate level of opinion on advertising strategies as well as having a high level of customer loyalty ( =3.61). An integrated marketing communication strategy model that affects the loyalty of customers who purchase bee products from the Center for the Promotion of Agricultural Occupational Development, Chanthaburi Province, which was  causally developed showed that the integrated marketing communication strategy in advertising, public relations, sales by salesperson, promotion and direct marketing had causal relationship with the loyalty of customers who purchase bee products from the Center for the Promotion of Agricultural Occupational Development, Chanthaburi Province, at the statistical significance level of 0.05 (DE = 0.41*, 0.73*, 0.34*, 0.45* and 0.25*, respectively). The developed model had  a good prediction efficiency and is acceptable, which was accounted for 53.0%. Integrated Marketing Communication Guidelines for Bee Products from the Center for the Promotion of Agricultural Occupational Development, Chanthaburi Province, consisted of sales by salesperson, training provision to increase skills for salesperson, direct marketing, website development and update, online catalogs preparation and implementation of Line Official Account to increase communication efficiency. In regard to promotion,  a buy 1 get 1 promotion should be created to boost sales. Public relations on strengths and differences should be disseminated through famous people, social and environmental responsibility (CSR) activities. In term of advertising, advertising through online media via social media, using creative communication strategies to match the behavior of the target group to create awareness to make consumers aware, understand through marketing communications and the credibility leads to the purchase decision in order to access communication channels and lead to customer loyalty should be increased.

Keywords: Integrated Marketing Communication Strategy, Customer Loyalty