Direct Marketing – Conceptual, Terminological and Methodological Determination

Abstract

Direct marketing is a two way communication process for creating interaction with customers with the purpose of information exchange and sales creation. It is also a powerful instrument for establishing and maintaining customers’ relationships. Lately, the concept is gaining in the usage frequency on one side and the extension of methods on the other which is mostly a consequence of technological development. However, due to many employed methods and terms we are dealing with the terminological and definitional chaos. In this respect direct marketing should represent an umbrella term but in practice it is often misconceptualized with narrower terms and methods. Partly this is also due to a fact that direct marketing is only a recent development in the field of marketing. Thus the author tries to define the terminological limits of the main terms and presents the main point of views of discussed concept in the sense of marketing. This is important from the point of view of increased complexity of customers’ needs satisfaction and from the point of view of direct marketing concept positioning within organizations as well. Direct marketing plays an important role in the contemporary business environment – in many cases it is already a complementary if not even the exclusive way of doing business. Thus the numerous variations of direct marketing methods and the expected development of them demand the correct comprehension.