Guest editorial
Article Type: Guest editorial From: EuroMed Journal of Business, Volume 4, Issue 3
About the Guest Editors Ioanna Papasolomou is an Associate Professor and the Head of the Department of Marketing, School of Business Administration, at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus. She has teaching and research experience in the UK where she worked as a Lecturer in Marketing at the Department of Management at Keele University and at Chester Business School. She holds a BA (Hons) Business Studies from Philip's College in Cyprus, and an MBA, an MPhil in Management, a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and a PhD in Management from Keele University. She was also the Chair for the 10th International Conference on Corporate and Marketing Communications that was hosted by Intercollege in April 2005 and the 14th International Conference on Corporate and Marketing Communications that was hosted by the University of Nicosia in April 2009. She is an Associate Editor for the EuroMed Journal of Business and a member of the editorial board for the International Journal of Social Responsibility.
Alkis Thrassou is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the School of Business of the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. He obtained a PhD in Strategic Marketing Management from the University of Leeds (UK). From 1996 until 2002 he has worked as a Business and Project Manager, leading teams of professionals through many projects of varying size and nature. In 2002, he joined the Marketing Department of the University of Nicosia, involving himself in various scholarly activities, lecturing on marketing-related subjects to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, and undertaking extensive research in the fields of marketing communications, services and consumer behaviour. He has published extensively in many scientific journals and books and between 2006 and 2008 he also served as the Head of the Marketing Department. He retains strong ties with the industry, participates in the management of companies, leads professionals through the realisation of large-scale projects, acts also as a consultant and is also a chartered member of two professional institutes: CIM and CIOB.
Organisations are constantly faced with developments and challenges in the field of communications, in an era which is marked by many innovations,inventions and trends. There is no doubt as to the importance of clearly defined marketing and communication activities in driving organisations forward and helping to maintain or improve competitive advantage. In today's highly competitive environment, there is a growing need for embracing strategically-focused corporate and marketing communications in order to market products, brands, ideas and organisations. Communications as a strategic resource can help in adopting shared values and goals between an organisation's internal and external stakeholder groups.
As the domains of corporate and marketing communications are maturing,expanding, and integrating in relation to organisational and market needs, it is increasingly important to consider interdisciplinary views on strategic communication practices that would help explore more fully the strengths and weaknesses associated with either domains and their practical implications.
Marketing communications in this era nevertheless, transcends the business context to define contemporary economic and social frameworks within which societies evolve. The importance of branding, social responsibility, internet utilisation and other aspects of marketing are incessantly reforming the foundations of marketing communications, enforcing new perspectives on the very principles of the subject.
Amid this constant transformation, both scholars and practitioners are challenged to comprehend the true forces and motivators constituting change, to employ these to the benefit of businesses and society as a whole, and to deploy their individual and combined abilities towards keeping up with the pace of progress.
Marketing communications cannot be and is not anymore a business function. It is an activity that links the individual consumer to businesses and the individual business to society. Marketing communications inform, create perceptions, build images, shape lifestyles and construct a new dimension in the consumers' sense of reality. A virtual dimension that is more real than reality as we came to know it. That is both the power and the legacy of marketing communications.
This special issue of the EuroMed Journal of Business encompasses six papers, each with a unique topic from the marketing and corporate communications fields. The papers put forward ideas as well as findings that help shed light in their respective fields of study. Each one provides an insight to the evolution of marketing communications and together they bring us a step closer to capturing the essence of contemporary marketing.
Ioanna Papasolomou, Alkis ThrassouGuest Editors
