Ericksonian therapy as a grounding for a theory of persuasive marketing dialogue
Authors: Miles, C.
Journal: Marketing Theory
Volume: 15
Issue: 1
Pages: 95-111
Publisher: Sage
DOI: 10.1177/1470593114558534
Abstract:Calls for the abandonment of manipulative and controlling marketing communication practices have become increasingly common in relationship- and service-orientated marketing theories. Scholars supporting such calls agree that the pursuit of communicative control should be replaced by a dialogical, negotiative orientation. However, there has been little thought given to how exactly dialogical marketing communication can practically reconcile itself with the issue of persuasion. In this article, I argue that a critical appraisal of the techniques of the clinical hypnotist and therapist Milton Erickson can provide marketers with a constructive framework with which to refashion their communicative roles and practices around the notion of a therapeutic, rhetorically grounded, marketing dialogue in which marketing stakeholders interweave dynamic narratives of value, which have the power to change other stakeholders and themselves. I also use the comparison with service-orientated marketing literature to point out certain weaknesses in the Ericksonian concep- tion of the therapist/client dyad.
Source: Manual
