Rhetoric Vs reality :Exploring the practices of permission marketing in fast food industry of Islamabad

Abstract

Permission marketing can manipulated as to address with more irrelevant and frequent messages. Companies use different strategies as to attract more and more customers or emphasize on the existing ones. SMS marketing and Opt-In emails are such two kinds of permission marketing of which the businesses claim that they get customer’s data with their consent and they agree to be targeted with different sorts of messages or emails by the company. This study illustrates that how these practices are applied as compared to the rhetoric. Permission marketing is a new tool developed by Seth Godin in 1999 in his book “Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers” in which he defines it as an approach by which we ask permission from the customer and then respond them according to their consent. This study has been based as on how the practices have been utilized in the fast food industry of Islamabad, what is the rhetoric and what is the actual reality in application of this concept. Two of permission marketing tools, SMS marketing and Opt-in emails were primarily focused. A qualitative study was carried in which questions were developed by focusing on the knowing out about the true practices of SMS marketing and Opt-in emails in the context of fast food industry which is the second biggest growing industry of Pakistan. In pursuit of the objectives of research, personal interviews from four major fast food restaurants in Islamabad have been recorded. From the discussions, four major themes have emerged in the findings chapter which are then discussed with some interesting results in a non-conclusive manner as the study is an attempt to explore the phenomenon via grounded theory approach taking in insights and views of respondents based on their experience and social communications. Key words: Permission Marketing; SMS marketing; Opt-in emails, Fast food industry.