Marketing as a useful tool in public communication of science and technology

Author: Andrzej Jasinski – University of Warsaw. Poland

Introduction. In the world’s literature, one can find quite many considerations referring to marketing of technology or technological innovation. Unfortunately, the publications considering science marketing or marketing of R&D appear much more rarely – e.g., Baaken (2009), Bialon (2010), Frischmann (2005), Isabelle (2007), Jasinski (2015), Markman (2005), Shankar (2008).

Participating in numerous PCST conferences since 1998 (except last three), the author has realized that some issues were practically absent during those conferences. A list of the omissions is as follows: (1) the main subject of the conference considerations is science communication, however, if we deal with PCST we should speak rather on communication of science and technology, (2) an idea to use marketing-mix as one of possible approaches to science communication is in principle non-existent, (3) also, among various depictions of science communication, marketing communication (previously named as promotion) of science is hardly seen, (4) some aspects of science marketing are practically absent, e.g., Science-to-Business Marketing.

The main aim of this paper is to show how marketing communication can be used by PROs to communicate with society – especially if a given science product is devoted to the business sector – with a purpose to facilitate University-Business Cooperation.

Theses. What is characteristic of marketing communication is that a marketing thinking is a kind of reverse thinking: it begins ‘from the end’, i.e., from potential receivers of a message. So, to be successful, the communication process also starts with an identification of target groups of final addressees of the message and goals of the communication campaign. In turn, such identification requires a segmentation of potential receivers.

Methodology: literature studies, a case-study of a research institute in Poland, and questionnaire research among enterprises in Warsaw and within University of Warsaw.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Individual paper
Theme: Technology