Hall are both academics with the School of Management at the University of Tasmania. Mark is a lecturer with an interest in marketing management and business ethics, whilst Linda is an associate lecturer with a keen interest in marketing communications and reputation theory. Organising IMC Roles and Functions in the Business-to-Business Network Environment. ABSTRACT As products and distribution channels become more homogenised, and competing on the basis of price more difficult, integrated

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... ting communications (IMC) has been identified as the 'new frontier' for effective differentiation (Kitchen and Schultz, 2003) . IMC has been advanced as a strategy for differentiation by which a firm sends consistent messages from all contact points resulting in constant message reinforcement, thus maximum impact on the target audience with minimum promotional expenditure (Kliatchko, 2005) . Research has determined that in the face of global pressures, firms within industry networks exhibited a natural convergence toward standardised communication practices, thus supporting the efficacy of the broader IMC perspective in the business-to-business context (see Wickham and Hall, 2006). In order to understand how multiple firms within an industry network managed their combined IMC functions, this paper explores the roles (and associated organisation of IMC activities) adopted by an industry network. In total, this research found evidence of three distinct roles (IMC Champion, Government Lobbyist, and Network Ambassador) that together served to gather, analyse and disseminate key marketing information throughout the network of firms. This research also presents an IMC framework that represents the manner in which the various network members coordinated the various IMC roles.