This Business Communication assignment contains two question. For the first question, it is sub-divided into two parts where for the first part, I have to explain the six step in the process of communication whereas for the second part, I have to explain and point out some ideas on how does one ensure the intended audience has received the right message.

For the second question, it is also sub-divided into two parts where for the first part, as the Product Manager of a soon-to-be-launched product, I have to the explain the methods, the medium, and the vehicles that I would use to communicate with my target audience in order to persuade them to buy my product and for the second part, it requires me to produce and come up with an advertisement for my product.

Explain the communication process. How does one ensure that the intended audience has received the right message?

2.0 The Communication Process

Communication is a process of sharing ideas, thoughts or feelings with other people or it can also be simplified as a process of sending and receiving messages. The process of communication involve the combination of some essential elements for the achievement of goals in an organization or a company. Communication doesn’t occur haphazardly, nor does it happen all at once. It is more than a single act and requires a common medium which is language. Communication is a dynamic, transactional or two way process that can be broken into six phases as shown in the diagram below

The first phase in the communication process is where the sender has an idea and wish to share the idea. The sender may be an individual or an organization who begin or commence the communication process. The sender is faced with involves the encoding process.

The second phase in the communication process is the encoding process where the sender encodes the idea. The encoder expresses his message through written words, facial expression, sounds and style. For example, when the sender put his idea into a message where his receiver will understand, the sender is actually encoding the message, deciding on the message’s form which depend on the sender’s idea, sender’s audience, and the sender’s personal style or mood. When encoding the message, the sender has to decide on what he/she wants to transmit.

The third phase in the communication process is where the sender transmits the message. The sender uses some kind of channel or can be called as a medium where it could physically transmit the message to the receiver. To help ensure communication is successful, the sender needs to select the channel relevant or suitable for the situation. Most channels usually used are either oral or written such as telephone, letter, memo, e-mail, report, face-to-face exchange. Visual channels such as video e-mail messages or video conferencing are becoming more common and convenient as technology expands over the time. These choices depends on the sender’s message, audience’s location and the formality required.

The fourth phase is when the receiver gets the message, where is the object to whom the message is directed. The receiver has the responsibility to receive the message with the same actual meaning appointed by the sender. For communication to occur, the receiver must first get the message. For instance, when the sender sends a letter, the receiver has to read it before understanding it.

After the receiver gets the message correctly and effectively, the next phase will be when the receiver decodes the message, which will be the fifth step in the communication process. Decoding is the antithesis of encoding. The decoder could be a reader or a listener. The receiver must decode (absorb and understand) the sender’s message. The decoded message must be then stored in the receiver’s mind. If the receiver interprets or decodes the message correctly, then the communication will become effective. However, if the receiver does not interprets the message correctly, the communication will become ineffective.

The last phase in the communication process will be the feedback process, where the receiver sends feedback to the sender. Feedback is a key compoenent which is the receiver’s response in the communication process. After decoding the message, the receiver responds in some way and signals that response to the sender which can take the form of either a written message, spoken comment or some other actions. Feedback enables the sender to evaluate the effectiveness of the message.

Therefore, the communication process is only effective when each step is successfully carried out. It can take the form of verbal and non verbal communication and involves the message being sent and received. The communication process is also an excellent guide towards attaining an effectual communication. Bad communication may cause failure in performance and in poor levels of job satisfaction.

2.1 Ensuring intended audience has received the right message

How does one ensure that the intended audience has received the right message? Generally, communication is the process of sending and receiving message. However, communication is only effective when people understand each other, stimulate others to take action, and encourage others to think in new ways. Effective business communication depends on skill in receiving messages as well as skills in sending them. To ensure that the intended audience has received the right message, the sender must intend to communicate appropriate meaning to the audience. The meaning must exists in the sender’s mind and in the mind of the audience. The sender and audience must share similar meanings for words, gestures, tone of voice, and other symbols in order to ensure the intended audience has received the right message.

Besides that, reducing the number of messages is also a good way to make audience understand better and received the right messages more efficicent rather than complicated. In order to prevent such complications, one can consider by breaking these complex messages or overloaded messages into simple and short form messages to make sure that the right message is conveyed to the audience to ensure that they received the right message. This is because listening ability decreases when information is difficult to understand and when it has little meaning for the listener. If a written message merely adds to the information overload, it’s probably better left unsent or handed over some other way such as, by a quick telephone call or a face-to-face chat. Holding down the number of messages reducing the chance of sending or transmiting false statement or information to the audience.

Apart from that, planning a business message can ensure that the intended audience has received the right message. When planning a business message, the sender must decide on the general and specific purpose of the message. All messages must have a general purpose such as to inform, to persuade or to

collaborate with the audience. To inform audience, the sender needs little interaction with their audience. Audience members absorb the information and accept or reject it, but they don’t contribute to message

content, where the sender control the message. Business purpose must have a specific purpose where that purpose may be clear and straightforward. Planning effectively by deciding on purpose, selecting participants who really need to be there, choosing a location and time that are conductive to the goals are also important to ensure the intended audience has received the right message.

In addition, selecting the best channel and medium for the message can also ensure that the intended audience has received the right message. When selecting a channel, the sender must consider the media within each channel. For example, the oral channel includes medium such as face-to-face conversations, speeches, videotapes, voice mail, phone conversations and so on. A written channel includes media such as letters, reports, e-mail, faxes, flyer and so on. Media richness is the value of a medium in a given communication situation. Richness is determined by a medium’s ability to convey a message by means of more than one informational cue ( visual, verbal, vocal ) , to facilitate feedback from audience, and to establish personal focus. For a communication to be more effective, It is often said that eye to eye contact is important wherever possible rather than other forms of indirect communication.

Morever, establishing a good relationship with the audience will also ensure that the intended audience has received the right message. Establishing a good relationship is important in order to get the message across to the audience. The way how the sender postion him/her self in the room, the tone of voice the sender adapt, and the way that sender interacts with audience in the room will also help all to establish this relationship. The message tells what the sender wants, and the audience is expected to go along with it. Besides that, too many business talks or meeting have an ‘I’ or ‘We’ attitude, which sounds selfish and uninterested in the audience. When someone makes a mistake, the sender may want to minimize it by pointing our the error impersonally. In general, try to state the message without using words that could hurt or offend the audience.

Question 2

As a product manager of a soon-to-be-launched, explain the methods, the mediums, and the vehicles that you would use to communicate with your target audience to persuade them to buy your product. Produce one advertisement for your product.

3.0 Advertising in Business Communication

Advertising is unique and diverse that it is difficult to conclude about how advertising works. It is used to promote a product, business or an event to its target audience. Advertising can take the form of communication which is intend to persuade or influence an audience to purchase the product It has few different types of characteristics which is effective in nature, non personal, paid for by a sponsor and it is distribute by mass course of communication.

Commercial advertisers usually seek to achieve the advance growth of consumption of their products

and services by branding, which involves the repetition of an image or product to affiliate related features or characteristics with the brand in consumer’s mind. In other hand, advertisement also could help to create and control brand equity where brand equity is an intangible asset resulted from impression of differentiation, brand or trademark. It is set up and controlled through advertisement that control on product attributes, image, service and other features of company. Advertising is meant to develop awareness in consumer’s mind and changing attitude in the consumers but not creating sales. Advertising’s input to sales is difficult to segregate due to various factors that influence sales.

One of the ways of advertising is through direct advertising, where it makes an effort to force targeted or potential customers by respond to call to action. Direct advertising conveys the ability to make the ad liable and accountable, where the advertiser is able to observe and keep track of an ad’s effectiveness.

However, the exception to this conception is limited to internet domain. While sources of advertisement such as banner ads and pops-out should continue be viewed as means for promoting something and not necessarily sales drivers, technology delivers the ability to track or account the number of visitors clicking banners of a website, wanting to know more about a product and ultimately making purchases. Basically, it is able to track how many visitiors aroused their interest or acknowledged the adverts.

Morever, the cost of advertising is too high and that high cost is enclosed by the selling price of the advertising goods. Unbalanced advertising may result in causing several goods to cost the consumers more than they should. Thus, this is taken as an economic waste. Besides that, consumers have also become more skeptical about advertising messages and tend to resend advertiser’s attempt to persuade.

Thus, advertising is one of the most essential and substantial element that should be present in a company or any kind of organizations. This is because advertising advocate consumers to keep them informed about products and services available in the market or in other hand, it also help to create and disperse awareness about products and services among consumers and potential buyers.

3.1 Choosing the Product

As the Product Manager, I have choosen the product ‘Best Buy Travel Bagpack’ as a soon-to-be

launched product. I will now advance and progress with the explaination of the methods, the mediums

use and the vehicles that I will use to communicate my products with my target audience to persuade them to buy my product.

In order to market my product ‘ Best Buy Travel Bagpack’ to my target audience, I have choosen advertising as a method to advertise my product and encourage my target audience to buy my product. The advertisement will create the awareness of the product to consumers and update the consumers about the produt’s features, characteristics and the price of the product which makes it easier for consumers to purchase the product without any confusion and hesitations. Besides that, through advertisement, consumers could save their time in purchasing the product and also bring about or implement the informations of the product in the consumer’s mind, which eventually they will start to utilize the product.

I chose flyer as the medium for my advertisement by distributing and giving out them for free on streets, postboxes and through mail. They are distributed to every consumers to raise the awareness of the product in the consumer’s mind. In addition, it is one of the cheapest way to advertise products but its highly effective way to attract targeted consumers, and it is ideal to utilize great response and feedbacks through flyer. Flyers is essential as they set the first impression or image of the company/product that is to be advertised by curious viewers. Like they say a picture speaks a thousands words, hence a flyer can tell a lot with one look. A good, glossy flyer that stands out wil help in the retention of a company or product’s name in the mind of a consumer. Therefore, an excellent and impressive flyer printing service is necessary in order to gain or attain highly quality promotional materials.

4.0 CONCLUSION

Therefore, the ability to communicate will influence people’s perceptions of someone as a business professional. Morever, because communication plays a key role in efforts to improve efficiency, quality, responsiveness, and innovation. As a career advances and to achive positions of greater responsibility and leadership with an organization, communication will become an increasingly visible and important part in job.

For audience members to successfully receive messages, they must first sense the presence of the message , then select it from other sensory input, then perceive it as a message. To decode messages successfully, they need to extract the same meaning that the sender encoded into the message. And to respond in a manner that the sender would consider successful, audiences need to remember the message, have the ability to respond to it, and have the motivation to respond.

Hence, I have completed the both question for this assignment and understood everything related to the assignment questions.