Sales Promotion: A Case Study

2.2.1 Sales Promotion

Every business organization reaches to the customers through their goods or services. To sell the products to the customers a number of activities are being performed. This is called marketing and it is an important function. Marketing is the performance of business activities that directs the flow of goods and services from producer to the customer. It is the activity that directs to satisfy the human needs through exchange process. Marketing starts with the identification of a specific need of customers and ends with satisfaction of that need. The customer is found in the beginning and end of marketing process. In marketing a large number of activities are performed. For easy understanding these activities are divided

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) defines sales promotion as, "Marketing devices and techniques, which are used to make goods and services more attractive by providing some additional benefit, whether in cash or in kind, or the expectation of such a benefit ". (Peattie, 2014) has described that there are three main categories of SP; Consumer promotions (premiums, gifts, competitions and prizes, e.g. on the back of breakfast cereal boxes), Trade promotions (point-of-sale materials, free pens and special terms, diaries, competition prizes, et cetera), Sales force promotions including incentive and motivation schemes. This is a particularly important marketing activity for fast moving consumer goods which represent majority of manufacturers’ marketing budget amounting to 16 per cent of their revenues (Conondale Associates, 2001). It acts as a competitive weapon by providing an extra incentive for the target audience to purchase or support one brand over

(2010) also shows that there are rarely any permanent effects of sales promotions on the volume of sales. Their findings proved that sales promotion does not change the structure of sales over the long run. They suggest that the diminishing impact of sales promotion may be because of choice of brand, quantity which is purchased and category incidence such as energy crisis. Masese (2009) are of the opinion that when a consumer is exposed to a sales promotion offer majority of the time, the consumer has already purchased and practiced a particular brand so the impact of learning form the that purchase is minimal and is easily balanced by a simultaneous and similar competitive offering. Therefore the immediate effects of sales promotion are small. This is because of price promotion consumers are forced to make purchases and but this impact on sales cannot only be explained by accelerated rate of purchase due to price