Promotion Strategy
What is promotional strategy ? Promotional strategy is the function of informing, persuading, and influencing a consumer decision. It is as important to non profit organizations as it is to a profit oriented company like Colgate-Palmolive. Some promotional strategies are aimed at developing primary demand, the desire for a general product category.
For example, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board promotes natural cheese through advertisements without referring to any particular cheese maker. But most promotional strategies are aimed at creating selective demand, the desire for a particular product. Land O' Lakes campaign—"The taste that stands above. Land O' Lakes 4-Quart Cheese"—is an example. The objectives of promotion, the components of the promotional mix—personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, and public relations are discussed, and finally, the factors that influence marketers' decisions in selecting a promotional mix are explained.
Objectives of Promotional Strategy Promotional strategy objectives vary among organizations. Some use promotion to expand their markets, others to hold their current positions, still others to present a corporate viewpoint on a public issue. Promotional strategies can also be used to reach selected markets. Most sources identify the specific promotional objectives or goals of providing information, differentiating the product, increasing sales, stabilizing sales, and accentuating the product's value. An organization can have multiple promotional objectives.
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The National Pork Producers Council has developed "The Other White Meat" promotional campaign primarily to position pork as a white meat rather than a red meat. Other goals of the campaign include increasing the sale of pork and informing consumers that pork is low in calories and cholesterol, high in nutrition, easy to prepare, and versatile. To illustrate the versatility of pork, one advertisement in the campaign features 21 different pork dishes and offers consumers a free booklet for those and other pork recipes. Providing Information
In the early days of promotional campaigns, when there was often a short supply of many items, most advertisements were designed to inform the public of a product's availability. Today, a major portion of advertising in the United States is still informational. A large section of the daily newspapers on Wednesdays and Thursdays consists of advertising that tells shoppers which products are featured by stores and at what price. Health insurance advertisements in Sunday newspaper supplements emphasize information about rising hospital costs.
Industrial salespeople keep buyers aware of the latest technological advances in a particular field. Fashion retailers advertise to keep consumers abreast of current styles. Promotional campaigns designed to inform are often aimed at specific market segments. Warner Bros. Records, for example, created a compact disc advertisement targeted at the baby-boom generation. In explaining the purpose of the ad, a Warner executive said, "We believe that most boomers are unaware that our classic recordings of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s are on CD along with the current releases. The ad informs baby boomers that Warner releases not only contemporary recordings but also some of its best albums from previous years, including those by Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison, and ZZ Top, on compact discs. Included in the ad is a list of classic recordings now available on compact discs. Differentiating the Product Marketers often develop a promotional strategy to differentiate their goods or services from those of competitors. To accomplish this, they attempt to occupy a "position" in the market that appeals to their target customers.
Promotions that apply the concept of positioning communicate to consumers meaningful distinctions about the attributes, price, quality, or usage of a good or service. Positioning is often used for goods or services that are not leaders in their field. The advertisement for Murphy's Oil Soap in Figure 13. 2 is part of a promotional campaign The Murphy-Phoenix Company uses to differentiate its household cleaner from its much larger competition. While market leader Mr. Clean and other large competitors such as Top Job are promoted as "tough on dirt" cleaners, Murphy's Oil Soap is positioned as a gentle household cleaner.
The positioning strategy is carried through in other ads in the campaign, in which caretakers of churches and opera houses emphasize the soap's gentle cleaning attribute. Increasing Sales Increasing sales volume is the most common objective of a promotional strategy. Some strategies concentrate on primary demand, others on selective demand. Sometimes specific audiences are targeted. In an effort to build the sales volume of its bodywear, Danskin developed an advertising campaign targeted at women age 18 to 44. Advertisements in the $3 million campaign, helped boost the sales of Danskin's adult garments by 30 percent in one year.
The campaign theme—"All the World's a Stage"—communicates the message that Danskin garments can be purchased not only for exercise and dance but also as everyday apparel. Stabilizing Sales Sales stabilization is another goal of promotional strategy. Sales contests are often held during slack periods. Such contests offer prizes (such as vacation trips, color televisions, and scholarships) to sales personnel who meet certain goals. Sales promotion materials—calendars, pens, and the like—are sometimes distributed to stimulate sales during off-periods.
Advertising is also often used to stabilize sales. Hotels are crowded on weekdays with business travelers, but these people go home on Friday. So many hotels promote "weekend packages" at lower rates to attract tourists and vacationers. A stable sales pattern allows the firm to improve financial, purchasing, and market planning; to even out the production cycle; and to reduce some management and production costs. The correct use of promotional strategy can be a valuable tool in accomplishing these objectives. Accentuating the Product's Value
Some promotional strategies are based on factors, such as warranty programs and repair services, that add to the product's value. Many Ford Motor Company advertisements promote specific car and light truck models. Some ads, however, are designed to promote Ford's 6-year, 60,000-mile powertrain warranty, while others concentrate on the Lifetime Service Guarantee offered by Ford dealers. These promotions point out greater ownership utility to buyers, thus enhancing the product's value. The Promotional Mix Firms use various elements to achieve their promotional objectives.
Promotion consists of two components: personal selling and nonpersonal selling. Personal selling is a promotional presentation made on a person-to-person basis with a potential buyer. Nonpersonal selling consists of advertising, sales promotion, and public relations. The promotional mix is a combination of personal selling and nonpersonal selling. Marketers attempt to develop a promotional mix that effectively and efficiently communicates their message to target customers. Personal Selling For many companies, personal selling—a promotional presentation made on a person-to-person basis to a potential buyer—is the key to marketing ffectiveness. The promotional strategy of Merrill Lynch, a financial services firm, focuses on its 12,000-person sales force. Selling was the original method of promotion. Today, selling employs over 6 million Americans. The sales function of most companies is changing rapidly. In some cases, the change has been only cosmetic, such as when the title salesclerk is changed to account representative but the job function remains the same. Yet, many firms are making significant changes in their sales force. Sales duties have been expanded, and in some instances, the function itself has changed.
The primary trend is toward increased professionalism on the part of sales personnel. Today's sales people act as advisors to their customers, helping them utilize more efficiently the items they buy. Sales Tasks Sales tasks vary significantly from one company or situation to another, but it usually includes three basic tasks: order processing, creative selling, and missionary selling. Order Processing: The task of order processing involves the receipt and handling of an order. Needs are identified and pointed out to the customer, and the order is processed.
The handling of orders is especially important in satisfying customer needs. The Willamette Industries advertisement points out that the firm's salespeople take a customer-oriented approach to order processing. They check the quality of the products their retail customers receive, know their customers' market, and ensure that products are available when customers need them. Route sales personnel for such consumer products as bread, milk, and soft drinks are examples of order processors. They check a store's stock, report the inventory level to the store manager, and complete the sale.
Most sales jobs have at least a minor order-processing function. It becomes the primary duty in cases where needs are readily identified and acknowledged by the customer. Creative Selling: Sales representatives for most industrial goods and some consumer goods are involved in creative selling, a persuasive type of promotional presentation. Creative selling is used when the benefits of a good or service are not readily apparent and its purchase is being based on a careful analysis of alternatives. In new-product selling, sales people need to be very creative if initial orders are to be secured.
Missionary Selling: An indirect form of selling in which the representative markets the goodwill of a company or provides technical or operational assistance to the customer is called missionary selling. For example, many technically based organizations, such as IBM and Xerox, provide systems specialists who consult with their customers. These people are problem solvers and sometimes work on problems not directly involving their employer's product. A person who sells a highly technical product may do 55 percent missionary selling, 40 percent creative selling, and 5 percent order processing.
By contrast, the job of retail salespeople may be 70 percent order processing, 15 percent creative selling, and 15 classifying a particular sales job. The Sales Process Years ago, sales personnel memorized a sales talk provided by their employers. Such a canned sales presentation was intended to provide all the information the customer needed to make a purchase decision. The entire sales process was viewed as a situation in which the prospective customer was passive and ready to buy if the appropriate information could be identified and presented by the representative.
Contemporary selling recognizes that the interaction between buyers and sellers usually rules out canned presentations in all but the simplest of sales situations. Today's professional sales personnel typically follow a sequential pattern, but the actual presentation varies according to the circumstances. Figure 13. 5 shows that seven steps can be identified in the sales process: prospecting and qualifying, the approach, the presentation, the demonstration, handling objections, the closing, and the follow-up. Prospecting and Qualifying: In prospecting, salespeople identify potential customers.
They may come from many sources, such as previous customers, friends, business associates, neighbors, other sales personnel, and other employees in the firm. A recent study indicated increased advertising in business publications results in more prospects for salespeople promoting industrial goods and services. In the qualifying process, potential customers are identified in terms of their financial ability and authority to buy. Those who lack the necessary financial resources or who are not in a position to make the purchase decision are given no further attention.
The Approach: Salespeople should carefully prepare their approach to potential customers. All available information about prospects should be collected and analyzed. Sales representatives should remember that the initial impression they give prospects often affects the prospects' future attitudes. The Presentation: The presentation is the stage at which the salesperson transmits the promotional message. The usual method is to describe the good's or service's major features, highlight its advantages, and cite examples of consumer satisfaction. The Demonstration: A demonstration allows the prospect to become involved in the presentation.
Demonstrations reinforce the message communicated to the prospective buyer. In promoting some goods and services, the demonstration is a critical step in the sales process. Paper manufacturers, for example, produce elaborate booklets that their salespeople use to demonstrate different types of paper, paper finishes, and graphic techniques. The demonstration allows salespeople to show art directors, designers, printers, and other potential customers what different paper specimens look like when they are printed. Handling Objections: Many salespeople fear objections from the prospect because they view them as a rebuke.
Actually, such objections should be welcomed, because they allow additional points in support of the sale and to answer questions the consumer has about the good or service to be presented by the sales representative. The Closing: The closing is the critical point in selling—the time at which the seller actually asks the prospect to buy the product. The seller should watch for signals that the prospect is ready to buy. For example, if a prospect starts discussing where the new equipment would fit in the plant system they are inspecting, it should give the sales agent a signal to attempt to close the sale.
Effective closing techniques might be that the salesclerk can ask the prospect directly or propose alternative purchases. Or the salesperson may do something that implies the sale has been completed, such as walking toward a cash register. This forces the prospect to say no if they do not want to complete the sale. The Follow-Up: After-sale activities are very important in determining whether a customer will buy again later. After the prospect agrees to buy, the salesperson should complete the order processing quickly and efficiently and reassure the customer about the purchase decision.
Later, the salesperson should check with the customer to determine whether the good or service is satisfactory. Many firms employ telemarketers to conduct post-sale activities. Telemarketing: is a personal selling approach conducted entirely by telephone. Telemarketers employed by the Apple Bank for Savings in New York make follow up calls to customers to measure their reaction to the bank's services. Telemarketers also perform other functions in the sales process. At Apple Bank, they handle customer inquiries and help market the bank's financial services.
For example, telemarketers call customers when their certificates of deposit are about to mature and suggest other savings alternatives. Advertising For many firms, advertising is the most effective type of nonpersonal promotion. Advertising is a paid, non personal sales communication usually directed at a large number of potential buyers. Firms in the United States account for about half of worldwide advertising expenditures. U. S. marketers spend more than $100 billion each year, or about $420 for each man, woman, and child.
The nation's leading advertisers are Philip Morris; Procter & Gamble; General Motors; Sears, Roebuck; and Ford Motor Company, each of which spends more than $1 billion on advertising annually. Advertising expenditures can vary considerably from industry to industry and company to company. In the nonresidential general building contracting industry, for instance, advertising spending amounts to only two-tenths of 1 percent of sales. At the other extreme is the retail mail-order house industry, which spends 14 percent of sales on advertising. Types of Advertising
The two basic types of advertising are product and institutional. Product advertising involves the selling of a good or service. Advertisements for Nike Air shoes, Marriott hotels, and Packard Bell computers would be classified as product advertising. Institutional advertising: involves the promotion of a concept, idea, or philosophy, or the goodwill of an industry, company, organization, or government entity. For example, Texas promoted tourism with the theme: "Visit a country where the natives are friendly and the language barrier is easily overcome. Institutional advertising by profit-seeking firms is called corporate advertising. A form of institutional advertising that is growing in importance, advocacy advertising supports a specific viewpoint on a public issue. Its purpose is to influence public opinion and/or the legislative process. Advocacy advertising is used by many nonprofit organizations. For example, advertisements by the National Rifle Association support Americans' constitutional right to keep and bear arms and speak out against the passage of gun-control laws.
The Chemical Bank advertisement an example of a corporate advocacy advertisement. The ad expresses Chemical Bank's viewpoint concerning a current law that prohibits commercial banks from competing in the securities underwriting market. Advocacy advertising is sometimes referred to as cause advertising. Advertising and the Product Life Cycle Product and institutional advertising can be subdivided by its purposes: to inform, persuade, or remind. Informative advertising, intended to build initial demand for a product, is used in the introductory phase of the product life cycle.
When Johnson ; Johnson introduced its Acuvue disposable contact lens—the nation's first disposable lens—it launched a massive advertising campaign directed at consumers and eye-care professionals to explain the health benefits of using the new product. Persuasive advertising attempts to improve the competitive status of a product, institution, or concept. It is used in the growth and maturity stages of the product life cycle. The Kinder-Care advertisement in Figure 13. 7 is an example of persuasive advertising. Since it was established in 1969, Kinder-Care used informational ads that promoted the centers' hours and programs.
But now that the company has grown to almost 1,400 centers and competitors such as La Petite Academy, Children's World, and Gerber Children's Center have entered the market, Kinder-Care has shifted to a persuasive advertising approach. The theme of the campaign—"The Joys of Kinder-Care"—promotes the idea of trust, which the firm's marketing research indicated was parents' major child-care concern. One of the most popular approaches to persuasive product advertising is comparative advertising, which makes direct comparisons with competitive products. Numerous companies have used comparative advertising in recent years.
The Pepsi Challenge is an example of comparative advertising. Pepsi-Cola ads have used blind taste tests in which a majority of consumers choose Pepsi over Coca- Cola. Although Coca-Cola still leads the soft-drink market, the Pepsi Challenge helped increase Pepsi sales considerably. Reminder-oriented advertising, used in the late-maturity and decline stages of the product life cycle, attempts to keep a product's name in front of the consumer or to remind people of the importance of a concept or an institution. Soft drinks, beer, toothpaste, and cigarettes are products for which reminder-oriented advertising is used.
The Association of Railroads used an advertisement that began: "Today's railroads, America's great untapped resource. " Even police cars in some areas of the United States carry reminder-oriented themes such as "We protect and serve. " E. D. Bullard Company designed the poster shown in Figure 13. 8 to remind workers of the importance of wearing hard hats. Advertising Media All marketers face the question of how to best allocate their advertising expenditures. Cost is an important consideration, but it is equally important to choose the media best suited for the job. All media have dvantages and disadvantages; these are discussed in the sections that follow. Newspapers: Newspapers, with 26 percent of total advertising volume, are the largest of the advertising media. 9 Because newspaper advertising can be tailored for individual communities, local advertising is common. Newspapers also reach nearly everyone in the community. Other advantages are that readers can refer back to them, and they can be coordinated with other advertising and merchandising efforts. In fact, advertising is considered the third most useful feature in newspapers, after national and local news. A disadvantage is the relatively short life p.
Television: Television ranks second overall to newspapers with 22 percent of all advertising volume, but it is the leader in national advertising. Television advertising can be classified as network, national, local, and cable. Television has a significant impact on potential customers despite its high cost. Mass coverage, repetition, flexibility, and prestige are other advantages. The medium's ability to reach huge audiences was demonstrated vividly by the 1989 Pepsi commercial featuring pop singer Micahael Jackson. The firm spent $5 million to beam the commercial to 250 million viewers in 40 nations, from Finland to the Philippines. The ad was pulled because of Michael Jackson’s image and legal problems. ) In addition to high cost, its disadvantages include the temporary nature of the message, some public distrust, and lack of selectivity in the ability to reach specific target market segments without considerable wasted coverage. Direct Mail: Direct mail is the third-leading advertising medium, with about 17 percent of total advertising expenditures. Its advantages include selectivity, intense coverage, speed, flexibility, complete information, and personalization. On the other hand, direct mail is extremely costly.
It is also dependent on effective mailing lists, and it sometimes meets with consumer resistance. Radio: With 99 percent of all U. S. households owning on average five radio sets, radio is another important broadcast advertising medium. Radio, which accounts for 7 percent of total advertising volume, can be classified as network, spot, and local advertising. Advantages of radio are immediacy, low cost, targeted audience selection, flexibility, and mobility. Disadvantages include the short life p of a radio message and a highly fragmented audience.
Magazines: Magazines account for about 5 percent of advertising volume. Modern Maturity, with almost 20 million subscribers, is the nation's largest magazine in terms of paid subscriptions. It is followed by Reader's Digest and TV Guide, each with about 17 million subscribers. Advantages of magazines include selectivity, quality reproduction, long life, and prestige. The main disadvantage of magazines is that they lack the flexibility of newspapers and broadcast media, but the appearance of local advertising in various regional editions of national news magazines suggests that this problem is being overcome.
Outdoor Advertising: One percent of total advertising expenditures are on outdoor advertising such as billboards. Its strength is in communicating simple ideas quickly. Other advantages are repetition and the ability to promote goods and services available for sale nearby. However, the message must be brief, and there are aesthetic considerations. Other Media Options: Other media include advertising in movie theaters and on airline movie screens. Recently, several firms such as Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Chrysler, and Hershey placed ads on videocassette movies.
Many firms display their advertising message on trucks, while others use transit advertising. An advertising vehicle gaining in popularity is the hot-air balloon, used by organizations such as Maxwell House, Coors, Eastman Kodak, and the states of Maryland and Connecticut. These alternative media can be employed separately or in conjunction with advertising campaigns using more traditional media. Can you name the candy the space creature picked up in the film "E. T. "? Reeses Candy company's sales of Reeses Pieces went through the profit ceiling for this exposure.
As such, many other companies now pay thousands of dollars for this type of theatrical exposure and advertising. Sales Promotion Sales promotion consists of the forms of promotion other than advertising, personal selling, and public relations that increase sales through one-time selling efforts. Sales promotion was traditionally viewed as a supplement to a firm's sales or advertising efforts, but now it has become an integral part of the promotional mix. Expenditures for sales promotion total more than $100 billion each year. Point-of-Purchase Advertising (POP)
Point-of-purchase advertising (POP) consists of displays and demonstrations promoting an item at a time and place near the location of the actual purchase decision, such as in a retail store. Video advertising on supermarket shopping carts is an example. POP can be very effective in continuing a theme developed by some other aspect of the firm's promotional strategy. Specialty Advertising Specialty advertising is the giving away of useful merchandise such as pens, calendars, T-shirts, glassware, and pocket calculators that are imprinted with the donor's name, logo, or message.
Because the items are useful and are often personalized with the recipient's name, they tend to be kept and used by the targeted audience, giving the advertiser repeated exposure. Originally designed to identify and create goodwill for advertisers, specialty advertising is now used to generate sales leads and develop traffic for stores and trade show exhibitors. Trade Shows A trade show is often used to promote goods or services to resellers in the distribution channel. Retailers and wholesalers attend trade conventions and shows where manufacturers exhibit their lines. Such shows are very important n the toy, furniture, and fashion industries. They have also been used to promote the products of one nation to buyers from another. L. A. Gear used a trade show extravaganza to let retailers know about its diversified product line. The company, which originally produced a line of teenage fashion athletic footwear, expanded its offerings to include 80 women's shoe styles, a men's and a children's line, and an apparel collection. But most retailers carry a limited number of L. A. Gear styles compared to those of nationally recognized brand names such as Nike and Reebok.
To build its brand recognition among retailers, L. A. Gear designed a trade show display replicating the city of Los Angeles, complete with a Beverly Hills Hotel and a 25-foot City Hall. The display includes a stage where dancers, gymnasts, and other performers entertained retailers attending the National Shoe Fair in New York and the Super Show, the trade show of the sporting goods industry. Don Wasley, L. A. Gear's vice-president of promotion, said, "When we created this trade show booth, it was to let the retailers know we'd arrived.
We wanted them to take us seriously. Other Sales Promotion Methods Other sales promotion techniques include samples, coupons, premiums, contests, and trading stamps. Most of these methods are used to introduce new products or encourage consumers to try a new brand. A sample is a free gift of a product distributed by mail, door to door, in a demonstration, or inside packages containing other products. Samples are particularly useful in promoting new products. PepsiCo used a novel sampling promotion to boost the market share of Pepsi Cola in Brazil.
Young male students wearing T-shirts with the Pepsi logo dispensed Pepsi samples from refrigerated backpacks to beachgoers sunning themselves on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. The promotion supported PepsiCo's "Taste of a new generation" advertising campaign in Brazil, where 50 percent of the population is younger than 20. A coupon is an advertising clipping or package inclusion stamps are similar to premiums in that they are redeemable for additional merchandise. Historically, they have been used to build loyalty to a certain retailer or supplier. Contests, sweepstakes, and games offer cash or merchandise redeemable by the customer.
Offering what amounts to a small price discount, it can help get a customer to try a new or different product. Many retailers, including southern supermarket giant Winn Dixie, double the face value of manufacturers' coupons. In a recent survey comparing various methods of consumer promotion, 83 percent of respondents said coupons increased the value of their shopping dollar. The respondents gave sweepstakes and other sales promotion techniques much lower ratings. A premium is an item given free or at a reduced cost with the purchase of another product. Premiums are most effective when they relate in some way to the purchased item.
To promote its new cinnamon-and-raisin biscuits and increase overall breakfast traffic, Hardee's fast-food restaurants offered the premium of a California Raisin figurine for 99 cents with the purchase of two biscuits. Sales during the four-week promotion increased 18 percent, well above Hardee's goal of increasing sales 4. 5 percent. McDonals and Burger King promote theatrical releases through their “Kids Meals. ” Trading as prizes to participating winners. The transit poster advertises an American Natural Beverage Corporation sweepstakes in which the grand prize is a 1957 Thunderbird Classic.
The first person to spell "Cruisin"' by collecting specially marked bottle caps from Soho Natural Soda wins the car. Public Relations Public relations is an organization's communications with its various publics, such as customers, vendors, news media, employees, stockholders, government, and the general public. Many of these communication efforts have a marketing purpose. Johnson ; Johnson Health Care Company launched a five-year public relations campaign to educate the public on reducing childhood injuries.
The Safe Kids program includes a free safety kit for children that contains Band-Aids and other J;J products. The firm hopes the goodwill generated by the program will not only enhance its image as a caring and concerned company but also translate into more sales. "Building our image builds our business," said a J;J executive. 14 Public relations is often used to supplement advertising and personal selling efforts. In some cases, however, public relations is used as a dominant element in a firm's promotional campaign. For example, in ddition to advertising, Paramount Pictures developed a public relations program to promote the Eddie Murphy movie "Coming to America. " The program was designed to change Murphy's image and broaden his appeal beyond his hard-core, young male fans. In the movie, Murphy plays a romantic and humorous leading man, a departure from his familiar tough-guy role in previous films such as "Beverly Hills Cop" and "Trading Places. " To stress the versatility of Murphy's talent, Paramount prepared publicity releases for newspapers and magazines and sent electronic press kits to television stations.
These efforts resulted in extensive media coverage for the movie. For example, several magazines featured Murphy in cover stories, and radio stations gave the movie's soundtrack additional playing time. Selecting a Promotional Mix Selecting the appropriate promotional mix is one of the toughest tasks confronting marketers, but there are some general guidelines to assist in determining the relative allocations of promotional efforts and expenditures among personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, and public relations. These guidelines might be stated as a series of four rules.
The first guideline is the decision whether to spend promotional monies on advertising or personal selling. Once this decision is made, the marketer needs to determine the level of sales promotion and public relations efforts. A second consideration is the market served by the good or service. For instance, a drill press is sold to the industrial market, so the manufacturer's strategy must emphasize the sales force. By contrast, California Raisins are sold to consumers; an effective advertising campaign is important to consumer products like raisins.
The third rule deals with the value of the product. Most companies cannot afford to emphasize personal selling in marketing a low-priced item and instead choose advertising for the promotional strategy of goods like toothpaste, cosmetics, soft drinks, and candy. Higher-priced items in both industrial and consumer markets rely more on personal selling. Examples include time-share vacation condominiums and Boeing aircraft. Finally, the marketer needs to consider the time frame involved. Advertising is usually used to precondition a person for a sales resentation. An effective and consistent advertising theme may favorably influence individuals when they are approached by a salesclerk in a store. But except for self-service situations, a salesperson is typically involved in completing the actual transaction. Advertising is often used again after the sale to assure consumers of the correctness of their selection and to precondition them for repeat purchases. Alternative Promotional Strategies The selection of a promotional mix is directly related to the promotional strategy the firm will employ.
The marketer has two alternative strategies available to meet these goals: pushing strategy or pulling strategy. A pushing strategy is a sales-oriented approach. The product, product line, or service is marketed to wholesalers and retailers in the marketing channels. Sales personnel explain to them why they should carry this particular item or service. The marketing intermediaries are usually offered special discounts, promotional materials, and cooperative advertising allowances. In the last case, the manufacturer shares the cost of local advertising of the product or line.
All these strategies are designed to motivate wholesalers and retailers to "push" the product or service to their customers. The kiwifruit advertisement is an example of a pushing strategy. In it, the New Zealand Kiwifruit Authority suggests ways retailers can merchandise the fruit so consumers will buy it. A pulling strategy attempts to generate consumer demand for the product, product line, or service, primarily through advertising and sales promotion appeals. Most advertising is aimed at the ultimate consumer, who then asks the retailer for the product or service; the retailer in turn requests the item or service from the supplier.
The marketer hopes that strong consumer demand will "pull" the product or service through the marketing channel by forcing marketing intermediaries to carry it. The General Foods advertisement for Maxwell House coffee in illustrates a pulling strategy. The ad announced a sales promotion that tied in with the Taste of Chicago outdoor food festival. Consumers who brought two empty coffee cans to the Maxwell House cafe at the festival received $6 worth of free food tickets. The consumer pull influenced Chicago-area retailers to prominently feature the brand at their stores. With consumers edeeming about 49,000 empty cans, the promotion was so successful it produced record sales and moved the Maxwell House brand from third place to first in the Chicago market. Most marketing situations require the use of both strategies, although the emphasis can vary. Consumer products are often heavily dependent on a pulling strategy, while most industrial products are sold through a pushing strategy.
References
- Colton. M. Jo Ann (2000). The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Basics 101; Advanced Marketing Technologie
- http://www. smallbusiness. wa. gov. au/marketing-promotion-strategy/#selling
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