Sales Promotion Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Sales Promotion - Research Paper Example A hypothetical budget and return on investment calculation is done in the final part of the study. Table of Contents Table of Contents 3 Sales Promotion 4 Theories of Sales Promotion 7 Sales Promotion Objectives 8 Creating Inquiries 8 Product Trial 8 Building Traffic 9 Rate of Purchase 9 Loyalty 9 Awareness 9 Tactical Reason 10 Comparative Analysis Product Profile and Sales Promotion Activity 11 Sales Promotion Budget 13 Return on Investment 14 References 16 Bibliography 17 Sales Promotion Sales promotional techniques like free gift item on each purchase, free movie ticket, holiday tour and free dining invitation are used to increase the brand awareness among customers. They use exchange offers (exchange the old TV set and get a new TV set at reduced price) to push the sales. Sales promotion can be done by using seasonal sales technique. The technique can be summarized in the following manner. Winter sale, autumn sale, summer sale and discount of 50% on particular product are few exa mples of seasonal sales technique. These are all incentive program offered by companies to boost up the sales. Incentive program may come in the form of gifts, free samples, demonstrations, discount coupons, trade shows, contests etc. Retailer uses all these techniques as a part of sales promotion to motivate customers to purchase more and in this way they can increase sales volume. This type of sales promotion is known as consumer promotion (Kenneth, 2007, p. 330). Many companies use personal selling and advertising as a promotional tool to increase the brand equity in the mind of consumer. Personal selling deals with face-to-face interaction with customer or target segment but advertising is use to communicate brand massage to large number customers. Advertising and Sales promotion are useful tools to increase sales of product. Advertising can be integrated with sales promotion to communicate incentive program on each purchase. Companies can use advertising to create awareness abo ut sales promotional schemes and offers to target customers. Personal selling can also be used for the same purpose but sales promotion and personal selling is not the same thing. They differ in terms of objectivity and technique. Sales promotion uses short term and non cohesive model to increase the sales with various incentive schemes. Generally the incentive program is not valid throughout the whole season. Companies use sales promotion during end of seasons or during festive seasons. Sales promotion is more occasion dependent. The promotional technique differs from personal selling and advertising in terms of process and application techniques (Pauwels, Risso, Srinivasan and Hanssens, 2003). Sales promotion is a part of integrate marketing communication (IMC) strategy. Company uses sales promotion to increase the brand visibility among customers. Manufacturer companies use sales promotion for two reasons. 1- Increase product sales to retailers (trade promotion) and 2- increase p roduct sales to customers (consumer promotion). Retailers also use sales promotion to increase the sales of a particular product. Sales promotions have an important role in the marketing programs adopted by retailers (Gedenk, Neslin and Ailawadi, n.d.). Sales promotion contributes a large percentage of advertising budgets for a company. Companies use at least seventy percent of total advertising budget on sales promotion.