Bowers – Discussion 1 Jeffery Bowers Email this Author 6/14/2016 1:44:23 PM

When trying to stimulate the market to increase market sales and ultimately increase stakeholder’s interests and bottom line profits, organizations will be resolved to using a promotion. The text explains that promotions are, “all promotional activities (excluding advertising, public relations, personal selling, direct marketing, and online marketing/social media) that stimulate short-term behavioral responses from (1) consumers, (2) the trade (e.g., distributors, wholesalers, or retailers), and/or (3) the company’s sales force” (Ogden and Ogden. 2014. Sec 6.1). The out of the normal routine activities such as giveaways, coupons, free samples, demonstrations or seminars of the products usages and values. The objective of these activities is to spawn immediate customer interest and product publicity. Promotions are mainly directed at the final user or the customer and these are called consumer promotions or directed at the retailers, wholesalers or vendors and these are called trade promotions.

Consumer promotion tactics are activities such as coupon campaigns, free samplings, rebates sweepstakes giveaways and loyal programs. Trade promotion tactics are activities such as allowance campaign, trade contests, incentive programs for featuring a product or brand, sponsorships, price reduction programs and free products given to retailers and wholesalers if they purchase a certain quantity of the featured product. These activities are meant to entice the wholesalers and retailers to showcase certain products to increase sales and customer interest. The test explains that, “Trade promotions are sales promotions aimed at the intermediaries in the marketing channel. The strategy behind trade promotions is to persuade resellers to carry new items and more inventory, buy ahead, promote the company’s products, give products more shelf space, and push products to consumers” (Ogden and Ogden. 2014. Sec 6.2). By aiming at the intermediaries, organizations focus on getting a larger quantity of product to market, it will entice the retailers to purchase more of the product, persuade the vendors to allot more shelf space and feature the product during weekly sales. All of these activities will ultimately coax the consumer to purchase more of the product, which is why organizations budget more resources toward trade promotions.

References:

Ogden, J. R., & Ogden, D. T. (2014). Integrated Marketing Communications: Advertising, Public Relations, and More. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.