MARKETING

Understanding Sales Planning & Operations

Understanding Sales Planning & Operations

Define promotion and explain the objectives of a promotional activity.

Promotion

Sales promotion includes incentive-offering and interest-creating activities which are generally short-term marketing events other than advertising, personal selling, publicity and direct marketing. The purpose of sales promotion is to stimulate, motivate and influence the purchase and other desired behavioural responses of the firm's customers. It is actually an action-oriented event of marketing which aims to make a direct impact on the buyers of the company. This technique involves price discounts, feature advertising, special displays, trade deals, reward programs, coupons, rebates, contests, and sweepstakes.

As implied by their definition, promotions create a noticeable impact on customers' behaviour. However, they tap into and induce important psychological processes in the consumer, as well as significant competitive response. As a result, all three foundations of the marketing field: behavioural science, economics, and management science (particularly econometrics), have contributed significantly to our knowledge base on sales promotion. In fact, there has been a veritable explosion of research over the past decade, and although we have learned a lot, there is still much more to understand.

Objectives of a Promotional Activity

It is important to remember that for promotional activity to be effective it must support the overall business aims. Aims and objectives can be different and in variety for each company, which may affect directly marketing as well as the approach of marketing promotion. Objectives can be classified into four categories; growth, profit, provision of services and survival (Dransfield et al. 2003, p.81-82).

Growth

The excess amount of sales made by a company either in the amount of products sold or the amount of money earned is known as growth. Promotional activity can make a vital impact on the outcome of growth. It can help to bolster the sales of a product. It can help to attract a larger market share for a company.

Profit

The total profit of any organisation can be improved by selling greater amount of products. In addition, profit market can play a vital role for an increase in profit, this providing the ability to increase profit without increasing sales. Promotional activity can help to increase the profit by increasing the sales of products through improving reputation of a brand and raising brand awareness.

Providing services

Provision of public services is also an essential objective for organisations which includes; health trusts, schools and employment services. Promotional activity is important for them as well in order to inform people about the services they are offering. Promotional activity can help to change public opinion about a service.

Survival

Promotional activity is important for the survival of any organisation. It can help organisations which are merely trying to survive, organisations starting new businesses, organisations trying to recover in the short term, or to help organisations to gain consumer acceptance for a product. Therefore promotion seems to be the key activity associated with an organisation's success.

Define buyer behaviour and identify factors affecting buyer behaviour.

Buyer Behaviour

Buyer behaviour is defined as, “The circumstances which describes when, ...