Sales Promotion

Sales promotion includes a wide assortment of tools such as contests, coupons, cents-off deals, premiums, and others-all of which have various unique qualities. They attract consumer attention, offer powerful incentives to purchase, and can be utilized to dramatize product offers and to enhance sagging sales. Sales promotions invite and reward rapid response-while advertising says, "Buy our product," sales promotion says, "Buy it now." Sales promotion effects are frequently short lived, however, and frequently are not as effective as advertising or personal selling in making long-run brand preference.

Sales promotion consists of short-term incentives to promote the purchase or sale of a service or product. While advertising and personal selling offer reasons to purchase a service and product, sales promotion offers reasons to purchase now.

Several factors have contributed to the quick growth of sales promotion, specifically in consumer markets. Primary, inside the company, product managers face superior pressures to amplify their current sales, and promotion is viewed as an effectual short-run sales tool. Second, externally, the company faces more competition and competing brands are less differentiated. Progressively more, competitors are utilizing sales promotion to help differentiate their offers.  Thirdly,  advertising efficiency  has  fallen  because  of  increasing  costs,  media  clutter,  and  legal  restraints.  At last, consumers have become more deal oriented and ever-bigger retailers are demanding more deals from product.

The increasing use of sales promotion has resulted in promotion clutter, alike to advertising clutter. Consumers are progressively tuning out promotions, weakening their capacity to trigger immediate purchase. Now manufacturers are discovering for ways to rise above the clutter, such as offering larger coupon values or making more dramatic point-of-purchase displays.