Promotion
is one out of four basic instruments of marketing
that has the purpose to inform about other
instruments of marketing mix and to contribute to
sales increase on the long term. The promotion is
always serving to specific goal. These goals can
be public informing, demand increasing, product
differentiation, and product value increasing or
sales stabilizing. Usually the promotion is
targeting more than one goal.
Promotion
is the process of communication between the
company that sells the product and the potential
customer, with the purpose of influencing the
attitudes and behavior. There are specific
promotional tool that are supporting chosen
promotional goal. The promotion mix represents a
combination of different promotional tools. The
basic elements of promotional mix are Advertising,
Public Relationship, Personal Sales and Sales
Promotion.
Advertising
is communication
with current and potential customers and
consumers, done through paid mass media. The channels of communication
can be TV, radio, Internet, billboards,
etc.
Public
Relationship ( PR ) is communication
toward public, but is turned more to
reputation and image of the company,
than to it's products. The PR activity
can be a press conference, TV interview
with company representative,press article about donation of
the company to charity or about latest
environmental project.
Personal
Sales is a way of promotion activity
where sales representative is directly
contacting the customer. This
person-to-person contact has the goal of
direct promotion of the product and
conclusion of sales.
Sales
Promotion represents a set of
different promotional activities that
has the goal of animating customers for
purchasing. This can be value offer (
discount ), quantity offer ( 2+1 ),
prize drawings, merchandising, direct
contact by animators in retail outlet,
etc.
The
approach to promotion can be different. The
push strategy is transferring the supply pressure
downstream through sales channels.
The pull strategy is approaching the
consumer directly. The consumer's demand is
then creating request for product through
supply channel upstream. Usually these two
approaches are interlacing. In the early
stage of product life the pull strategy is
more dominant. Later, when the market is
saturated with own and competitor's products
the push strategy is predominant.
