Sales Promotion: Meaning, Features, Importance, Objectives -

Sales promotion consists of those activities that are designed to bring a company’s goods or services to the favorable attention of consumers.

Meaning

It can be concluded that sales promotion includes all these activities (except advertising, publicity, and personal selling) which attract both the distributors and Consumers towards goods and services of the enterprise so that the sales of the enterprise may increase.

We can summarise that sales promotion is a very important tool of marketing which includes samples, coupons, cash refund offers, prices off, premiums, prices, free trials, warranties, tie in promotions, point of purchase displays, and demonstrations for consumer promotion; price off, advertising and display allowance for Trade Promotion; and trade shows and conventions, contests for Salesforce promotion. Sales promotion is newly accepted by management as an effective sales tool.

Features of Sales Promotion

On the basis of the meaning of sales promotion, the following are characteristics of sales promotion may be enumerated-

Sales promotion does not include advertising, personal selling, and publicity.
Sales promotion activities are generally performed at certain times thus, these are not regular activities, like the display, fairs, and exhibitions, demonstration, seasonal discount, free gifts, etc.
Sales promotions help in selling and it makes advertisements and personal selling easy and effective.
Sales promotion encourages dealers and distributors to sell the product more.
Sales promotion encourages consumers also to buy the product.

Objectives of Sales Promotion

Sales promotional activities serve the following purposes:

1. Providing information

The producer generally provides information regarding the quality, uses, different uses of the products and the price, etc. to the customers while introducing the product.

2. Increase in Sales

The main purpose of all promotional activities is to increase the sales of the products of the company.

Promotional activities increase the sales by changing the elasticity of demand of the product through various techniques, like, by distributing samples, free purchase, premiums, discounts, etc. Such activities make the product popular.

3. Reducing Seasonal Decline

In slack season, the promotional activities help in maintaining the sales of the product, Customers and middleman are offered attractive discounts and free gifts along with their products to induce the persons to purchase their products.

4. To Keep the Memory Alive

One of the most objectives of the sales promotions is to keep the memory of the product alive in the minds of the present customers.

Tough this work is done by advertisement but other promotional activities help achieve the objectives.

5. To Induce Middleman to Purchase More

The middleman wholesalers and retailers have induced the Purchase more stock by offering more facilities such as credit facilities, higher trade, and cash discount and free gifts, etc.

6. Other

To protect the market share in the age of competition.
Shifting the burden of storage on distributors.
To earn the benefits of Economics of scale.
To overcoming seasonal slumps.
To support and supplement the salesman effort.
To develop favorable consumer experience.
To generate short term cash inflows.
To expand the target market.
Improve relationship with dealers.
To induce brand switching.

Role and Importance of Sales Promotion

Nothing happens until somebody sales something. The sales promotion activities help in promoting the sales of the concern effectively.

More and more promotional activities are required to induce the customers to purchase more and more products and Thus they produce the demand.

In today’s competitive world, promotional activities play an important role which can be judged from the following facts:

1. For Selling the Goods in Imperfect Market

Every market is the imperfect market. In the imperfect market conditions, the product cannot be sold easily on the basis of price differentiation.

It is the promotional activity that provides information about the differences, characteristics and the multi uses of the products of various competitors in the market.

The customer is attracted to purchase the goods on the basis of such information.

Thus, promotional activities are necessary for selling the product successfully.

2. Distance Between Producers and Consumers

Due to the prevalent market conditions, mass selling is quite Impossible without promotional activities.

The distance between Producers and consumer has so widened in present days that to get them acquainted with the product, promotional activities are necessary.

3. Intense Competition

The intense competition has necessitated the sales promotion activities.

When one manufacturer increases his promotional spending and adopts an aggressive strategy in creating a brand image, others are also forced to follow the suit. This leads to virtually a promotion war.

4. Increased Standard of Living and Employment Opportunities

Large scale production is the theme of the day. Sales promotion is always the result of large scale production. But this could be achieved only with appropriate methods of largescale selling.

Large-scale selling is possible only with the help of promotional activities.

In this way, promotional activities increase the standard of living by providing better goods at lower rates (due to large scale production and selling).

As the promotional activities cannot be performed without the help of an effective Salesforce and the specialists in the field, employment opportunities are open for a large number of people.

5. Increased Trade Pressures

The growth of large scale retailers, such a Supermarket, chain stores, etc. have brought greater pressure on manufacturers for support and allowance.

So, in order to aid the retailers and also to ensure that share of shelf space, many manufacturers have taken to sales promotion activities.

6. Effective Sales Support

Basically, sales promotion policies supplement the efforts of personal and impersonal salesmanship (advertising).

It is found that good sales promotion materials make sales of men’s efforts more productive.

Such activities reduced his time spent in prospecting and reduce the turn downs.

7. Increase Speed of Product Acceptance

Most of the sales promotion devices (such as contests, premium, coupons, etc.) can be used faster than the other promotion methods such as advertisement.

8. Other

Inter-firm rivalry due to increasing competition.
Growing consumerism in the country.
The spread of mass media.
Managing self space against the competition.
Desire to have an immediate positive impact on sales.
Advertising has become more expensive.
Emphasis on sales volume directly contributes to the revenues of firms.
Increase in impulsive buying.
To get benefits of the Economics of scale.

Thus, now you know Sales Promotion: Meaning Features Importance Objectives.