Sales Promotions

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Sales promotions are activities that supplement a company’s advertising, public relations, and personal selling efforts. Sales promotions are often temporary, but when the economy is weak sales promotions such as coupons become even more popular for consumers and are used more frequently by organizations. The goal of sales promotions is to persuade customers to take action quickly and make larger purchases. As discussed in Chapter 11 "Advertising, Integrated Marketing Communications, and the Changing Media Landscape", sales promotions in business-to-business (B2B) settings are typically called trade promotions; they are referred to as such because businesses “trade” or do business with other businesses.

Also as discussed in Chapter 11 "Advertising, Integrated Marketing Communications, and the Changing Media Landscape", companies use a pull strategy when they target consumers with promotions. In other words, a company promotes it products and services to the final consumer to pull a consumer to the stores or get the consumer asking for the product. If a company sends coupons to the consumer, hopefully the consumer will take the coupon (sales promotion) to the store and buy the product. A push strategyis used when businesses are the target of sales promotions so that products may be pushed through the channel to final consumers. For example, a manufacturer may provide incentives such as price discounts to the retailer who then promotes or pushes the product to the final consumer. Figure 12.4 A Push versus a Pull Strategy  shows how push strategy differs from a pull strategy. Many organizations use both a pull and push strategy, promoting their products and services to both final consumers and their trade partners (retailers, wholesalers).

Figure 12.4 A Push versus a Pull Strategy