A Perceptual Study of Relative Effectiveness of Tools and Techniques Used in Sales Promotion

A good promotional strategy encompasses advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and personal selling in order to communicate with their present and potential consumers (Kotler, 1994). Because they have been shown to have a significant sales impact, sales promotions are majorly employed in businesses. Application of consumer sales promotions in product management requires debate over its’ effectiveness. Critics argue that sales promotions are ineffective as they make consumers more promotion prone, resulting in market share losses in the long run (Ehrenberg et al., 1994; Totten and Block, 1987). However, other researchers have shown that sales promotions lead to real long-run increases in sales and profits (Dhar and Hoch, 1996; Hoch et al., 1994). This discrepancy suggests there are other factors at work; for instance, that sales promotions are more effective when they provide benefits that are congruent with those of the promoted product (Chandon et al., 2000). Sales promotion is thus, a direct inducement that offers some additional value to its customers for speed up selling process and to increase sales volume and to expect a desired behaviour from consumers. Businesses today face the key challenge of gaining competitive advantage using promotions to choose a promotional tool which is suitable for the brand and the product type. It has been realised that it is very important to know the consumer‘s preferences and the actions that influence his or her behaviour (Alvarez and Casielles, 2004) to identify which promotional tool promotes sale of the product. But to understand which Sales Promotion technique has what impact not much literature is available. The aim of this work is to find effective combination of promotional tools with selected segment type to ensure consumer responses towards the marketing expenditure borne.