Impact of Sales Promotion on Sales Volume, in Unilever (Nig.) Plc

The promotionPromotion is the business of communicating with customers. It will provide information that will assist them in making a decision to purchase a product or service. The pace and creativity of some promotional activities are almost alien to normal business activities.The cost associated with promotion or advertising goods and services often represents a size-able proportion of the overall cost of producing an item. However, successful promotion increases sales so that advertising and other costs are spread over a larger output. Though increased promotional activity is often a sign of a response to a problem such as competitive activity, it enables an organization to develop and build up a succession of messages and can be extremely cost-effective.

Web advertising is becoming, and has become, technically an inevitable part of our life. The size and range of online advertisement is increasing dramatically. Businesses are spending more on online advertisement than before. Understanding the factors that influence online advertisement effectiveness is crucial. An internet broadcast model is what many major advertisers have been waiting for. They want to make Internet advertising more like television advertising. Actually, they want to make it better than TV advertising; they want all visuals influence of traditional broadcast with the additional value of interactivity.

Thus, companies seek to strengthen customer loyalty. Brand loyalty is considered to tilt the consumer to purchase the package / product specific brand (Jacoby and Chestnut, 1978). Later, Oliver (1997) defined loyalty as "a deeply held commitment to REBUY or repatronize preferred product / service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing activities, which would result in causing switching behavior "(p. 34). This conceptual definition covers two different aspects of loyalty: the behavioral. This is consistent with an integrated conceptual framework proposed by Dick and Basu (1994), that customer loyalty is regarded as a "power relationship between the relative position of the individual and repeat

Companies uses a blend of advertisement, public relations, personnel selling and direct marketing tools to communicate and persuade customers of value of product to them.

Many companies sway a consumer’s mindset by using emotional advertising. This type of advertising pulls at the consumer’s heartstrings and makes them act quickly without thinking critically. Strong images are used often in emotional advertising, as they provide a

58.01— Analyze the types, advantages, and disadvantages of Internet advertising (interacting personally and wireless network).

advertising has played an important role in shaping the purchasing habits of households and companies.

Nowadays, the increasing number of companies decide to boost the investment of advertisements in order to propagandize the new products more effectively and efficiently. Munusamy and Wong argue that advertising has become one of the important elements in our modern life (Munusamy and Wong). According to the most recent forecast of US advertising spending, eMarketer expects US advertisers to spend $171.01 billion on paid media this year, up 3.6% over 2012 spending levels ("US Total Media Ad Spend Inches Up, Pushed by Digital - EMarketer."). Besides, the increasing concern from the businessmen who spend a lot of money on advertising, there are also a rising number of customers who have highly prone to choose a product while being affected by advertisements. For example, the advertising that children view daily works -- 84 percent of parents take their kids to a fast food restaurant at least once per week (Davidson, Jeremi. "How Are Teenagers Affected by Advertisements for Fast Food?"). In addition, some advertising strategies will cause some social problems, such as advertising some products which will undermine health. Given the fact above, the increasing investment of advertisements is the debatable exigency. The research questions which leaded me to investigate are listed as follows: Is the huge investment of the advertisement worthy? And what kind of advertising strategies should be applied to gain better advertising effect?

We live in a day and age where marketing and advertising is stronger then ever. It is essentially in our face every where we turn, from the clothes we wear to the music we listen to and even the device we use to listen to our music. Marketing and advertising touches our lives everyday without our really ever even noticing it. Marketing professionals have a difficult challenge before them in figuring out a way to create a public interest, and a want for their products if they are to become adopted. Various marketing communications tools provide the means to which they will best reach the public. In the early 1990's marketing professionals for PepsiCo choose to heavily promote and advertise a new

Advertising has always been an important part of our society. The history of advertising can be traced to pre-modern history when it served an important purpose by allowing sellers to effectively compete with other merchants for the attention of clients in Ancient Egypt. From 1704 when the first newspaper advertisement was announced, it gradually grows into a major force in American society based primarily on newspapers and magazines (Ad Age Advertising Century, 1999). It not only helps to raise the target demographics’ awareness of issues, but also educate consumers with the benefits of the product. However, advertising cannot target a particular person before the emerging of World Wide Web.

Sales promotion is very significant tool of marketing .The purpose of sales promotion is to increase sales by instilling feeling of purchase on the spot in the mindset of customers. Behavior of customer is influenced by activities of sales promotion.The sales promotion tools affect directly on the purchase behavior of the firm’s consumers. Firms need to think the relationship between attitude and behavior of their consumers.

Sales promotion tools are used by most organizations, including manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and not-for-profit institutions. They are targeted toward final buyers (consumer promotions), retailers and wholesalers (trade promotion). Today, in the average consumer packaged company, sales promotion accounts for 74 percent of all marketing expenditures. Several factors have contributed to the rapid growth of sales promotion, particularly in consumer market. First, inside the company manager face greater pressures to increase their current sales, and promotion is viewed as an effective short-run sales tool. Second, externally, the company faces more competition and competing brands are less differentiated. Increasingly efficiency has declined because of rising costs, media clutter, and legal restraints. Finally, consumers have become more deal oriented, and ever-larger retailers are demanding more deals from manufacture.

Kover et al. (1995) defines effectiveness in advertising as ‘‘the ability of an announcement to produce interest in purchase or use the good or service it is promoting’’ (Kover, Goldberg and James, 1995). Many researchers have tried to establish a link between the content and effectiveness of advertisements, and this will help us to identify some general factors that affect advertising, in order to recognize which one can maximize the desired effectiveness.

The term “Brand Loyalty” also called as “Customer Loyalty” has been in the business industry since a very long time as a model to be used in conducting business. But it wasn’t until the mid to late 1900’s that the term was actually given its due importance by making it a vital part of advertising and marketing. The concept of marketing evolved substantially from being focused on sales of a product to having Customer satisfaction to be its focal point. Studies further revealed that there was a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and Brand Loyalty.

Over time, businesses have recognised that brand loyalty plays a key role in sustaining steady demand and sales flows over time (Aaker, 1991). In fact, Gralpois, (1998), as cited by Lodorfos, Mulvana and Temperley, (2006), labels brand loyalty as a fundamental asset of any business. Findings by Keiningham et al., (2006) have shown that it costs on average, five times more to replace a customer than it does to retain one. This underlines how businesses cannot afford to lose loyal customers and simply replace them with new customers. Subsequently, this has become a major reason why so much research is focused on achieving a better understanding of customers’ loyalty behaviour (Dick and Basu, 1994) (Liebermann, 1999).