Meaning, Importance & Components of Promotion

Meaning of Promotion

Promotion is the process of marketing communication involving information, persuasion, and influence. The promotion has three specific purposes: communicating marketing information to consumers, users, and resale persons. Promotional efforts act as powerful tools of competition providing the cutting edge of its entire marketing program. The promotion has been defined as “the coordinated self-initiated efforts to establish channels of information and persuasion to facilitate or foster the sale of goods or services, or the acceptance of ideas or point of view.”

According to Philip Kotler, “Promotion includes all the activities the company undertakes to communicate and promote its products to the target market.”

According to W.J.Stanton, “Promotion is the element in an organization’s marketing mix that serves to inform, persuade and remind the market of the organization or its products.”

According to Mc. Carthy, “Promotion is concerned with any method that communicates to the target market about the right product to be sold in the right place at the right price. Promotion encompasses sales promotion ,advertising, and personal selling.”

Hence, promotion is persuasive communication to inform potential customers about the existence of products, to persuade and convince them that those products have emerged with want satisfying capabilities. Consumers really, speaking, buy a bundle of expectations to satisfy their economic, psycho- social wants and desires. The promotion offers the message, the communication of these benefits to consumers. Hence, promotion message has two main purposes; persuasive communication and tool of competition.

Importance of Promotion

The importance of promotion can be briefly shown below:

• Sales of the goods in imperfect market:

Promotion helps in the sales of the goods in imperfect market. In the imperfect market conditions, the product cannot be sold easily only on the basis of price differentiation. It is the promotional activity that provides information about the differences, characteristics and the multi-use of the products of various competition in the market. The customer is attracted to purchase the goods on the basis of such information successfully.

• Filling the gap between producers and consumers:

Promotion helps in filling the gap between producers and consumers. Due to the tough market condition, mass selling is quite impossible without promotional activities. The distance between producers and consumers has so widened in present days to get them touched with the product that promotional activities are necessary.

• Facing intense competition:

Promotion helps in facing intense competition in the market.When a 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 ‘promotional war. Without promoting the goods, the competition is not possible in the market. So, it is necessary to face the competition in the market with the help of promotional activities.

• Large scales selling:

Promotion helps in the large selling of goods and services. Sales promotion is the result of large-scale production. It can be achieved only by appropriate methods of large scale selling. Large scale selling is possible with the help of promotional activity. Due to the large selling of goods, there will be more chance of promotion of goods. So, it is necessary to sell lot of goods in the market for promotional activities.

• Higher standard of living:

Promotion helps in the rising standard of the people.The promotional activities increase the standard of living by providing the better goods at a lower rate due to large scale production and selling. It help to increase the standard of living in a good way. People can raise their standard of living with the help of promotional activity. As the promotional activities increases, the standard of living of people also increases. So, the promotional activity has a great role in the increment of a standard of people so that they can live a good and happy life.

• More employment:

Promotion helps to create more employment opportunities. People can gain employment opportunity with the help of promotional activities. With the help of promotional activity, many workers get motivated towards the work. Promotional activity helps to increase more employment opportunities to the people who are unemployed, as the promotional activities cannot be performed without the help of an effective sales force and the specialists in various fields.

• Increased trade pressure:

Promotion helps to increase trade pressure in the market.The growth of large scales retailer, such as supermarkets, chain stores, etc. has brought greater pressure on manufacturers for support and allowance. Promotional activities help to decrease the trade pressure. There is need for promotional activities to decrease the trade pressure.

• Effective sales support:

Promotion helps in the sales support of the product.Sales promotion policies are under the supplement to the efforts and impersonal salesmanship. Good sales promotion materials make the salesman’s effort more productive.Promotion helps in the sales of theproduct. It provides good support in selling the different types of goods. Sales of different types of goods in the market are very necessary to increase the market economy.

• Increased speed of product acceptance:

Promotion helps to increase the speed of the products acceptance.Most of the sales promotion devices such as contests, premium coupons, etc. can be used faster than other promotion methods such as advertising. The increase in rapid speed of product acceptance has occurred with the help of promotional activities. As the promotional activities are done, there will be direct effect in the increment of a speed of the product. Increase in the speed of product acceptance is very important in the competitive market. So, it is necessary to increase the speed of product.

Components of Promotion

There are five components of promotion: Advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relation and publicity.

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• Advertising:

Advertising is the major components of promotion of products.It is an impersonal mass communication that the sponsor has paid for and in which the sponsor is clearly identified. The most familiar forms of ads are found in the broadcast (TV and radio) and print (newspapers and magazines) media. However, there are many alternatives, from direct mail to billboards and from the telephone directory to a yellow page.

• Personal selling:

Personal selling is the direct presentation of a product to a potential customer by a representative of the organization for selling it. Personal selling takes place face to face or over the phone, and it may be directed to a middleman or a final consumer. It plays the vital role in the promotion of products.

• Sales promotion:

Sales promotion is demand stimulating activity designed to supplement advertising and facilitate personal selling. It is paid for by the sponsor and frequently involves a temporary incentive to encourage a purchase. Many sales promotions are directed at consumers. They are designed to encourage the company’s sales force or other members of its distribution channel to sell its product more aggressively. Sales promotion include activities such as contests, trade shows, in- store displays, rebates, samples, premiums, discounts, and coupons.

• Publicity:

Publicity is a special form of public relations that involves news stories about an organization or its products. It involves personal or impersonal message that reaches mass audiences through the media. But there are several things to distinguish publicity from advertising: It is not paid for, the organization that is the subject of publicity has no control over it, and it appears as news and therefore has greater credibility than advertising.

• Public relation:

Public relation encompasses a wide variety of communication effort to contribute to generally favorable attitudes and opinions toward an organization and its products. Unlike most advertising and personal selling, it does not include a specific sales message. The targets of the public relation may be customers, stockholders, a government agency, or a special- interest group. Public relations can take many forms, including newsletters, annual reports, lobbying, and sponsorship of the charitable or civic event.

References:

Koirala, Dr. Kundan Dutta. Elementary Marketing. Kathmandu: Buddha Academic Publishers and Distributors Pvt. Ltd, 2014.

Thapa, Gopal, Dipendra K. Neupane and Dilli Raj Mishra. Introduction to Marketing. Kathmandu: Asmita Books Publishers and Distributors (P) Ltd., 2014.