Sales promotion is a blend of marketing activities and promotional items to intensify the efforts of your sales force, induce your intermediaries to stock and sell your products, and persuade your customers to purchase the offering within a specified, limited time period. Why do customers respond to sales promotions? * They have a positive feeling about your brand which is linked to an unconditional stimulus such as a discount * Reinforced reward - in-pack discount voucher and once tried, they keep coming back. * Their attitude changes after trial - repeat purchase. * Foot in the door' technique - sample is tried to gain a larger order. * Salesforce promoting benefits to alter customers perception of the offering. * Price perception - the perceived benchmark by customers. Used by quoting the reference price and sales price to assist the customer to calculate the savings. * Decision-making process - end of isle items trigger recognition to purchase or seeing a machine in a magazine and it reminds them to place an order for a service or part. Type Of Sales Promotion Objectives * Encourages sales force to move slow-moving items * Challenges sales force to locate and qualify new prospects * Set up more store displays * Train more distributor salespeople * Induce wholesalers to carry a new product line * Persuade distributors to promote (push) a brand in their promotional activities * Persuade retailers to give a particular brand shelf space * Encourage retailers to support sales promotion campaigns by carrying...

Anyone visiting a typical supermarket cannot fail to notice the variety of displays used to attract their attention. There are many benefits for POP merchandising: Benefits for the marketer - Keeps the company and brand name/s visible to the consumer - Reinforces brand image - Calls attention to special offers - Stimulates impulse purchases   Benefits for retailers - Attracts consumers' attention and direct them to product/s featured - Increases consumer interest in shopping - Extends the number of time consumers spend in the shop •    Helps optimize space utilization •    Benefits for the consumer •    Provides useful information that often assists in the purchase decision •    Simplifies the shopping process Not a lot of imagination is needed to realize that all these benefits lead to increased sales. A wide variety of POP materials are available, one is only limited to one's imagination. They can be temporary or permanent, static or moving, interactive with the consumer and video merchandising centres. A sample of the items that can be used would include a wide variety of signs, posters, mobiles, plaques, banners, shelf tapes/talkers, mechanical mannequins, lights, mirrors, plastic reproductions of products, check-out units, dump bins, racks of various literature, flags, bunting (string flags) etc. POP materials perform four very important marketing functions: •    informing, •    reminding, •    encouraging and •    merchandising. For POP displays and materials to be effective they should conform to a few requirements: •    be the right size and format (in proportion to the location in which they are...