Product Promotion 4

Types of discount

• Quantity discount: - Allowed by trader to encourage him/her to buy more quantity of the product being offer.

• Trade discount: - Allowed to another trader who is buying products for resale to the consumers.

• Cash discount: - Allowed to the customer to enable him pay promptly for the goods bought.

x. Loss leader: - Selling the price below the market price to entice the customer to buy.

xi. Psychological selling: - Playing with the customers psychology in terms of pricing by quoting odd prices such as 999, 199, 99, etc to convince the customer that the price has been reduced.

xii. Credit facilities: - where the customer is allowed to take a product for his consumption and pay for it later.

This entices the customer to buy more of the product

xiii. After sales service: - these are services offered to the buyer after the goods have been bought.

They may be in terms of packaging, transportation or installation which may be offered to the customers free of charge.

This makes the customer to buy more goods with confidence.

Sales promotion

These are activities carried out to increase the sales volume of a business.

They are activities out of the ordinary routine of business that is carried out by the seller to increase his sales volume.

The methods of carrying out sales promotion includes all the methods of carrying out product promotion as discussed earlier, that is, shows and trade fair, showrooms, free gifts, free sample, personal selling, advertisement,
window display, credit facilities, after sales services, etc.

Factors to consider when choosing a promotion method

i. The cost of the promotion that is whether the company can afford it or not, for some promotion methods are very expensive that may not be
easily affordable to the company.


ii. The nature of the product being promoted especially whether it requires demonstration or not.

Products which requires demonstration are best
promoted through personal selling.

iii.The targeted group for the advertisement, on whether they can be reached by that method or not.

The promotion method must reach the
targeted group, if it has to be effective.

iv.The objective that the firm would like to achieve with the promotion, and whether the method is helping them to achieve that particular
objective.

v. The method used by the competitor in the market to enable them choose a method that will enable them compete favourably.

vi.The requirement of the law concerning product promotion, to enable them not use what the law does not allow.

Ethical issues in product promotion

These are rules and regulations to be followed when carrying out promotion to avoid violating other people or businesses right.

They include;

Cheating on performance of the product to attract more customers by given them wrong and enticing information about what the product can
do.

Cheating on the ingredients of the product by telling them that the product contains a suitable type of ingredient which does not exist just to
lure them to buy the product

Not telling them the side effects of the product which may affect them should they continuously use the product due to fear of losing customer.

False pricing, especially a case where they overprice their and later on reduce them slightly just to lure the customer, yet exploit them.

Not caring about the negative effect of the product on the environment,.

which may includes littering of the environment by the posters used for advertisement

Social cultural conflict, especially putting up some forms of advertisement which are considered a taboo buy the community leaving around, such as hanging a billboard of a female advertising inner wears next to a church.

Trends in product promotion

The following are some changes that have taken place to improve the product promotion activities.

Use of website/internet to advertise product worldwide, which has increased the coverage.

Encouraging gender sensitivity and awareness in product promotion to bring about gender balance.

Use of electronic billboards in advertisement to increase their visibility even at night.

Intensifying personal selling by the business to reach more customers.

Development of promotion convoys to move from one place to the other with music and dancers to attract more prospective customers.

Catering for the rights of the youths when carrying out product promotion and even involving them in carrying out the promotion.

Catering for the interest of those with special needs when carrying out advertisement.

Advertisement through mobile phones by sending them s.m.s about the product

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