THE EFFICACY OF SALES PROMOTION IN THE MARKETING OF CONSUMER PRODUCT

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Promotion is synonymous with marketing communication. They are often used interchangeably, they are professioner terms used to describe the aspect of marketing function which deals with information, persuading and reminding the target audience about a firm’s product offering. Thus promotion, comprises advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, publicity, public relation and direct marketing.
It should be noted that promotion is one of the promotion tools of marketing that move a product or service or idea in a channel of distribution to the target market. Such promotion tool is the pates promotion which stimulates or arouse the interest of the consumer to buy. The Nigeria bottling company (NBC) producer of soft drink uses sales promotion tools which comprises the consumer promotion, dealers, and sales force promotion. The company capilizes on more of consumer promotion, in this we have the sampling and demonstrations, sweepstake and others tools etc.
According to Philip Kotler in (2003) in marketing management defines sales promotion as a key ingredient in marketing campaigns, consists of a diverse collection of incentive tools, mostly short term, designed to stimulate quicker or greater purchase of particular products or services by consumers or the trade.
According to the American Marketing Association defined sales promotion as activities other than personal selling, advertising designed to stimulates sales dealer effectiveness which may take the form of displays demonstrations, show and exhibition and various non-recurrent effort not in the ordinary routine. It is used between producers and consumers to stimulate demand.