A Comparative Study of four Toothpaste Brands to develop Strategy for Consumer Sales Promotion Essays

A Comparative Study of four Toothpaste Brands to develop Strategy for Consumer Sales Promotion Essays A Comparative Study of four Toothpaste Brands to develop Strategy for Consumer Sales Promotion Essay A Comparative Study of four Toothpaste Brands to develop Strategy for Consumer Sales Promotion Essay Essay Topic: Marketing Sales promotion has become a ubiquitous element of marketing, and therefore of the customers purchase environment. They offer direct inducements to act by providing extra worth over and above what is built into the product at its normal price. These temporary inducements are offered usually at a time and place where the buying decision is made. It enhances the benefit perception of the product in the eyes of customers. As a result customers purchase more quantity than their immediate requirements. Despite the inbuilt feature of directness, sales promotions are a very complicated and rich tool of marketing with innumerable creative possibilities limited only by the imagination of promotion planners. Sales promotions are often referred to by names of extra purchase-value (EPV) and below the line selling. to purchase a product immediately, either by lowering the price or by adding value. There are institutions like NCH Promotional Services in United States of America and Institute of Sales Promotion in England, which are directly concerned with studies on different issues related to Sales Promotion specially consumer offers. These countries in the west have been especially focusing on this area because they know that it is a significant marketing tool and a big business one that would continue to grow each year. Today sales promotion has become the most cost-effective marketing tool to attract consumer. It is capable of inducing first trials for new launches and breaking loyal customer of competitors brand. Whatever is the objective of a sales promotion offer, they generally show positive results, that too, quite soon. Realising a growing importance of sales promotion in marketing of FMCG, there is a need to understand them in context of each product category, targeting a specific consumer segment, and in a defined market. To enrich the understanding of various issues related to sales promotion, a well-supported research-work should be undertaken on a continuous basis. A central agency or a body solely dedicated for developing this important marketing tool- the sales promotion becomes imperative. Sales Promotion in Toothpaste amounts to lacs of rupees each year, and yet the strategy behind the design of sales promotion scheme is still a mystery. The purpose of this study was to provide insight on the importance of two features while formulating a sales promotion scheme in toothpaste and like category of products Offer itself Mode of Accessibility of the Gift. The study has been conducted in three phases. The first phase consists of literature survey. It helped in defining the concept of sales promotion, the role it plays in consumer buying behaviour. Sales promotion consists of a diverse collection of incentive tools, mostly short-term, designed to stimulate quicker and/or greater purchases of a particular product by consumers or traders. (Kotler, 1988, p. 45). This and other definitions recognize that sales promotion motivates consumers. Also it was observed that in India nothing substantial has been done as far as this issue is concerned. This was one of the main reasons why this research was undertaken. In the second stage of the study, response of some 350 consumers was taken with the help of a structured questionnaire. The respondents were randomly selected from the exit point of the retail outlets in the city of Lucknow. They were asked to rank the eleven categories of sales promotion schemes on the basis of their attractiveness with respect to FMCG products. These consumers were also asked to comment on at least two most attractive and two least attractive sales promotion offers they had ranked. They were probed to highlight the attributes of those offers and were recorded verbatim. From the analysis of the second stage, two significant findings emerged. First, the two most preferred and attractive sales promotion offers out of a total of eleven categories broadly available in the market with the FMCG product categories. Second, the attributes because of which the offers are considered as more attractive than rest of the offers. Once these findings could be generated from the second stage of the research, these were then used in the third stage of the research. In this stage the researcher on the basis of the experience and findings of the second stage of the research, derived four categories of sales promotion offers that were found to be most attractive by consumers. Here it is important to note that these four categories of offers were formulated by visualizing the features, which were present in the top two offer categories. That is, these four were derivations of the top two offers. Similarly, the attributes, which were most preferred, were selected and these were then translated into the four categories of mode of accessibility of the gift offered in the promotion. It was concluded from stage one that the most important attribute for the consumers in an offer is the method by which the gift attached to the offer is available to the consumer. Therefore, four most probable ways to access the gift along with the offer were derived. A group discussion session was also conducted before arriving at final four modes of accessibility. These four derived offers and the four derived modes, along with the four most commonly used brands used by the consumers and the four different pricing of 150gm pack of toothpaste was used to run conjoint analysis in the second stage. Conjoint analysis was used to obtain individual weights on the willingness to purchase toothpaste with given sales promotion offers and mode of accessibility of the gift attached with the offer and in the available price range. This phase consists of conducting pilot study with consumers, applying conjoint analysis technique (keeping in view the multi-attribute nature of sales promotion schemes), designing orthogonal plan cards, determining the sample size; and lastly collecting the data. The last phase of the study deals with analyzing the data through conjoint analysis subroutine of SPSS package, and then using ANOVA to draw inferences. At last, the Strategic implications of survey findings are discussed. The offer/scheme while formulating any consumer sales promotion is of utmost importance. Next to it in importance is the Mode of accessibility of the gift in the offer, which is almost equal to offer as far as score/weights generated by SPSS is concerned. The price of the toothpaste comes next in importance and the least important is the Brand. Thus, we can conclude that it is not the sales promotion offer, which attracts the consumers; rather it is the WAY / METHOD in which the offer is Communicated and Implemented by the company.