Advertising and Pricing Policy

Introduction

Sales promotion is a form of marketing that firms employ in order to attract customers in its business or to give incentives to the customers so that they can purchase more. In most cases, sales promotions last for a given period, and are used to clear out inventories, lift sales temporarily, introduce new products, and to attract traffic. There exist numerous types of sales promotions such as demos and sampling, price reductions, free products, coupons among others. This paper pays high attention to the type of sales promotion that a producer can use the selected situations.

1. A firm has developed an improved razor blade, but customers are not motivated to buy it

In this situation, the best type of sales promotion is giving away the razor blades as branded gifts. To be honest, every individual loves a freebie. This type of sales promotion provides customers with a chance of testing a firm`s product and in the long run entice them to buy it (Ameri-Commerce Blogger 2014). In addition, it makes the product memorable since most customers would always remember it whenever they see the branded gift.

2. A competitor is about to do a test market for a new brand and wants to track sales in test market areas to fine-tune its marketing mix.

In this situation, the competitor should allocate discount to their products. This would enable the competitor to establish the level of demand that customers would have on the new brand. If more customers are willing to purchase the discounted product, then the competitor can contemplate that the product has demand in the market (Ameri-Commerce Blogger 2014).

3. A big grocery chain will not stock a firm’s new popcorn-based snack product because it does not think there will be much consumer demand

In this situation, the grocery chain may opt to give free sample of popcorn to the customers. His type of sampling is necessary when a new product when a new food product is being introduced into the market. It is anticipated that most customers tends to buy a new food product when given a free sample to taste it (Mullin, Roddy & Julian 23).

Work cited

Ameri-Commerce Blogger: The Top 10 Most Popular Types of Sales Promotions. Posted on 25^th March, 2014. Retrieved from, http://www.americommerce.com/the-top-10-most-popular-types-of-sales-promotions

Mullin, Roddy, and Julian Cummins. Sales Promotion: How to Create, Implement & Integrate Campaigns That Really Work. London: Kogan Page, 2008. Print.