Nature and Objectives of Promotion
Table of Contents:-
Nature of Promotion
The nature of promotion is as follows:
1) Customers: A promotion without an audience either does not exist or has no logic. The point of company or product promotion is to appeal to the targeted customers. Promoters not only need an audience for a promotional message, but the promoter needs to efficiently reach the right people. This makes choosing the right promotional option and the right media critical to success. Paying for advertising, for instance, allows one more control over who sees or hears the message than relying on PR opportunities like feature stories.
2) Message: Promotions are, by definition, messages. Whether one pays for the delivery or finds other means, which project a message to the audience. In advertising, the goal is usually either to build the value of the brand by expressing company or product benefits or to attract customers immediately through sales promotions and inducements. PR is used to generate goodwill with the public and to announce new events or activities to the community.
3) Sensory Appeal: Effective promotions have sensory appeal. The more senses the message appeals to, the more impact it generally has. In television ads, for instance, one has the ability to not only describe benefits but also show off products through demonstrations and stories. Using social media or direct marketing, promoters can interact directly with customers to understand their problems and needs and address them with messages. In-store promotions can add a sense of taste and smell, such as with food samples.
4) Persuasion: Promotions, especially those that are paid for, such as advertising, are used to persuade customers to act. Initially, businesses try to create awareness and get customers to take their product or service offerings seriously. Over time, promoters shift into creating favourable associations with their brands, inducing buying activity, and, ultimately, generating loyal, emotional attachments from core customers. Persuasion is vital to success in competitive markets where all companies are trying to garner the attention of customers with their own value propositions.
Objectives of Promotion
1) Leads to Behaviour Modification: Promotion seeks to:
i) Modify behaviour and thoughts (for example, persuading others to drink Coca-Cola rather than Pepsi),
ii) Reinforces existing behaviour (for example, persuading to continue Coca-Cola once customers began to take).
The marketer hopes to create a favourable image for itself and also to motivate purchases of the company’s goods and services.
2) Objective to Inform: All promotional communications are designed to inform the largest market about the company’s product or services. Informative promotion is more prevalent in the early stages of the product life cycle of a product or any service. It is necessary to increase the primary demand. The first thing which the customer needs is the information about the product itself, its features etc. It leads the customer in making a more intelligent purchase decision.
3) Objective to Persuade: It is designed to encourage purchase. Though the firms want to create a positive image for long-term gain rather than immediate purchase. The persuasion objective is the main objective when the product reaches the growth stage of its product life cycle because at that time the consumer formation objective and consumer retention objective both have to be taken simultaneously.
4) Objective to Remind: It is used to keep the product brand name in the public’s mind and is used in the maturity stage of the product life cycle. This type of promotion is used to freshen the memory of the target customers assuming that they know the product.
5) Specific Objectives: Broadly speaking the goal of promotion is to change the pattern of demand for the product by behaviour modification, informing, persuading and reminding. In Economic terms, the basic purpose of promotion is to change the location and shape of the demand curve it means to shift the demand curve upward or to make a change even temporarily.
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