STUDENT CORNER - 245

SALES PROMOTION

Increasing net Profit is a welcome sign of business efficiency and we said the increase of Net Profit generally requires two initiatives: increase in sales volume and decrease in operational expenses. In this session, we shall spend some time on the first of the two, namely, increase in sales volume.

Sales promotion is another name for increasing sales volume. Sales volume refers to the number of products you have sold, you sell in a given period of time. For example, if you sell 1000 units per month, you sell, then, 12,000 units in a year. The sales volume of your product is 12, 000 units a year.  Sales promotion aims at increasing the sale from 12,000 a year to say 20, 000 units. If you achieve this sales volume, accordingly your net profit also increases; you have sold 8000 units more and profit therefore commensurate with 8000 increases.

To increase the sale volumes is the main objective of any business and all efforts must be taken to achieve this increased sales volume. Let us see what steps can be taken to increase the sales volume.

Of course, advertisement comes at once to our mind; but advertisement after all appeals to the customers with a reason why the customer must buy your product. Since advertisement is a visual tool, attraction reigns supreme; attraction through colours, pictures, appeal to senses immediately and intensely as well.  Advertisement has entered the field of marketing with a big bang; no company can afford to ignore the tool of advertisement; and, it demands a compulsory share in the budget of the company.  Nowadays, we know children and celebrities are much exploited. Parents are anxious about their children’s health and happiness. And today many advertisements flashed by the Food and Toy companies exploit this concern in every possible way to appeal to the customer. Your child must grow strong and tall that too, faster than any other child; then, they say their products promote physical growth. Often ads are introduced during streaming films and even live sports. Parents and children watch the programmerstogether; it is what every ad-user wants to exploit; children make the parents spend for them; we know those who can buy products matter; that is, he or she must have money to spend. Children however do not have money but they command the love and care of the moneyed parents who willingly spend for them, more or less with a sense of obligation.

Prestige is another invisible and no less invincible factor and it takes us into a much more complicate regime; for the time being, let us not venture into the influence of prestige on human behavior.

We will continue with Sales Promotion in our next; possibly more sessions.