Important Definitions:
Promotion Communication to build and maintain relationships by informing and persuading one or more audiences
Promotion Mix A combination of promotional methods used to promote a specific product; includes advertising, personal selling, public relations, and sales promotion
Advertising Paid, non-personal communication about an organization and its products transmitted to a target audience through mass media
Personal Selling Paid, personal communication that attempts to inform customers and persuade them to buy products in an exchange situation
Public Relations Communication efforts used to create and maintain favorable relationships between an organization and its stakeholders
Sales Promotion An activity and/or material intended to induce resellers or salespeople to sell a product or consumers to buy it
Promotion and Electronic Marketing Summary:
Research in the academic world of marketing today is focusing on the idea that the utilization of the Internet in marketing is simply another form of promotion. There are even textbooks today that have added electronic marketing as a fifth variable in the promotion mix (defined above). Therefore, the discussion points provided below will hopefully allow you as students a broad array of topics to discuss as we focus on promotion.
Discussion Point #1 What lies ahead in the future of promotion? In other words, which element(s) of the promotion mix are positioned to provide organizations with the best ability to reach target audiences? Advertising is often the face of promotion, garnering the greatest amount of mass media coverage (think super bowl advertising). However, in recent years, organizations worldwide have spent more on sales promotion annually than they have on advertising. Is this likely to continue?
Discussion Point #2 – How will the promotion mix elements be used together? Recent research suggests that public relations is most effective when combined with other forms of promotion. Will that trend continue? Finally, where does the Internet and web promotion fit into this equation? A few years ago, the popular trend in marketing was to suggest that the Internet was going to overtake all forms of traditional marketing, especially promotion. Is that still the prevailing thought today? Additionally, are there organizations or industries that either rely too heavily on the Internet to promote their products, or are not positioned to take advantage of the promotional positives that the Internet provides?
