Sales Promotion

Trends in Sales Promotion

Marketers who employ sales promotion as a key component in their promotional strategy should be aware of how the climate for these types of promotions is changing. The important trends in sales promotion include:

Customers Expectations

The onslaught of sales promotion activity over the last several decades has eroded the value of the short-term requirement to act on sales promotions.  Many customers are conditioned to expect a promotion at the time of purchase otherwise they may withhold or even alter their purchase if a promotion is not present.  For instance, food shoppers are inundated on a weekly basis with such a wide variety of sales promotions that their loyalty to certain products has been replaced by their loyalty to current value items (i.e., products with a sales promotion).  For marketers the challenge is to balance the advantages short-term promotions offer versus the potential to erode loyalty to the product.