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.
