Impact of sales promotion on consumer purchase decision in Ukraine

Table of contents

Chapter 1. Introduction

Every individual is considered to be a consumer. From this point of view it is not only about what and why people buy, the question behind is how to influence consumer decision to buy this specific product. The purchase decision related to the goods depends on various factors like brand, quality, after sales services, warranty, advertising, offers, discount, mode of payment, display, sales person behavior, store location and many more. Companies spend billions of dollars annually studying what makes consumers to make a choice. Marketers want to know how consumers think and feel to create the optimum combination of the factors that can increase the sales of their products. The customer should know about products usage and benefits. For this the most effective tool is promotion. It includes elements like advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relation and direct marketing. Among the various promotional tools, it has been found that sales promotion is one that stimulates quick and large purchases in a limited period of time. (Neha and Manoj, 2013). Sales promotion is an initiative undertaken by organizations to promote and increase sales, usage or trial of a product or services (Aderemi, 2003). Sales promotion refers to the provision of incentives to customers or to the distribution channel to stimulate demand for a product. It is an important component of an organizations overall marketing strategy along with advertising, public relations and personal selling. Sales promotion acts as a competitive weapon by providing an extra incentive for the target audience to purchase or support one brand over the other. It is particularly effective in spurring product trials and unplanned purchases (Aderemi, 2003). Sales promotion is a marketing activity that adds to the basic value proposition behind a product (i.e. getting more for less) for a limited time in order to stimulate consumer purchasing, selling effectiveness or the effort of the sales force. This implies that, sales promotion may be directed either at end consumer or at selling intermediaries such as retailers or sales crews. Sales Promotion is indeed an essential component of marketing mix. According to McCarthy (1960) and Borden (1964), marketing mix consists of four „P‟s namely Product, Price, Place and Promotion. The Promotion itself is conceptualized as promotion mix consisting of elements like Advertisements, Direct Marketing, Publicity or Public Relations, Personal Selling and Sales Promotion (Kotler, 2003).

5.1. Conclusion

The research study indicated that consumers actually use the sales promotion incentives during their purchase decision makings. The extent to which the consumers use the sales promotion incentives ranges in a continuum from a very large extent to a small extent. The study also indicated that most of the goods purchased on the basis of sales incentives include food stuff, electronics, and toiletries among others. Luxury cars are not frequently purchased on these bases.

The study has shown that most of the consumers rely on the magazines offered by their income and money they can spend on this or those product. Most of the customers use such sales promotions as the free gifts attached to a good, free samples offered to consumers and discounts for instance discounts on electronic items, also had considerable influence in helping consumers identify the needs. However, least influence came from the layout of products in the shelves of ATB, Metro and Prostor supermarkets. Moreover, we came to the conclusion that there are some important factors apart from sales promotions that influence on low or high-involvement purchasing decisions, they are as follows:

- personal income and family income;

- social status of the clients;

- age and gender (women and young girls prefer buying cosmetics in Prostor supermarket);

- inclination of the clients;

- the relevance of sales (on weekends customers tend to spend much more money that in week days)

5.2. Recommendations

Further, findings of the topic should include the search in following sub-themes:

- Verifications of types of product being discounted, which have large influence on consumers.

- The influence of the timing of the sales promotion, for instance, during the holidays or the definite season;

- The social background of the low and high purchase decisions festive season impacted the consumers only to a small extent in making the buying decision.

- The post-purchase behavior.