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Definition of Promotion:  Activities that provide product information to potential buyers in an attempt to persuade them to buy the product.

Promotion activities are typically grouped into the three distinct categories below.

Advertising

Advertising is defined as any paid form of product information that is delivered to potential customers in a nonpersonal way (such as through newspapers, magazines, television, radio, billboards, or the Internet).

The amount of money spent on Internet advertising has grown tremendously in the past two years. There are now advertising agencies such as DoubleClick, Inc., which specialize in developing Internet advertising campaigns for Web publishers and Web advertisers.

Internet advertising is especially powerful in its ability to target specific, appropriate segments of customers. For example, enter the search word "beer" in the Yahoo! search engine, and notice the relevant advertisement (for Miller Genuine Draft) that appears on the top of the search results page. Similarly, entering the search word "beer" in the AltaVista search engine leads to a results page that contains an Amazon.com link to a list of recommended books about beer!

 

Personal Selling

Personal selling involves direct, in-person (or over the telephone) communication with potential customer in an attempt to persuade the customer to buy a product.

The Internet and related technology have already demonstrated a profound effect on the personal selling process. Salespeople today carry around laptop computers that connect them (over the Internet) to their own company's databases when they are out on sales calls. This provides them with the ability to provide the customer with extensive, relevant information almost immediately.

In fact, many selling companies make available on their Web sites nearly everything customers and prospects would want to know about their products. This is information that salespeople used to deliver to the customer themselves; thus, the Internet frees up salespeople to focus on more important aspects of their job (such as building long-term relationships with customers, or focusing on new accounts).  For example, Sun Microsystems reduced customer service phone calls 20 percent by providing documents over the Internet via their Web site.

Of course, this leads to discussion about whether or not salespeople will eventually be completely replaced by or because of the Internet and related technology. Perhaps the first such example of this is the Encyclopedia Britannica sales force, which no longer exists. The hard-copy, paper encyclopedias are being replaced by the much less expensive online or CD-ROM versions, and people are much less willing to pay much money for books, which can be outdated in a few years. Thanks to the Internet, the age of the door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson is essentially over.

OhioLINK institutions do have access to Britannica Online and many other online reference sources. The extent to which online electronic databases replace hard-copy, reference books remains to be seen.

 

Sales Promotions

Sales promotions are those activities other than advertising and personal selling that stimulate interest, trial or purchase of the product. These include coupon promotions and trade show booths, and typically result in an immediate, measurable response.

Via the Internet, individuals can obtain free, printable coupons from a wide variety of companies. For an extensive list of this type of website, see the following area in Yahoo's subject index:

Home > Business and Economy > Shopping and Services > Coupons