Download Chapter 15 Sales Promotion, Merchandising and Personal Selling

Chapter 15
Sales Promotion, Merchandising and Personal Selling
Learning Objectives
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15.1
Understand the concept of Sales Promotion and Merchandising
Know about how these concepts are used to achieve Personal Selling
Understand the various Sales Promotion Methods used in travel and tourism
Know about the steps in planning and evaluation of an effective Sales Promotion
Why Sales Promotion and Merchandising?
The perishable nature is the peculiar characteristics of travel and tourism business. This
uniqueness of tourism products keeps the marketing professionals thoughtful. They are always
engrossed with a need of demand control or to manipulate demand. Thus need of sales promotion
and merchandising is felt.
Sales promotion and merchandising is generally done in response to various circumstances and
events or demand changes or fluctuations occurring periodically (daily, weekly or seasonal).
Sales promotion and merchandising methods are especially suitable for such short time demand
changes. These are essential weapons in the marketing armoury of most travel and tourism
businesses.
Essential characteristics of sales promotion and merchandising are defined as:
Sales promotion and merchandising are parts of marketing communications other than
advertising, PR, personal selling, and sales literature. They are techniques primarily designed to
stimulate consumer purchasing and dealer and sales-force effectiveness in the short-term, through
temporary incentives and displays.
Sales promotion and merchandising is done mainly at POS, point of sale locations. It covers
different kinds of location, each with very different marketing requirements. These POS locations
could be:
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External POS
Internal, ‘in-house’ (or ‘on-site’)
Customer’s location as POS
The Customer itself
Sales Promotion and merchandising is normally aimed at different customer groups such as:
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Individual Customers as Buyers
Distribution Channels
Sales Team
Marketing Objectives (to be realized) by Sales Promotion are:
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15.2
Sales revenue targets and variance analysis.
Issues related to over- or under-capacity utilization.
Measures undertaken by the Competitors.
Other business environment factors representing unknown threats or opportunities.
Difficulties in distribution channels
Sales Promotion Methods used in Travel and Tourism
Typical promotional techniques used in travel and tourism industry are for different customer
groups listed above are:
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15.3
Competitions
Offering free gifts
Reward schemes for regular customers
Lucky Winner Prize draws
Price reduction
Discount offerings
Disguised price reduction
More product offerings
More incentive in the form of trade margin and / or more commission
Special events like receptions / parties
Lucky Winner Prize draws
Travel vouchers
Food vouchers
Gift vouchers
Bonuses and other incentives
Planning and Evaluating Sales Promotions
Planning and evaluation of sales promotion involves following Activities:
 Making use of yield management schemes in working out sales that sales promotion
activity is likely to be achieved in a specified (promotion) time period.
 Estimating potential sales as a result of achieving the sales promotion.
 Identifying the customer profile of the groups to be selected for sales promotion and
detailing of the same based on marketing research.
 Selection of types of rewards those appeals to the target customer groups.
 Designing and implementation of action plans and its coordination with other
promotional factors.
 Monitoring and evaluation of the results achieved.
15.4
Personal Selling
Personal selling is direct interaction between buyer and seller. It could be face to face, by
telephone or through video-conferencing. In general, personal selling highlights the fact ‘doing
the business’ resulting in actual sales transactions. The emphasis is on customer retention,
building relationships and solution-driven selling, and not the one-time sales. Personal Selling
functions can be grouped are:
 Influencing the purchase more services and products (goods)
 Enabling and facilitating B2B Purchases
 Significant Purchases - higher in value terms
 Taking the help of distribution channels to encourage purchasing
15.5
Responsibilities of the Sales Team in Travel and Tourism
As applicable to all industry sectors, the efforts of sales team is the mainstay for achieving actual
sales. It is also true for the travel and tourism business.
In this context typical responsibilities for the Sales Managers and the Sales Team are:
Sales Managers
Sales Team Members
 Formation of Sales Team as per the
 Undertake Marketing Research
requirements of Company
 Administration
 Hiring Sales Team
 Skill Improvement
 Inspiring and Rewarding the Sales
 Business Development
Team
 Customer Servicing
 Supporting Activities
 Negotiation
 Monitoring, Evaluation and Control
 Scheduling and Planning