Promotion: Meaning, Definitions, Features

06/04/2021 1 By indiafreenotes

Promotion means the advancement of an employee to a higher job involving more work, greater responsibility and higher status. It may or may not be associated with the increment in salary. Sometimes, salary of the employee also increases with the promotion. Sometimes it is not so. When an employee is promoted but his salary does not increase it is known as dry promotion. Promotion means the placement of an employee on a higher post involving greater amount of responsibility, better status, more pay and more perks.

Edwin B. Flippo, “A promotion involves a change from one job to another that is better in terms of status and responsibilities.”

Scott & Spriegal, “A promotion is the transfer of an employee to a job that pays more money or that enjoys some better status.”

Paul Pigors and Charles Myers, “Promotion is an advancement of an employee to a better job, better in terms of greater responsibilities, more prestige or status, greater skill and specially increased rate of pay or salary”.

Thus promotion is a term which covers a change and calls for greater responsibilities, and usually involves higher pay and better terms and conditions of service and, therefore, a higher status or rank.

Dr. L.D. White, “means an appointment from a given position to a more difficult type of work and greater responsibility accompanied by change of title and usually an increase in pay.” Real promotion means rising to a higher post carrying a higher grade.

Features

  • Promotion is a reward for consistently good performance of the employee.
  • It enhances employee morale and job satisfaction.
  • It involves higher responsibilities, better job status and increase in salary.
  • Provides opportunities for career advancement.
  • Promotion is beneficial to both employees as well as organisation. It motivates, increases the involvement and commitment of the employees, leading to increased productivity.
  • It helps the organisation to attract and retain good performers.

Objectives

  1. To create product and brand awareness: Several sales promotion techniques are highly effective in exposing customers to products and brands for the first time and can serve as key promotional components in the early stages of new product and brand introduction. This awareness is the basis for all other future promotional activities. Promotional activities motivate the customers to try new products and brand and the dealers also to push the new products and brands.
  2. To create interest: Sales promotions are very effective in creating interest in a product. In fact, creating interest is often considered the most important use of sales promotion. In the retail industry an appealing sales promotion can significantly create customer interest.
  3. To provide information: Promotional activities provide substantial information about the product to the customers. This goes a long way in converting interest into actual sales.
  4. To stimulate demand: Effective promotional activities can stimulate demand for the product by convincing the customers to buy the products.
  5. To reinforce the Brand: Promotion can be used to reinforce or strengthen the brand in the minds of the customers. This will ensure repeat sales of the product in the long run.
  6. To attract new customers: Sales promotion measures also play an important role in attracting new customers for an organization. Usually, new customers are those persons that are loyal to other brands. Samples, gifts, prizes, etc. are used to encourage consumers to try a new brand or shift their patronage to new dealers.
  7. To induce existing customers to buy more: Promotion activities can increase the purchases made by the existing customers by making them consume more quantity or consume on more occasions.
  8. To help the firm to remain competitive: Companies undertake sales promotion activities in order to remain competitive in the market. Therefore, in the modern competitive world no firm can escape sales promotion activities.
  9. To increase sales in off-seasons: Sales of the products naturally reduce during the off-season. Therefore, promotional activities can be implemented during the off-season to maintain or even increase the sales. Techniques such as off-season discounts, off-season offers can achieve this.
  10. To add to the stock of the dealers: Dealers like wholesalers and retailers usually deal with a variety of goods. Their selling activity becomes easier when the manufacturer supplements their efforts by sales promotion measures. When a product or service is well supported by sales promotion, dealers are automatically induced to have more of such items.
  11. To Keep Existing Customers: A sales promotion can be geared toward keeping existing customers, especially if a new competitor is likely to enter the market.
  12. To clear inventory: Promotional techniques can be effectively used to clear unsold inventory by giving effective offers.

Nature

Induces Action:

The ultimate goal of all marketing activities is to make a sale. An effective promotional strategy will grab the attention of the would-be consumers, create interest in their minds, provide enough information about the product to help them in taking the purchase decision and finally induce them to take action, i.e. purchase the product.

Creates Interest:

It is not enough to get the attention of the customer. The aim of promotion is to make the potential customers interested in knowing more about the product. Customers will be interested only in those products that they actually need, so the promotional messages should emphasise on how the featured product can fulfill their needs.

Creates Awareness:

Promotional activities expose an adequate number of target consumers to the messages and create awareness about the product. For this purpose, such promotion media is chosen which will reach adequate numbers of target consumers. Print, electronic, outside or online media can be used as per nature of the product and target audience.

Informative:

The target markets need to know about the functions and characteristics of the product so that they can relate their needs with it. Promotion is done to provide the necessary information and details to the prospective buyers of the product. The information given to the customers should also enable them to differentiate the product from those of competitors.

Attention Grabbing:

The promotional campaigns draw the potential customer’s attention towards the product. The customers are not aware about the new product and it is only through promotional activities that they can be informed about the product, its features and utility.