Promotion

1. Promotion is fundamentally a tool to help apprise consumers of products and services available to them. However, promotional activities today include various forms of advertising as well as promotional gimmicks such as dirigibles at football games, coupons, and frequent flier miles. The goal of promotion is no longer simply product awareness, but brand awareness, product loyalty and even corporate image.

Many different promotions have come under criticism, particularly when they are judged to be illegal or unfair. Bait-and-switch refers to the practice of advertising one product at a low price, but having none of that product on hand when consumers arrive to make the purchase. Conveniently, this technique results in the seller having other, similar, more expensive products available.

Putting aside the issue of promotional activities that are illegal, there remain examples of promotions that may be unscrupulous, or perhaps merely prejudicial. The potential for this arises when promotional activities are not directly associated with the product or service that is ostensibly being promoted. As an example, Virginia Slims sponsored a women's tennis tournament for many years. The sport of tennis received the financial backing, and the cigarette was associated with a popular sport and received considerable publicity as its name was mentioned in legitimate sports coverage.

However, criticism arose since cigarettes are not healthy, do not have anything to do with tennis

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selling legislatively are likely to fail because of the question of what constitutes persuasion, and what constitutes information. If a pharmaceutical company representative tells a doctor that a competitor's drug has terrible side effects (and this is a true statement), is that negative promotion or is it providing facts? Issues such as these are what would make legislating all of the personal selling effort difficult, if not impossible. However, outright abuses of the personal selling relationship (lying) could be legislated, although enforcement is still an issue. 3. At one time, the Internet was considered by many to be a boon to advertisers. However, consumers and software providers have grown increasingly sophisticated about unwanted advertising on the Internet, and an advertising manager needs to consider not only the newness of the Internet, but whether the Internet meets the needs of his specific product. A manufacturer of sports equipment probably advertises using targeted media, and avoids mailings to all households in a specific geographic market (as an example). Targeted media might include sports magazines, high school and college athletic media, and television sports programs (depending on the advertising bud

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