Sales Promotion Intended for Trade

Trade promotions focus on members of the trade which include distribution channel members such as retail sales people or wholesale distributors, that a firm must work with to sell it’s products.   Trade promotions take on one of two forms:
• Discounts and deals: one form of trade promotion is a price break.   Manufacturers can reduce a channel partners costs through product discounting.   Case allowance is another discount promotion which is based off of sales volume.   There could be a downside to this because if a merchant purchases a large quantity during the discount period and doesn’t sell them as expected then he basically loses money rather than making the money he would have hope to gain by the discounted pricing.
• Increasing industry visibility: other types of trade sales promotions increase the visibility of a manufacturer’s products to channel partners within the industry.   These include: trade shows, promotions products like coffee mugs, t-shirts, key chains, etc, and incentive programs.
Sales Promotion Intended for Consumers
Price-based consumer sales promotions accentuate short-term price drops or rebates that persuade people to choose that certain brand at least during the sale period.   One downfall in this technique if used too much consumers become accustomed to purchase the product only at the promotion periods.
Price-based consumer sales promotion includes the following:
• Coupons: one of the most common price promotions in marketing today.   Pick up the Sunday newspapers and there is a whole section of coupons especially at Christmas time, every year I search for the coupon at Toys R Us of $10 off your purchase.
• Price deals, refunds, and rebates: price deals are temporary price cuts that are marked in the store or on the package itself, Target has these all the time in their stores.   You will see the regular price and the “temporary cut” price.   Rebates is another popular promotion that I”m familiar with.   Especially when purchasing a...