Sales Promotion and Personal Selling were the topics of this week's class - I had some experience in this sort of thing, promoting with point of purchase advertising, coupons, online - so I was probably more confident and less open minded than I should have been. What can I say - I had room to learn and grow. I had never heard of push money, for example. And personal selling took on a negative tone for me, with images of used car and vacuum cleaner salesmen. I can see now that it's a crucial element in the high involvement products and can be used to counsel and guide the buying decision, providing information, advice, meeting objections with knowledge and awareness. It's a rather complicated process and maybe even an art - hard work and very strategic - definitely a system to be respected.
The concept of premiums always makes me think of the free dishes my grandmother and my mom used to get in boxes of laundry detergent. And I can remember the times of dumping out an entire box of Cap'n Crunch cereal to get the toy buried inside. We talked about coupons vs. rebates - and I do see more consumers preferring the instant rebates or coupons over the mail in kind. They are more difficult to do and can see why a percentage of consumers never follow through on them. I was driving home through Brigham City yesterday and at the Sprint store there was a huge sign: "No Mail-In Rebates: All rebates are instant this weekend!" That sign probably brought some people in who otherwise would have waited.
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