Consumer Oriented Sales Promotions and Trade Oriented Sales Promotion Examples

The image to the left is of a promotional item that was mailed to me about oil changes. It reminds me to get the oil change on my car. On the opposite side of the mailing is a coupon for $5.00 off an oil change at Auto Select. This is an example of an non effective promotional item. The price cute is not enough to make me want to go to them for my oil change, and they also send these out once a week so I've started to throw them away. An example of a good promotional item would be the toppers mailing to the right side of the screen. This offers lots of deals on discounts for multiple items. Not just one, for the auto select mailing I think they should have had more coupons about other services they offered not just oil changes.



For trade-oriented sales promotion items I found two. One was a point of purchase display that is at the counter of a cell phone retailer. It's a demo of the product. The product is a super tooth. A super tooth is a blue tooth device that goes in your car on the visor that works with your cars built in speakers to make phone calls. It automatically connects with your cell phone when you enter your car. Next to the demo model are coupons to be used for the purchase of the item. It offers a 10% discount till the end of the week.
For an ineffecitve example of trade oriented sales promotion is the More HD for less money cardboard display add. This stands in the corner of a store to show customers the benefits of dish network and their HD offers. It tells you how much you can save compared to cable. Its ineffective in the way that it does not attract a lot of attention and does not offer anything for singing up. It's a waste of money and space in my opinion.

Business and Marketing Blogs

One blog that I found that had a lot of good information was http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/. It's called the duck tape of marketing. Out of all the business and marketing blogs I looked at this is by far the best one with the best information. For example his latest posts talks about how to become more organized as a business owner so that you have more time for marketing and other business operations. He wrote this post because he said that when talking to business owners lots of them said they don't have time to spend on marketing because they are already spending 80 hours a week on other things. This post will help business owners document, delegate, and dominate in his words. It's a great blog and is full of great tips and information.

Direct Marketing Example

This piece of direct marketing was sent to me from Auto Select. Auto Select is a car repair shop located on church street in Stevens Point. I took my car their once to something fixed and ever since then I have recieved direct marketing mailings from them at least once a week.

In this particular piece of mail they sent me coupons for various types of things. For example $10.00 off and break work, or get 5 oil changes for $99.99.

Because I recieve so many ads from Auto Select I would not say that they are very effective on me. The first 3 I got I opened and scanned through them briefly but after the 5th and 6th one I've just started to throw them away unless if I see something for FREE. :) I think the mailings are good idea's and are eye catching and interesting, but they should send them out less often.

Cosmopolitan Magazine Analysis

For my analysis of a magazine I choose to do Cosmopolitan because that is the one that I read the most. The target audience that cosmo is trying to reach is people between the ages of 16 and over. They have a very large target market. I think that even though it is strongly geared toward women that they also appeal to men as well. (men that are open minded) The lifestyle of the readers would be people who are young, active, out-going, stylish, and driven. (this also includes people who want to be more of these things and are looking for advice)

Most of the magazine is dedicated to advertising versus editorial content. I would say it's 40% editorial content and then 60% advertising. They definitely use every single page in the magazine from top to bottom. There are no empty spaces on any of the pages.

Types of products readers can expect to see in cosmo would be lots of advertising for makeup, clothes, hair products, cars, perfumes and colognes. Some services offered would be travel services school services, and phones and other types of technologies. People are attracted to these types of ads because their all products that they already probably use or would like to use and want to see what they latest styles and trends are.

The editorial climate I would say is hot. This magazine is really blunt and kind of risky. They talk about a lot of topics that normal magazines do not. (lots of sex topics)

Cosmopolitan has always been a popular magazine for many years and I don't see that changing any time soon, and as long as they continue to sell as many magazines as they do advertisers will always be drawn to put their ads in their magazine. Girls especially look for advice in magazines. Advice on hair, clothes, weight issues, and all sorts of other topics.

Advertising on Cable

For advertising on cable I watched the MTV network. MTV is a network that is mostly targeted towards young adults. Most of the programs on this network are reality TV shows such as The Real World, Road Rules, Tough Love, Celebrity Rehab, ext. Companies that advertise on this network are make up companies such as Loreal, Cover Girl, and Maybalean. Other companies are clean and clear which is an acne company.
They also have lots of commercials that communicate to the consumer and are not trying to sell products such as the truth about tobacco commercials, or save the music foundation, lately there has been a lot about relief for Haiti. Most of the commercials are between 15 and 30 seconds long. They all are done in very creative formats with bright colors and usually have young famous people in them to help promote whatever their trying to sell you. Recognizable artists such as Beyonce, Drew Barrymore, Kanye West, and Taylor Swift to name a few.
Commercials on MTV are similar to other networks but not the same. MTV tends to focus more on music, dance, and other things surrounding today's teen culture. This does not mean that you won't see the same commercial on MTV as on CBS.

This link here takes you to a commercial that shows the consumer the "truth" about tobacco. Their not trying to sell you cigarettes, or tobacco, their trying to put the word out about the health risks caused by smoking tobacco and cigarettes. The ad is trying to reach people on a real level by showing them the staggering amount of numbers of people that are affected by this product each year. This is an ad where there communicating to their audience not trying to sell them something.

This ad to the left is similar to the tobacco video in that it is trying to get the consumer to do something. This ad is trying to convince consumers to be organ donors.

The next ad to the right is advertising the iphone. This ad is trying to tell the consumer that the iphone is the future. The future of cell phones and the way we live our everyday lives. If you don't have an iphone your living in the past. This ad wants the consumer to go out and purchase an iphone. The marketer here has a sales objective not a communication objective like the two ads above.

External Influences On Consumer Behavior

The 5 infulences on consumer behavior starting with the largest are culture, subculture, social class, refrence groups, and situational determinants. Each of these 5 influences impact consumer bahavior differently. Culture is the norms, values, and customs shared by members of a society. Culture is always changing and if marketers want to be successful when marketing to a specific culture they need to change with it. This picture of this girl blowing a bubble with all the writings on her face and body is an example of today's pop culture and what is considered cool right now. The next largest influence would be subcultures. A subculture is based on age, geographic, religious, racial, and/or ethnic differences. For example a subculture would be African Americans, Koreans, generation X, or even the elderly. And example of advertising to a subculture would look something like this ad for tanning. This is primarily directed at young white women. The next influence is social class. Social class refers to relatively homogeneous divisions in a society into which people share similar lifestyles, values, norms, interests, and behaviors. And example of this would be the Cadillac ad that Kate Walsh did. The link for the video is here. I tried to post it but it would not let me, if you go to this link you can view the video. The next influence is reference groups. A reference group is a group whose presumed perspectives or values are being used by and individual as the basis for his or her judgments, opinions, and actions. An example of this would be the military, or service. And the last influence that is the smallest is the situational determinants. This final external factor is the purchase and usage situation. Usage refers to where the product will be used, and the purchase situation is the environment that you see or think about making the purchase, are you in a store or listening to it on the radio. All of these external factors are important when trying to design a profitable ad.