Point of Presence Advertising - Essay Example

The author planned to purchase a movie named Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring on recommendation of a friend and came across a pack of all the three movies of Lord of the Ring series at a price that was 20% less than the overall cost had the movies been purchased separately. The author realized that he anyway had to purchase the other two movies to complete the story and was delighted to get all the three of them at 20% discount. In the second purchase instance, the author was delighted to realize the value of the package as he owns both a Sony digital camera and Handy Cam.

The total price was cheaper by 15%. Such product promotion advertisements resulted in positive impact on the author because the overall value of the buying decisions improved although the author didn't had planned for part of the purchase. The effectiveness of these two "Point-of-Sale" advertisements resulted in win-win deal for both the store and the author - the store increased the net sale value and the author got more useful products at lesser cost. The author was not at all annoyed but was happy with the sales girl for introducing these offers.

Massy and Frank (1966. pp383) presented the findings of an exploratory study on behavior of retailer advertising thus establishing some interesting empirical generalizations. They could prove that the brands sell differently in different stores and the support to a brand depends upon the brand's market share in a particular store type. The author discovered a linkage of this theory with the research by Kumar and Leone (1988. pp178-179) which stated that many customer packaged good manufacturers have resorted to funding short term sales promotion at the store level which primarily has two distinct advantages - the effectiveness of promotions can result in on the spot sales activity and the store management takes pride into participating in on the spot campaigns given increased margins & commissions.

Both the manufacturer and the store management gain in this process - the former achieves brand promotion & quick sales and the latter achieves improved profitability of the store. However the store management normally achieves short term benefits but the manufacturers achieve long term benefits by achieving strong customer franchise through brand substitution. From the author's perspective one good observation about this model is that the on the spot promotional activities sometimes are effective enough to modify the purchase plan by the customers that they had made before visiting the store.

Bucklin and Lattin (1991. pp24) observed that "point-of-purchase promotion is particularly attractive given the large pro-portion of grocery purchase decisions made after entering the store". They further observed that "two-thirds of supermarket purchases are the result of an in-store decision". Culturally speaking, such campaigns has promoted a culture of "fun buying" even avail such promotions to just find out what's hot on the day and carry out on the spot purchase decisions. Many a times, customers just get impressed by the sales skills of the sales person and do not bother what brand they are buying. Hence the