Chapter Fourteen

Question 1

Promotion mix (or marketing communications mix)

Answer 1

The specific blend of promotion tools that the company uses

to persuasively communicate customer value and build customer relationships.

Question 2

Advertising

Answer 2

Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor.

Question 3

Public relations

Answer 3

Building good relations with the company’s various publics by obtaining favourable publicity; building up a good corporate image; and handling or heading off unfavourable rumours, stories and events.

Question 4

Personal selling

Answer 4

Personal presentation by the firm’s sales force for the purpose of making sales and building customer relationships.

Question 5

Sales promotion

Answer 5

Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or a service.

Question 6

Direct marketing

Answer 6

Direct connections with carefully targeted individual consumers to both obtain an immediate response and cultivate lasting customer relationships.

Question 7

Integrated marketing communications

Answer 7

Carefully integrating and coordinating the company’s many commu- nications channels to deliver a clear, consistent and compelling message about an organisation and its products.

Question 8

Buyer-readiness stages

Answer 8

The stages consumers normally
pass through on their way to a purchase, including awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and, finally, the actual purchase.

Question 9

Personal communication channels

Answer 9

Channels through which two or more people communicate directly with each other, including face to face, on the phone, via mail or e-mail, or even through an Internet ‘chat’.

Question 10

Word-of-mouth influence

Answer 10

Personal communications about a product between target buyers and neighbours, friends, family members and associates.

Question 11

Buzz marketing

Answer 11

Cultivating opinion leaders and getting them to spread information about a product or a service to others in their communities.

Question 12

Non-personal communication channels

Answer 12

Media that carry messages without personal contact or feedback, including major media, atmospheres and events.

Question 13

Affordable method

Answer 13

Setting the promotion budget at the level management thinks the company can afford.

Question 14

Percentage-of-sales method

Answer 14

Setting the promotion budget at a certain percentage of current or forecasted sales
or as a percentage of the unit sales price.

Question 15

Competitive-parity method

Answer 15

Setting the promotion budget to match competitors’ outlays.

Question 16

Objective-and-task method

Answer 16

Developing the promotion budget by (1) defining specific promotion objectives, (2) determining the tasks needed to achieve these objectives, and (3) estimating the costs of performing these tasks. The sum of these costs is the proposed promotion budget.

Question 17

Push strategy

Answer 17

A promotion strategy that calls for using the sales force and trade promo- tion to push a product through channels. A producer promotes a particular product to channel members, who in turn promote it to final consumers.

Question 18

Pull strategy

Answer 18

A promotion strategy that calls for spending a lot on consumer advertising and promotion to induce final consumers to buy a particular product, creating a demand vacuum that ‘pulls’ a product through the channel.