PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES AS TOOL FOR IMPROVING MARKETING MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY
A Marketing Promotional Strategy is saliently concerned with the role be played by each of the promotional mix elements towards effective and efficient dissemination of information potential customers and clients. Promotion practices are essential especially under condition of imperfect competition, noon-rational behaviours of customers and incomplete market information.
Intensified competition among different insurance companies may well inform the need for serious attention to promotion. The emphasis to be placed on promotion has relevance for both products and services marketing. The Insurance marketer needs to understand the environment in which the function, and to look at the promotion mix elements those he uses and those which he must adjust. Promotion Strategy can therefore, be seen as the design and management of a marketing subsystem for the purpose of informing and persuading present and potential customers and clients.
A firm should coordinate all its promotional efforts as a complete subsystem in the total marketing system. In economic terms, the basic purpose of promotion is to change the location and shape of the demand curve for a company’s products, service or idea. Through promotion, a company attempts to shift a product’s demand curve to the right, and change the shape of the curve. Through the use of promotion, a company hopes to increase a products sales volume at any given price. It also hopes that promotion will effect the demand elasticity for the product, that is, making the demand elastic when the price decreases.
The basic purpose of promotion strategy is to let actual and potential customers, clients know about the product/ service, i.e. to disseminate relevant information. Nigerian corporate marketing managers should determine what combinations of advertising, personal selling and other promotional tools will be the most effective promotional strategy for their companies. Four factors that should be taken into account in deciding on the promotional mix.
· The amount of money available for promotion
· The nature of the market
· The nature of the product
· The stage of the products life cycle
