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Promotion Discussion
School of Business, Liberty University
Author Note
I have no known conflict of interest to disclose.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
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Discussion Thread 4: Promotion
This weeks 4P marketing mix topic is the idea of promotion or how to get brand awareness to the
customer base and beyond. The selected methods for promotion is advertising, coupons, and
social selling where each has their own distinct ways of reaching the customer. Promotion can be
thought of bringing awareness to potential customers and the days of door to door sales may be
long behind with the technology that seems to bring people closer together.
Advertising
In the article reviewed for advertising, Miller et al. (2021) research the premium effect of product
level incentives, more specifically automobiles. Many manufactures offer price incentives with
assumption it will cause the consumer to get upselled and this is not always the case. These price
incentives can either be costumer directed or retailer directs with more research focused on the
customer. Miller et al. (2021) hypothesize that with large customer directed incentives and
increase advertising spending a consumer is more likely to choose the premium product. On the
contrary the advertising spending has the opposite affect on the consumer with retailer directed
spending incentives (Miller et al., 2021). The two hypothesis results are then placed through
several robustness tests to validate the results. This research helps firms understand how
incentives alongside advertising can have an impact on a consumer either positive or negative
based on whether the incentive is retailer or customer directed.
Coupons
The next article reviewed is an article that reviews of 25 empirical studies on various positive
and negative affect of coupons and discounts (Cui et al., 2021). The authors give a detailed
background on different coupon strategies that make attract or sway consumers away from the
product (Cui et al., 2021). They then formulate and test eleven hypotheses of which only a few
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will be mentioned in this review. The first is the idea that consumers do not redeem their coupons
when they have to go online versus to the store and they found strong evidence that proved this
to be true (Cui et al., 2021). Another one that was interesting test was a mobile versus a non-
mobile coupon, however there was not enough conclusive data to prove or disprove it. Overall,
the authors did find that the format and the redemption method affected whether the consumer
would redeem the coupons; as well as, consumers dependency on discount level for deciding
between coupons for fictious brands versus real product brand (Cui et al., 2021). This article was
particularly enlightening as it helped understand all the various affects coupons and discounts
can have on consumers, especially with a lot of organizations moving towards a digital
environment.
Social Selling Practices
The use of social media as a promotion channel for salespeople is the at the center of the next
article as well as some of the process’s institutions are using to either encourage or disrupt the
fairly new practice. The authors Schmitt et al. (2021) find three types of practice for social
selling promotional, reconciliation and disruption work. Promotional work is positive and the
salesperson gathers all resources to their side to implement a social practice; moreover,
reconciliation merges the traditional older face to face methods with the newer digital social
media practices. Disruptive tends to be on the negative side focusing on some of the darker sides
of social media and focuses on delegitimizing it. Schmitt et al. (2021) perform a qualitative studu
by interviewing several different times, throughout numerous industries via Linked in and also
included some French salespeople. This gave the authors a wide base to evaluate their
interviewees responses and the found that social selling practices were mainly bottom up
managed (Schmitt et al., 2021). No surprise they also found that disruption led to delegitimizing
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of the social selling practice within all aspects of the team; whereas, reconciliation work is
something that will help fight against these negative practices. They also argue “that promotion
work is a form of extra-role behavior within the organization” (Schmitt et al., 2021, p 190). This
is an interesting promotion as this varies form the traditional word of mouth advertising found in
the past and adopts some of those features performing on a digital channel and starts typically
with peer groups.
Biblical Integration
Promotion is not something that is unfamiliar to Christians as we are promoted our faith with
great feelings of joy. The customer we are trying to reach are those not saved we are trying to
lead them away from certain damnation in hell. The tool Christians have at their disposal is
scripture, “therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his
neighbor, for we are members one of another” (English Standard Version, 2016, Ephesians 4:25).
Conclusion
To conclude this week’s discussion on promotion one of the 4P’s marketing mix, the three
articles reviewed were on advertising, coupons and social selling. All three topics and articles
were enlightening and informative, however the most surprising was the coupon or discount
article as, there was a real gap in the amount of knowledge on how types and formatted coupons
really affect consumers.
References
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Cui, N., Yu, X., Hu, Y., Xu, L., & Hu, Y. (2021). Do consumers always prefer coupons with a
large discount? A meta-analysis. Journal of Contemporary Marketing Science, 4(2), 185-204.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JCMARS-06-2021-0022
Miller, C. J., Brannon, D. C., Salas, J., & Troncoza, M. (2021). Advertising, incentives, and the
upsell: how advertising differentially moderates customer- vs. retailer-directed price incentives'
impact on consumers' preferences for premium products. Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science, 49(6), 1043-1064. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-021-00791-1
Schmitt, L., Casenave, E., & Pallud, J. (2021). Salespeople's work toward the institutionalization
of social selling practices. Industrial Marketing Management, 96, 183-196.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2021.05.008
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway
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