39 Fashion Promotion techniques – Publicity, special shows, visual merchandising

R. Sunitha

Learning Objectives

To impart knowledge on fashion promotion techniques To understand about visual merchandising

1. Promotion

• Promotion is the mix of promotional elements used by a firm to communicate with its potential or current customers about its products or services.
• Promotional efforts are directed to the ultimate consumer, through an intermediate chain such as a retailer, a wholesaler or a distributor.
• Promotion is fundamental to the success of a firm for the potential customers to know about the existence and benefits about the product or service.
• Some promotional effort is required for the best selling of a product.

2. The Promotional Elements

• The five main promotional elements used in firm are: advertising, personal selling, public relations, sales promotions, and direct marketing.
• Of these advertising, public relations and sales promotion are “non personal” communication elements, and personal selling and direct marketing are “personal” communication elements.
• An effective promotional program should have a good combination of “personal” and “non personal” communication elements.

   2.1 Advertising

• Advertising is the most well-known and widespread promotional element and an efficient method to reach a large number of people.
• It is done to create awareness of a new product or service.
• Advertising is very expensive for its non-personal nature.
• Advertisement is done through different media such as Television, Radio, Magazines, Newspapers, Direct mail, Signage and Yellow Pages.

  2.2 Personal Selling

• Personal selling is the second major promotional strategy and it involves a face-to-face communication between the seller and the buyer.
• The role of the sales force is to encourage intermediaries to buy the product and this comes under the push promotional strategy.
• The role of the sales force to provide support and after-sales service to retailers Comes under the pull strategy.
• The key advantages of personal selling are a high level of persuasiveness, opportunities to customize the promotional message, getting immediate feedback and the possibility of selecting the audience.

2.3 Public Relations & Publicity

• Public relations and publicity is the planned and sustained efforts of a firm to establish and maintain a favorable public image and generate publicity aimed at a broad public audience. Publicity is basically a non-personal, unpaid presentation of a firm, product or service.
• Press media can inform the public about the firm, the products and services, new products. Production of promotional brochures and videos, holding consumer exhibitions, celebrity endorsements and websites aid in developing publicity.
• The main advantage of publicity is that being an unpaid way of communication.

2.4 Sales Promotion

• Sales promotion consists of all activities other than advertising and personal selling that help to increase sales of a particular commodity
• This technique is different from personal selling from and advertising in means of its approach as it adopts short term, non-recurring methods to improvise the sales.

The offers given to the customers in this technique are not available to them throughout the year but only during festivals, end of the year, end of the seasons and other occasions.

Objectives of Sales Promotion

The objectives of sales promotion are as follows:

(i) To introduce new products in the market:

New products may be introduced in to the market and the customers may be made aware of the new products by giving some offers.Sales promotion may be done by giving some free samples to the consumers which may develop a taste for them and tempt them to buy the product.

(ii) To attract new customers and retain the existing ones:

Sales promotion helps in attracting and creating new customers for the products, in the market.It makes the customers attracted towards the product by providing discount, gift and special coupons on their purchase. Thus, it helps to retain the existing customers, and at the same time it also attracts some new customers to buy the product.

  (iii) To maintain sales even during the off seasons

Sales promotion technique is adopted for the products which are used only during particular seasons such as sweaters, raincoats, umbrella etc. to maintain the sales of the products. The off-season discount is given by the manufactures and dealers to the consumers. For instance, get discount on winter clothes during summer.

(iv)   To meet the challenge of competition:

Today’s business faces competition all the time. New products frequently come to the market and at the same time improvement also takes place.So sales promotion measures have become essential to retain the market share of the seller or producer in the product-market.

24.4 Tools of Sales Promotion

To increase the sale of any product the manufactures or producers adopt different measures like sample, gift, bonus, and many more. These commonly used sales promotion tools are:

(i) Free samples: The free samples are distributed by the shopkeeper even without purchasing any item from his shop. These are distributed to attract consumers to try out a new product and thereby create new customers. For example, free samples of detergent may be given to the target customers.

(ii)Premium or Bonus offer: Offering free accessories along with the product purchase is an example for this. This is effective in inducing consumers to buy a particular product and in encouraging the existing customers.

(iii) Exchange schemes: It refers to offering exchange of old product for a new product at a lesser price than the original price.This is useful for drawing attention to product improvement. Exchange of washing machine is an example.

(iv) Price-off offer: Under this offer, products are sold at a price lower than the original price. This type of scheme is designed to boost up sales in off-season and sometimes while introducing a new product in the market.

(iv) Coupons: Sometimes, coupons are issued by manufacturers either in the packet of a product or through an advertisement printed in the newspaper or magazine or through mail.These coupons can be presented to the retailer while buying the product. The holder of the coupon gets the product at a discount. The reduced price under this scheme attracts the attention of the prospective customers towards new or improved products.

 (v) Fairs and Exhibitions: Fairs and exhibitions may be organised at local, regional, national or international level to introduce new products, demonstrate the products and to explain special features and usefulness of the products. Goods are displayed and demonstrated and their sale is also conducted at a reasonable discount.

(vi) Trading stamps: In case of some specific products trading stamps are distributed among the customers according to the value of their purchase. The customers are required to collect these stamps of sufficient value within a particular period in order to avail of some benefits. This tool induces customers to buy that product more frequently to collect the stamps of required value.

(vii) Scratch and win offer: To induce the customer to buy a particular product ‘scratch and win’ scheme is also offered.Under this scheme a customer scratch a specific marked area on the package of the product and gets the benefit according to the message written there.

In this way customers may get some item free as mentioned on the marked area or may avail of price-off, or sometimes visit different places on special tour arranged by the manufacturers.

(viii) Money Back offer: Under this scheme customers are given assurance that full value of the product will be returned to them if they are not satisfied after using the product.

This creates confidence among the customers with regard to the quality of the product. This technique is particularly useful while introducing new products in the market.

2.5 Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is one of the fastest growing marketing strategies.It is based on the establishment of a direct relationship between a firm offering a product or service and the end consumer, with the goal of making a sale on the spot and eliminating the middleman.

Because of the direct link between producer and end consumer direct marketing allows firms to be more effective in targeting their market, getting higher response rates, generating repeat sales and competing.

The tools used in this marketing are direct mail, leaflet drops and handouts, telemarketing, direct response advertising, email marketing, online marketing and SMS/Text marketing. Direct mail: the most widespread among this category of promotional tools.It allows firms to get information about their products or services directly into the hands of those consumers who might be interested in them.

The main disadvantage is its image as “junk mail”.

Leaflet drops and handouts: are probably the simplest and cheapest tools for direct marketing, but their response rate is significantly lower than direct mail.

Telemarketing: contacting consumers by phone is advantageous in that it is possible to gauge the customer’s interest immediately, ask questions to assess their needs and explain technical features or complex messages more effectively.

Direct response advertising: presents the product in a very attractive way in one or two minutes infomercials in which the seller encourages viewers to call a toll free number or go to a website to purchase the product. Infomercials are typically cheap to make and purchase of medium time is less expensive.

Email marketing: is also an extremely cheap tool for direct marketing.It is the easiest way to reach specific target consumers.Measuring response rates is simple and recent data shows that response rates are higher than for direct mail.

Online marketing: plays an increasingly important role in direct marketing.With the wealth of information it contains, the Internet allows consumers to search for and compare products in a convenient way.A webpage makes purchasing easy for consumers and provides opportunities for sellers to initiate additional contact points with the consumer which may allow for other promotional strategies. Coverage limited to those with Internet access and the skills needed from costumers to engage in online purchasing constitute its main disadvantages.

Short Messaging Service (SMS) /Text marketing: is a very attractive vehicle for direct marketing due to rapid growth of cell phone usage.It allows for sending messages to groups of people quickly at a relatively low cost. It is easier to reach consumers as everybody carries their phone and tend to read all of their messages. The personal nature of cell phones makes of this a very powerful marketing tool.

2.6 Other Promotional Options

Additional promotional tools to promote the product or service include: attending or participating in trade shows and consumer fairs, developing your own newsletter and developing brochures.

Trade Shows and Consumer Fairs: trade shows, industry fairs, farmer’s markets, home and garden shows and State fairs, constitute the main promotional tools for some businesses.They are very effective promotional tools because people in attendance are already serious prospects and, additionally, they provide a great opportunity for networking.

Newsletters: developing a newsletter that provides up-to-date information to your customers allows you to establish a relationship with them and stay in touch.It is a very affordable promotional tool that even firms on very small budgets can afford. Effective newsletters are published regularly and consistently, are enjoyable and easy to read and provide solutions to customers’ problems.

Brochures: This gives a detail information about the product or service. Color photos or images are presented to improve attractiveness and increase customer’s retention. The firm’s logo is used consistently throughout the brochure and the necessary contact information such as telephone, fax, e-mail address, business address, webpage location are also provided.

Developing the Promotional Program

There are six key aspects that help the development of promotional program namely target audience, promotion objectives, available budget, promotional elements, place to run the promotion be run, Time to run the promotion.

3.1 Target Audience

The first step in developing your promotional program is identifying the target audience, that is, the group of prospective buyers. The target audience is identified through the marketing research and market segmentation studies. The more we know about your target audience, the easier it will be to develop an effective promotional program.

When the target audience is the final consumer, mass media communication channels allow access to a large number of potential buyers.On the other hand, personal selling is used when the objective is to reach the end consumer at the point of purchase or when intermediaries are the target audience.

3.2 Promotion Objectives

After identifying the target audience, the objectives of the promotion should be accomplished.The objectives include: reaching a certain percentage of the target market, increasing customers’ exposure to a product or service, raising awareness about a new product or service, achieving a certain level of sales.

Product/Service Lifecycle: the lifecycle of a product or service encompasses four stages namely introduction, growth, maturity and decline, and the promotional mix should be adjusted at each stage.The main objective of promotion during the introduction stage is to raise consumer’s awareness and interest about the product or service.The promotional mix at this stage usually includes all promotional elements but advertising is particularly important to reach a large audience.

During the growth stage the objective is to persuade the consumer to buy the product or service. In the maturity stage, the objective is to maintain existing buyers. Advertising is used to remind your customers of the existence of the product or service. Sales promotions in the form of discounts, coupons and price cuts are used to maintain loyalty of both end consumers and intermediaries. In the decline stage the product is close to being phased out, and as a consequence, little money is spent on promotion.

Customer Buying Decision Process: a prospective buyer is said to go through a sequence of stages from initial awareness to eventual action.

The stages include: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and adoption. Awareness relates to the consumer’s ability to recognize and remember the product or service. Interest relates to the consumer’s increased interest in learning more about the product or service.

Evaluation  refers  to  the  consumer’s  appraisal  of  the  product  or  service  on  important attributes.

Trial is the actual first purchase and use of the product or service.

Adoption is the repeated purchase and use of the product or service, after the consumer has had a favorable experience during trial use.

During the pre-purchase stage when it aims at developing awareness and interest, advertising is the best strategy as it informs the potential customer.

At the purchase stage when evaluation and trial of your product or service takes place, sales promotions through coupons, deals, point-of-purchase displays and rebates can be the most effective. Sales promotions in the form of coupons and direct marketing are very effective in encouraging repeat purchases or adoption of a product or service.

Available Budget

Once the target audience is identified and the promotion objective is set, there is a need to determine the budget for promotion.This budget will depend on the resources and also on how widely and how frequently promotion of the product is to be done. The methods followed by the firms to arrive at a promotional budget, include, objective and task budgeting, percentage of sales, matching competitors, and that one can afford. If the resulting cost is beyond the firm’s possibilities, objectives need to be reassessed and tasks adjusted accordingly, until a suitable balance is accomplished.

3.4 Promotional Elements

The next step in developing the promotional program is to select the promotional elements that best fits the promotion objectives.

For example, if advertising is the right promotional element to meet the promotional objectives for the selected product or service, one should start developing the advertising strategy, which is directly related to the positioning strategy. This implies deciding the message to be conveyed, the feeling to be created, frequency to advertise and type of media to use. The advertising message should be consistent with the price of the product.

3.5 Place to run Promotion

Depending on the target audience the next step is to identify the best medium or place to execute our promotional program. For example: for advertising one needs to consider the different media available.

3.6 Time to run Promotion

Once the design of the promotional program is ready, one should define the right timing for it. The order in which each of the promotional elements is introduced, Seasonality and competitive promotion activities are very important factors to take into account when scheduling your promotional program. Repeated advertisement works better than a one-time shot. Repeated exposure lends familiarity and credibility and helps prompt people to reach for, or ask for your product or service. Other key factors to take into account when scheduling your campaign are: buyer turnover, purchase frequency and the forgetting rate.

Execution and Evaluation of Promotional Program

Typically the advertising campaign will be handled by an advertising agency. These can be either be full-service or limited service agencies. The campaign can be handled in-house by advertising staff.A full-service agency provides a complete range of services, including market research, media selection, ad development, artwork, and production.

Executing the promotional program involves pre-testing your promotional tools and implementing them. Before the program is initiated, ads should be shown to consumers to choose the best option, identify any necessary adjustments, or both. The techniques used to pre-test ads include: portfolio tests, jury tests and theater tests.

Visual Merchandising

Visual merchandising is creating visual displays and arranging merchandise assortments within a store to improve the layout and presentation and increase traffic and sales.The concept of visual merchandising provides a useful framework for the discussion of this interface, as the product range make its entrance into customer space.

It combines a commercial approach with a design approach within the store environment.

Elements of Visual merchandising

• Choice of fixtures and fittings to be used, Method of product presentation,
• Construction of ‘off-shelf’ displays.
• Choice of store layout
• Use of point of sale material
• Construction of window displays.

5.1. FIXTURES AND FITTINGS:

The way the products need to be presented and displayed within the store will largely determine the choice of fixturing.

GONDOLAS:

The term gondolas refer to a system of shelving which offers staked merchandising to the customer in a longitudinal presentation.The gondolas is used in the ‘grid format’ which offers merchandise on both sides.

ROUNDERS:

As the name suggests, the rounder fixture offers merchandise in a circular presentation. The merchandise might be hung on a series of prongs, as in the case of belts or bubble packed products, or the rounder may be a more solid structure, showing the variety available in a merchandise type.

SHELVING:

Wall space is useful for incorporating the general display of merchandise within the overall interior design of the store. This type of shelving arrangement became popular with other casual-wear retailers.

TABLES, BINS AND BASKETS :

Bins and baskets are used to house large qualities of merchandise. They are effective for small items and for heaps of promotional merchandise. Promotional merchandise can also be done on tables, which provide flexibility in terms of space allocation and display area. Tables can also be used in a more elegant display of product.

5.2. PRODUCT PRESENTATION:

The way in which the products are presented depends on the type of fixture available. It includes..

Vertical stacking, –for magazines and CDs.

Horizontal stacking, -for tinned foods or folded garments. Hanging– on hangers or hooks.

5.3. STORE LAYOUT:

• Visual merchandising also encompasses the design of a store layout.
• A store layout will be heavily influenced by the assortment and variety on offer and will be constrained by the size and structure on the shop itself.
• The layout used will also determine or be dependent on the type of fixturing used.

There are a number of different approaches to store layout, although they are designed with the intention of moving customers to every areas in the store in order to expose them to the full range of products.

5.4. DISPLAYS:

Displays can normally be broken down into three different types: on-shelf displays, off-shelf displays and window displays.

On shelf displays are the ‘normal‘ displays around the store that show all the different variations of product on offer in some kind of logical sequence.

Off-Shelf Displays are the displays designed to have additional impact by showing the product. Displays can be considered as visual features that create interest or excitement within the store. Window displays communicate to the potential customer about the retailer’s shopping environment.

Window display make customers aware of the type of merchandise being sold, and will attract the interest of the target customers.

Conclusion

Visual Merchandising is the most essential form of publicity. The role of visual merchandising within retail product management cannot be separated from any of the more ‘scientific’ aspects of retail product management, because of its crucial role in creating and supporting the retail brand’s position.

References

• Amstrong, Gary and Philip Kotler. “Marketing: An Introduction”. 8th  ed. (Upper Saddle
• River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2007), Chapters 12 &13.
• Blakeman, Robyn. “The Bare Bones – Introduction to Integrated Marketing Communication.” (Plymouth, U.K.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), Chapters 4, 5 & 14.
• Business  Basics   for   Alberta   Food  Processors    –  Promotion.  Government  of  Alberta    –
• AgricultureandRuralDevelopment.AccessedJuly2,2011  at:http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex10013
• Kotler, Phillip. “A Framework for Marketing Management.” 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003), Chapter 20. th Roger Kerin, Eric Berkowitz, Steven Hartley and William Rudelius. “Marketing”. 7 Ed.
• Wold, C., Sumner, H., Schlake, M, Gotwals, J.P. (2000). Tilling the Soil of Opportunity – Course Overview and Participant Outlines. First Edition. NxLevel Trining Network, University of Colorado at Denver. Chapter 6, Sections 19-30.