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Promotion Planning And Techniques
DISADVANTAGES OF DECENTRALISED PROMOTIONS
- Increased costs, as a result of the duplication of staff by the company’s divisions.
- Better quality decisions that top management could make will be missing.
- There can be variations in promotion skills and standards among divisions which can create
indistinct corporate image. - The loss of discounts and bargaining power when purchasing media time, space and printing.
A firm can use centralized, decentralized and combined approaches, depending on its size, company
policy or its promotional plans.
ORGANISATION OF PERSONAL SELLING
Personal selling is usually decentralized in a firm because of the necessity of adapting to different
localities. Competitive strategies and salesmen must be directly supervised; a process which involves
day-to-day decisions that are hard to make at central headquarters. Personal selling in most firms is
usually organized on a line basis because of the authority needed to supervise salespeople effectively. It
can also be organized on a product, customer or territorial basis. Each salesperson is assigned a territory,
or geographical area, in which he is responsible for the sales of the company’s product.
ORGANISATION OF ADVERTISING
The advertising manager may be responsible for sales promotion, public relations and publicity. The
manager of advertising may be called advertising manager, advertising director, advertising and sales
promotion manager, advertising and public relations manager or communications director. Whichever
title that is used depends on the size of the organization’s promotion programmes and the job description,
or scope of the job. His location may be at the divisional level in the headquarters; he is a functional staff
most times with functional authority in certain decision areas, such as advertising production.
ORGANISATION OF SALES PROMOTION
In a firm, sales promotion is placed at the division level because it is closely related to personal selling.
Industrial manufacturers operate sales promotion activities from their headquarters while consumer
products manufacturers operate their sales promotion activities at the division’s level, by allowing the
division to have complete control over sales promotion.
Sales management executives are usually more directly involved in sales promotion because it often
supports directly, efforts in personal selling activities.