This paper introduces and explains a process for analyzing and understanding promotion effectiveness and profitability combining the use of information sources, state-of-the-art modeling techniques and procedures. The problems of simply managing large-scale databases and the challenges facing managers, marketing scientists, econometricians and statisticians attempting to extract relevant business facts and test critical hypotheses have been discussed in the literature. This paper goes beyond reviewing the knowledge base to discuss an approach to managing large amounts of data when the objective is flexibility in the application of quantitative tools and procedures providing output for understanding the current business environment and leading to the development of a more efficient (or optimal) promotion plan. Each element of the marketing mix - and the components of both maximizing incremental sales and marketing return on investment are discussed with empirical examples, using both new software and systems.
This paper addresses the subject of how to promote programmes more effectively. It is important to understand at the onset that this paper is not addressing the issue of repeat viewing to programmes or trying to understand or indeed quantify programme quality. Nor is the paper going to address the creative aspect of programme promotions. What the paper will address is how best to place a promotional campaign on television in order to efficiently expose the right audience (this may be in terms of size or profile) to maximise the viewing of the programme itself, and then evaluate how effective that promotional campaign has been.
The main argument put forward in this paper is that covers are of vital importance in stimulating magazine sales and readership and that market research can contribute greatly towards making them more effective in their impact and communication. The paper looks at the most suitable research methodology for conducting cover research and for interpreting results. Finally, the paper discusses the anatomy of a good cover, dissecting the various elements that contribute towards success.
This paper is concerned with promotional pricing. It is studied in the context of a major consumer products category in the Canadian Market using electronic diary data. Price effects on several brands are shown. One brand is analysed in greater detail in order to show the full economic consequences of promotions.
Market research successfully developed tools to measure the effectiveness of below-the-line activities. These not only record reliably sales performance before, during and after promotions, but increasingly take into account "reason-why-data". Also it is now possible to provide virtually complete coverage of all retail outlets and not just a sample in selected towns, thus providing better insight into consumer reactions. More recently, POS-scanning systems give more frequent and faster access to store-data which greatly enhances the usefulness of results. A case history introduces the findings of such modern research and analyses on a week-by-week basis three months of promotional activity of major brands in a confectionary market. As a special feature, the study includes rarely available facts regarding the impact of promotions on gross-profits and margins of participating retailers. The second case history introduces a "Model for Price-Elasticity and Promotions", recently developed by A. C. Nielsen. It measures the marketing productivity by combining various levels of price-reduction with other below-the-line activities and assists marketing executives in conducting more successful promotions.
This paper describes how a programme of research based around a novel means of collecting data has enabled Heinz to optimise its performance in the promotions area and develop a framework within which the performance of specific promotions can be evaluated. Though Heinz used traditional research to evaluate the success of consumer promotions, the costs of these relative to the promotion cost, meant that no consistent framework for evaluation was used to track the effectiveness of individual promotions. This paper describes the development of a more cost-effective way of providing tactical data to marketing, using sales promotion techniques (in the form of foil-printed self-completion questionnaires) to gather profile data from those responding to particular offers. The paper presents some findings from a detailed study of three live promotions based on a total sample of 20,037 responding from a postal study and a further 1,531 telephone interviews conducted amongst a sample of postal non-responders. It also outlines how Heinz are using this and other data to provide a means of evaluating promotional effectiveness.
The paper begins with an analysis of the spectacular development of the direct marketing Europe and the United States, followed by an examination of the causes of this development. The second part of the paper stresses the crucial importance of professionalism among the causes of this growth and pinpoints the ways in which this professionalism emerges at the market survey level. Sales promotion then emerges as the key variable in the M.O.S. marketing mix, because it is what explains and justifies the use of the term and concept of direct marketing.
The author has attempted to show that conducting ad hoc survey research to determine the effectiveness of below- the-line activities is a viable but difficult field to work in. Once a decision has been made as to what performance criterion variables are to be used the problems resolve into ones of data collection and interpretation. By setting levels of acceptability, decision and action standards (preferably in terms of threshold and target levels), a good deal of information becomes available providing a reasonable basis for evaluation.
This paper describes the thinking and planning that lay behind the launch of Britain's newest daily newspaper, the Daily Star, and the role played by research in the overall marketing operation. The main research project described in this paper was conducted during the first week of the launch. Its objectives were to assess the success of the promotion of this paper and the public's reaction to and readership of the new publication. Our paper also describes the main results of this study and the development of the Daily Star as its circulation area expanded to cover the whole of the British Isles.
The highly important but complicated channel of distribution - the vending machine, has not yet been covered by a market research institute as to the flow of products through it. Of course, we do have distribution data, but no information about turnover or other important and interesting aspects are available. Based on this, the A. C. Nielsen Company has worked on this subject and has developed an instrument with the aid of which it is possible to offer exact and multiple data for this special market. An innovation can be presented in the auditing technique as well as to exactly measure the effect of promotional activities. The first approach in covering this market was made in the field of cigarettes.
In the case that I want to look at today, I plan to show how promotion was used in the successful development of a brand in a highly competitive market, and to describe an approach to measuring the value of a promotion both before implementation and evaluating it after. The example is the launch and development of a new brand in the U.K. Feminine Hygiene market - a market in which until recently Kimberly-Clark had only a relatively small share.