INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Sales promotion is a key ingredient in marketing campaigns, consists of a collection of incentive tools, mostly short term, designed to stimulate quicker or greater purchase of particular products or service by consumers or the trade.Sales promotion can also be defined as a marketing activity that adds to the basic value proposition behind a product (i.e getting more for less) for a limited time in order to stimulate consumer purchasing, selling effectiveness or effort of sales force (Aderemi 2013).According to Nkamnebe (2007), sales promotion is a direct inducement which offers an extra value or incentive for product to the sales force, distributors, or the ultimate consumers. With this we realize that sales promotion should be directed to the sales force, middlemen and the ultimate consumer.
The business environment has become very competitive in the 21st
century. The environmentis very complex and consumer preferences keep changing becauseof low switching costin the market .In addition, the increased competition in the fast moving consumer product industry, particularly the noodles market has worsened the fight for customers, thus making survival difficult. Many new players have joined the market, worsening the already competitive market structure.However, the initial failure by many of these fast moving consumer product companies to understand the relevance of promotion made their survival difficult but currently almost every firm seeks to increase the sales of its product through an effective promotional tool of which consumer sales promotion is one of them. In this era of global competition, firms in the manufacturing sectors uses various dimensions of consumers sales promotion such as price packs, contest and coupons to influence consumers’ behavior and increase sales. Also, using sales promotion to differentiate ones’soffer has become an order of the day. Budget allocation to consumer sales promotion in order to woo consumers is on increase.
This research work therefore, tries to justify the fact that sales promotion motivate people to buy or try a product that they had not tried before, to induce people who are currently using the product to buy and use more, to keep existing customers and to reinforce and maintain their purchase pattern for the product, to strengthen the image or competitive position of a product and also suggest new uses for a product so that existing customers will use more. This will be achieved by looking into some sales promotional tools like price packs, contest, and coupons to determine their influence on consumer patronage of noodles.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Some manufacturing firms especially those operating in the noodles industry face high competition in the marketing of their products. Management of these firms face the problems of customers switching over to competing firm due to an ineffective consumer promo tool. There are complaints of misapplication of consumer promo tool such as price packs, ineffective use of contest and inappropriate use of coupons in the promotion of a product. It is therefore doubtful if sales promotion has any positive impact on patronage of noodles.
Furthermore, despite the number of researches on the influence of sales promotion, limited research has been done on the influence of sales promotion on consumer patronage of Noodles .This study attempts to fill the gap by studying the influence of some dimensions of sales promotiononconsumer patronage of noodles with emphasis on students of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
The main objective of the study is to determine the influence of sales promotion on consumer patronage of noodles.
The specific objectives are:
1 To determine the influence of price packs and consumer patronage of noodles.
3 To examine the influence of coupons and consumer patronage of noodles
1.4 Research Questions
1.5 Research Hypotheses
1.6 Scope and Limitation of the Study
This study focuses on the influence sales promotion on consumer patronage of noodles and it covers only Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. This study is however limited by some challenges like financial constraints and such affected the scope of the study. This study was conducted only in Nnamdi Azikiwe University and this may affect the generalization of the study.
1.7 Significance of the Study
This study will help producers and marketers of noodles to know and understand the degree of influence of these three dimensions of promotional tool (price packs, contest and coupon) in the marketing of noodles. This studywill add to the few existing literature on the subject matter and as such a veritable tool in the hands of students, researchers and other relevant stakeholders.
1.8 Definition of Terms
Consumer: this is the final user of a firm’s product.
Consumer Sales Promotion: this consists of diverse collection of incentives mostly short- term designed to stimulate demand directed towards the ultimate consumer.
Contest: this is a sweepstake or contest in which a small fraction of consumers win cash prizes, goods or free trips somewhere.
Coupons:are the certificates that give buyers a savings when they purchase a specified product of mailed, endorsed in other product or them, or inserted in magazine and newspaper.
Price packs: This refers to various ways of reducing the price of a product regular package, such as by stating the price reduction on the package itself or by selling three packages at the price of two.