CHAPTER ONE

• INTRODUCTION

One of the major marketing strategies used by companies to build up, encourage and reinforce brand loyal behavior is “Sales promotion” Over the years, most companies spend huge amount of money on advertising and promotion for a number of reasons, most importantly to influence customers to buy, to increase and maintain brand preference and loyalty, and consequently to have high returns.   The question that these study sought answers to are that, does the huge amount of money spent on sales promotion worth it, are the consumer affected by the various method of promotion, does sales promotion really influence consumer’s brand preference. Extensive literature review was conducted on the influence of sales promotion on consumer’s brand preference and related topics. Literatures were reviewed generally on the principles of marketing, marketing concept, sales promotion and principles of consumer’s behavior, advertising. The study is based on descriptive and inferential ( chi- square) analysis of 50 consumers and 35 dealers surveyed through structure of questionnaires. The results obtained were presented and managerial implications were discussed. It was found from this study that majority of the consumers agreed that advertising and sales promotion influenced them to buy, that it make difference if the product is advertised and that should continue. Larger part of the dealers also claimed that their sales increase when ever there is advertising or major promotional effort on the product. It was however found out from this study that as important as “advertising and sales promotion” is, it is not the only factors that make consumers to buy. Consumers would consider taste and price before taking the final decision to purchase the product.

1.1  BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

In the previous years, sales promotion has not become popular. But in recent years it has grown so rapidly. It is this rapid increase that has promoted the attention to undertake this research and find out how sales promotion influence the consumer brand loyalty with special emphasis on Nigeria Bottling Company.

Sales promotion is an indirect form of intended to stimulate quick action. It is one of the variables in the promotional mix that organization uses to stimulate customers purchasing and dealer’s effectiveness such as displaying, shows, exhibition, demonstrations, coupons, contests, premiums,   samples trade allowance and other routines selling effort are usually short term in nature.

According to Kotler (2001) sales promotion is one of the promotional activity or material that act as a direct inducement to reseller, sales persons or consumer. It offers added value or incentive to buy or sell the procedure. A range of technique used to engage the purchaser.

Nigerian Bottling Company is a multinational Company and has Parents Company in the United States of America (Atlanta). The production of Nigeria bottling company product in Nigeria is purely through franchising, Nigerian Bottling Company operates a globalize marketing, that is selling its product as it is in all the consumer countries, and thereis no change in marketing, advertising, taste and promotional activities. The company sources their coke from Ijebu-Ode, their bottle from Nigerian Bottling company glass industry at Ughele plant Delta state.

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