Sales Promotion Models

Firms spend a significant part of their marketing budgets on sales promotions. Retail (2012) indicates that during 1997–2011, promotion accounted for roughly 75% of marketing expenditures for US packaged goods manufacturers; the other 25% was for advertising. In 2011, 58% of the budget was spent on promotion to the trade (i.e., from manufacturers to retailers), and 15% on manufacturer promotions to consumers. Since the impact of promotions on sales is usually immediate and strong (Blattberg et al. 1995), promotions are attractive to results-oriented managers seeking to increase sales in the short term (Neslin 2002). In a meta-analysis, Bijmolt et al. (2005) report that the average short-term sales promotion elasticity is –3.63, which implies that a 20% temporary price cut leads to a 73% rise in sales. There are few, if any, other marketing instruments that are equally effective. Because of this, coupled with the availability of scanner data, marketing researchers have been very active in developing models for analyzing sales promotions. Most applications analyze promotions for consumer packaged goods, and this chapter reflects this practice. Nevertheless, many of the models could be applied to other settings as well. This chapter discusses models for measuring sales promotion effects. Part I (Sects. 2.1–2.10) focuses on descriptive models, i.e., models that describe and explain sales promotion phenomena. We start by discussing promotions to consumers. Sections 2.1 through 2.5 focus on analyzing the direct impact of promotions on sales and decomposing that impact into a variety of sources. Section 2.6