Impact Of Promotional Strategies In The Management Of Supermarket

INTRODUCTION

1.1   Background of the Study

For every organization to stay in business, it entails continuous and effective transaction between the organization and its customer and potential customers. The success of any business also depends totally on the organization ability to understand the prospect needs and other identified problems and being able to come up with panacea that could lead to solving the identified problem.

Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying anticipating and satisfying customer’s requirements profitably to achieve the needs, most organization practice the marketing concept which is the philosophy that holds the task of organization is to determine the needs, wants of the market and satisfying them more efficiently and effectively. Operations of supermarkets uses promotional strategies which include advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, publicity and public relations, in some cases promotional tools or strategies perform several functions in the business organization.

Any organization operation in a competitive environment, like the supermarkets to be precise should as a matter of fact stimulates sales, and then yield profit, most importantly satisfies customers need and wants.

A market is made up of people who have various needs. Some are buyers while others are sellers. The seller search for buyers, in other to ease the search effort, it is usually and most often the duty of the seller to package product information for dissemination to the buyers.

The use of the appropriate promotional strategy becomes inevitable. The promotional strategies in marketing theory and practice over the years has been concentrated on advertising, personal selling and publicity campaign. The degree of competition in the business environment usually indicate the volume and sophisticated type of promotional strategies that an organization should adopt.

Many business organizations do not welcome any expenditure on promotion. As competition builds up however such organization gradually begins to see promotional activities as indispensable.

Promotional strategies are integrated marketing communication that are employed to perfect and promote a product or services to its target audience. The totality of this package goods is made up of various elements of marketing communication comprising: advertising, sales promotion, public relation, publicity, event marketing, packaging design, marketing consultations, customer research and media buying. The basis of the study is to reveal their various impacts and effort on the management of supermarket.

1.2   Statement of the Research Problem

The increased rate at which most supermarkets are folding up calls for some concern, some of the owner attribute the folding up to poor performance. A cursory look at global scene would reveal that supermarket in advanced countries of the world are doing well. Most of them employ a lot of promotional strategies. With this global picture one cannot but have to embark on this study.

1.3   Objectives of the Study

The major aim of this research work is critical study of the supermarkets management through the promotional strategies;

1. To know the impact of promotional strategies in supermarket.
2. To examine the need for promotional strategies in the modern supermarket.
3. To know the composition of promotional strategies within a supermarket.

1.4   Hypotheses

Hypothesis One

HO:Promotional strategies are not useful in modern supermarket.

HI:Promotional strategies are useful in modern supermarket.

Hypothesis Two

HO:Promotional activities do not act as incentives to attract customers.

HI:     Promotional activities act as incentives to attract customers.

Hypothesis Three

HO:Promotional activities do not contribute to profitability of supermarket.

HI:     Promotional activities contribute to profitability of supermarket.

1.5   Scope of the study

The scope of the study is limited to Auchi town. It would have been extended to other principal cities of the country but due to academic work load, this won’t be possible.

1.6   Significance of the Study

One of the significance of this project work is to enable the owners and operators of supermarkets to be acquainted with relevance of promotional tool in the management of their business. Secondly the study will be of paramount importance to the student of business studies and marketing in particular and the general public who want to employ the promotional strategies in the management of business enterprises.

1.7   Limitations of the Study

1. Pressure:First and foremost, the study has to be carried out under great pressure to meet the need of other courses. The gathering of relevant information required for this study was almost impossible as the staff of Jovenson Supermarket, Auchi were reluctant to furnish the researcher with relevant and viral information.
2. Time Constraint:The factor posed some constraint on the successful execution of this project, encroached upon by other activities such as assignments, tests and preparation for my examination.

iii.     Inadequacy Research Materials:Obtaining related materials such as textbooks, journals and other publications from the library and other source was somehow difficult. Related literature in the area of study was not readily available.

1. Attitude of Respondents:Attitude to the questionnaire posed serious problem as regard the amount of the information gathered from field survey.

1.8   Operational Definition of Terms

1. Advertising:Advertising is a paid form of non personal communication that is transmitted to consumers through the mass media such as television, radio, newspaper, magazines etc.
2. Sales Promotion:Sales promotion is the process of persuading a potential customer to buy the product. Sales promotion is also designed to be used as a short term tactics to boost sales, it is not really designed to build long term customer loyalty.

iii.     Personal Selling:Is oral presentation done through talks/conversation with the prospective buyers for the purpose of sales. Personal selling is also a promotional method in which one party e.g. sales person uses skills and techniques for building personal relationship with another party (e.g. those involved in a purchased decision) that results in both parties obtaining value. In most cases the value for the salesperson is realized through the personal rewards of the sale while the customer’s value is realized from the benefits obtained by consuming the product because selling involves personal contact.

1. Publicity:Publicity is a non personal stimulation of demand for a product service or business unit by planting commercially significant news about it in a published method of obtaining favorable presentation of it upon television, radio, internet or stage that is not paid for by the sponsor.
2. Event Marketing:This involves organization of activities that attract public attention and interests. The activities may be individually organized or co-sponsored. In Nigeria sport appears to be the most interesting activity to members of the public. The exposure received by the sponsor is usually tremendous and it’s followed by improved co-operate range. It also creates lasting impact to the audience.
3. Public Relations:Public relation may be defined as the deliberate planed and sustained to establish and maintain mutual understanding between organization and its policies.

vii.    Supermarket:A supermarket is a large business unit that sells mostly food and grocery items such as tea, sugar, household utensils, electronics or electrical appliances and other things on the basis of low price wide variety display and assorted.