PART A

1.1 Introduction

Integrated marketing communications refer to a specific mix of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion and public relations a company uses to pursue its advertising and marketing objectives. Sales promotion is a form of short-term incentives to encourage purchase or sales of a product or service. While its main purpose is to stimulate quick response at targeted consumers, it is not effective at building long-term brand preferences. There are essentially three types of benefits of sales promotion: utilitarian, where the consumer is able to justify value of product through utility; hedonic, how one is able to derive pleasure from; and affective, which are additional utilitarian benefits. If a consumer feels that his purchased product is being utilized to its capabilities, he would derive a sense of pleasure that he paid good money for the product. In other words, utilitarian and hedonic benefits are related to one another.

1.2 Utilitarian and Hedonic benefits relating to cost, value and benefits

Utilitarian benefits also relate to economic utility that a consumer would get through a purchase. This would be in the form of direct savings, quality and convenience. Very often, firms would choose monetary promotions (i.e. price discounts, two-for-one bundles) to capture consumer’s attention. Marketers would benefit by enjoying higher sales with regards to everyday products or fast consumer moving goods, while customers benefit by enjoying more savings. However, this could create negative implications towards brand image in the consumer’s mind. This is because price is seen as an extrinsic cue to infer product quality, and it leads to encouraging customers to assess the incentives relative to what they pay.

Another, and perhaps a better, approach that firms could adopt would be non-monetary promotions, which are less likely to