“Marshmallows and Public Policy” Case Analysis

Sales promotion is an important component of business' overall marketing strategy. It acts as a competitive weapon by providing an extra incentive for the target audience to purchase or support one brand over another and then makes companies earn immediately sale growths. On the other hand, consumers also prefer instant reward when they do shopping. Therefore, when companies execute sale promotion strategy, they usually create a sense of urgency and trigger target audience purchase products immediately to get the sale today.
In 1970, Walter Mischel launched “the marshmallow test” discussing the reward of self-control and delayed gratification. Children who could control themselves to delay gratification probably got better SAT scores in later life. Self-control and delayed gratification also relate to consumer’s buying behavior. Derived from consumers’ buying behavior, they do shopping because they want to satisfy different kinds of gratifications. Marketer usually creates an extra incentive to encourage consumers to take an action that they might prefer to delay. Since the ability to delay gratification correlates with socioeconomic status, after marketers define the target audience, they should be able to create marketing strategy to persuade consumer into gain gratification without delay.
Implementing sales promotion probably is the most common strategy to stimuli consumer’s buying motivation immediately. According to the Advertising and Promotion, sales promotion is a direct inducement that offers an extra value or incentive for the product to the sales force, distributors, or the ultimate consumer with the primary objective of creating an immediate sale. Effective sales promotion increases the basic value of a product for a limited time and directly stimulates consumer purchasing, particularly spurring