The Effect of Promotion on Sales of Small Scale Furniture Sector in Ghana: A Case Study of Kpogas Standard Furniture Company Limited
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Date
2009-06-07
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Abstract
The importance and significance of promotional mix in today’s market cannot be
underestimated. This is due to the emergence of more markets as a result of globalization and its associated overwhelming competition. However, manufacturers perceive promotion as unwanted cost and disregard it entirely. This misconception is attributed to the problem of not knowing what constitute an appropriate promotion for a particular product and the nature of competition prevailing in the market.
Promotion is an organisation’s unique set of communication channels (stimuli), designed to influence (inform, persuade and remind), selected target audiences into desirable responses. Among the factors that determine appropriate promotion include culture, religion, tradition, consumption patterns and habits, and the degree of expose to external cultural practices and values especially in the target market. It is therefore imperative to note that promotion of products varies from society to society and one target market to the other. This underscores the importance and significance the role promotion mix plays in marketing. The end point of any production activity is consumption. Thus, production is not complete until the product or service has reached the final consumer. Promotion is the offer of an incentive to induce a desired sales result Thus, a careful analysis of this concept was done through the use of open ended questionnaire and interview to access information on how Kpogas Standard Furniture Company Limited pursue its promotional mix activities. Also, the sales records of Kpogas were analysed using percentage cumulative skewed frequency, graph trend and growth tools in SPSS as well as Microsoft Excel software. It revealed that, due to cost, inaccurate and unprofessional planning on the part of Kpogas Standard Furniture Company Limited marketing department, the intended impact was not fully felt by the company against the competition on the local and international market. It was therefore recommended that the appropriate budgeting must be done so that the full promotional mix tools be implemented especially advertising on the television, some price off, tie-in promotion, patronage rewards and specialty advertising were inevitable. Most of the problems were much more of price fluctuations, bulk purchase and shortage of raw materials could help. Also frequent price changes can be solved by effective budgetary controls to ensure that production cost or distribution cost changes have enough buffers to prevent shocks.
The projections from the trend and growth analysis indicated that Kpogas Standard Furniture Company Limited stands to gain significantly from the introduction of promotional mix tools strategic promotion in 2009 as the total cash sales was increased significantly. Further research may be considered for the integration of full supply chain management after the successful implementation of promotional mix tools by Kpogas Standard Furniture Company Limited.
Description
A Thesis Submitted to the Business School, Kwame Nkrumah
University of Science and Technology in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration