— By Paul Uchegbu

Over the years, we have all always looked forward to the yuletide season; the end of a year and the beginning of another. For various reasons, we’ve had to anticipate this period. When we were younger, it was a time for new clothes, shoes, toys and plenty food. It was a time we were all happy. Though every young one was happy, the older ones; our parents and those responsible for us did not look that happy, they just seemed to be in another world. Now that we are older, we understand better. This period doesn’t just come with ‘arms wide open and smiling’; its challenges are as generous as Santa Claus.

This period is boldly characterized by the heavy financial burden it places on people leaving everyone struggling for financial freedom. Everyone is struggling to settle outstanding bills to make sure they don’t start a new year in debt. The prices of virtually everything goes up, companies and industries make moves to make up for under-implemented budgets. Indeed, it is a period buzzling with activities where everything from transportation to transaction seems to be on the ‘fast forward’. The only people who survive this period unscathed are the ones who are either very wealthy, those with financial dexterity or the ones who have learnt to accept fate; those who are willing to cut their clothes according to their coats. Little or no wonder! The global market is invaded by various sales promotions, discounts and other bonuses during this period; from Automobile to Telecommunication, Clothing to Tourism, Electronics to Banking and so on.

Sales promotion as it literally reads can be simply put as promoting sales of a product, brand or service. It is a deliberate action carried out towards building product awareness, creating interest, providing information, stimulating demand and reinforcing a brand, product or service. This is very important for every business organization since all businesses are profit based. Just as the Nigerian crave for “awoof” benefits is on the high, so is it in every part of the world- this effect has been worsened by recession. Recession, which has worsened the purchasing power of the vast majority of Nigerians, has combined conspiratorially with weak brand loyalty to turn the Nigerian marketing space into one sprawling casino. From banks to telecoms, the case is the same. Customers are daily drawn into one form of disguised lottery or the other all in the fight for a larger market share. Players in the Nigerian economy are a lucky lot. There are just too many festive seasons as many people planning to celebrate one thing or the other. So the market for season-centric lottery is here in abundant. If we are not celebrating Christmas (the biggest of them all), we are doing Sallah. If we are not here, then we must be on the threshold of Easter, Democracy Day, Independence and so on. Most of us would have realised very clearly that Valentine Day has gradually become favourite celebration period for everybody, young and old. It has become its own season and it would surprise no one if some hay brains start agitating for this day to be made a formal public holiday.

Jokes apart, companies in Nigeria have stretched sales promotion strategy thin and experts are beginning to wonder whether it still serves its purpose. The idea of sales promotion was conceptualised to enable brands take advantage of discounts offered during this period to scoop huge patronage that would otherwise not have been possible in the ordinary course of marketing. This, in addition to opportunities to win series of prizes is thought to have potential to drive patronage. Sales promotions can also attract a different audience and encourage people to try a product for the first time. But do they stay “tuned” at the end? Is sales promotion a genuine way in rewarding customers’ faithfulness? What impact really does benefitting from a Sales promo have on customers on the long run?

Research has shown that sales promos do not usually drive brand loyalty. In fact, consumers are known to have felt negatively towards brands after several futile attempts to win prizes offered in sales promos. They even tend to rebel and demonstrate this by veering over to competition. In a market like ours where the integrity of virtually everything is taken with a pinch of salt, any possible rumour that the sales promo is fraudulent is capable of doing irreparable damage to the brand. So why, in this country, do we have this rich harvest of sales/consumer promotions? The obvious reason is that “managerial use of sales promotions is influenced primarily by competition and short-term pressures.”

Despite the fact that sales promotions have long been employed in marketing practice and researched academically, a clear understanding of the impact of sales promotion on post-promotion brand preference continues to evade brand managers and marketing scholars alike. These findings cannot be truer. In the Nigerian marketing landscape, pressures from competition can be identified as the chief driver of this strategy and I cannot discuss this without citing the cases of Nigerian banks. At the time sales promos was vogue in the financial services sector, there was noticeable pressure on the marketing staff in the area of selling several of their retail products, especially children’s savings accounts and the regular savings accounts. The banking industry got to a point where all the products were generic and the only differentiator available was in offering customers the opportunities to win one prize or two. But soon nearly all the banks were doing the same thing and what did customers do? Those who wished to play the lottery simply moved money from one account to the other depending on who was in the market with which promo.

What about the telecom industry? What about the breweries? The story is virtually the same. In telecom, the drive for market share is intense with the top three so close that it is sometimes difficult to define leadership. So to sustain loyalty and generate the cash necessary for expansion, sales promos become the only resort.

But the greatest challenge facing sales promotion strategy is its short term nature. Sales promos do not build brands. They do not even reinforce loyalty in the long term. People are waiting to forget one sales promo and move over to the next. At this point, sales volume drops, sometimes so dramatically that the brand suffers considerably. This means that measurement of market share could be misleading during periods of intense promotional activity by one brand, especially if competition was not flying anything at the time.

I really think what marketers in Nigeria should do is to invest greater energy in identifying long term bonding strategies not tied to particular seasons. People tend to forget very easily things that do not connect with them in the real sense. And if the promo becomes too frequent, consumers get bored and might be unwilling to spend the extra cash that would make the difference. But in a market like ours with endless seasons, I doubt if this short term strategy would not be long term for us. Especially when it is the easy way out for battle-weary marketers and brand managers!

And for you who thinks that Sales promotions, bonanzas and lotteries or gambling in ‘disguise’ is the only way out of your financial troubles, remember that nothing good comes easy and that even if you win a million dollars from a promotion, it only makes you rich but does not guarantee you wealth, it will make new friends for you but will give you even more enemies and most importantly could even add to your troubles if you invest all you have on mere permutations.