CHAPTER II- LITERATURE REVIEW
In today's competitive environment it is very important for marketing managers to utilize the complete variety of marketing mix tools to achieve maximum result and one of these marketing tools is sales promotion which has been very important in the food retail division(Sue Peattie; 1998). Nowadays several promotional tools such as coupons, bonus packs, free samples and sweepstakes are very commonly practiced activities offered by manufacturers to its consumers but the next step which is the consumer response to these activities has not been understood well in this regard (Chem L. Narayan and P.S. Raju; 1985). So keeping in mind the importance of consumer's ...view middle of the document...
This investigation has been intended to assist managers of marketing and sales departments in order to implement various consumer promotions efficiently in a combined marketing program.
The usage graph of sales promotions has gone up significantly in few years and one of the major reasons for this is that effectiveness of sales promotions is very much easier to calculate than the effectiveness of advertising campaign (Deborah L. Owens, Michael Hardman, Bruce Keiller). There are some internal factors and external factors which contribute in the growth of sales promotional activities. The main internal factor is the acceptance of sales promotion as an effective sales promotion technique by the product managers because they face greater pressure by top management to increase their current sales while external factors include large number of brands and then the increasing competition among them seeing that the competing brands are less differentiated. Third, advertising efficiency has declined because of changing economic conditions, rising costs and media disorder (Philip Kotler), (Chem Narayan and P.S. Raju; 1985). Given the importance of sales promotional techniques the most important decision for marketers is to choose the mixture of suitable sales promotional activities (Philip Kotler), (Chem Narayan and P.S. Raju; 1985).
The modern fast food uprising basically was originated in the US in 1950's and since then this style of cuisine has captured the whole world. Fast food is seen as a symbol of globalization and post-modern society and the world is attracting to this style of food (Yasser Ibrahim, Claudio Vignali; 2005). The fast food industry is more global now and international fast food expenditure goes on to enhance in popularity (Ali Kara, Erdener Kaynak, Orsay Kucukemiroglu; 1997).In the developing countries a very little research has been done on fast food and its consumers thus a very little is known about fast food consumers. Timothy J. Richards and Luis Padilla in 2007 has found that promotional activities increase the market share of the company and also expand the fast food demand generally. This shows that promotional activities influence the buying decision of fast food consumers due to price change. Promotions obviously contain a great impact on buying decision. What is important to keep clear is the process through which consumers act in response to these offers. This understanding is very important for successful scheming of promotions as well as for assuring the...