Research Article Open Access Familmaleki et al., Int J Econ Manag Sci 2015, 4:4 DOI: 10.4172/2162-6359.1000243 Research Article Open Access Volume 4 • Issue 4 • 1000243 Int J Econ Manag Sci ISSN: 2162-6359 IJEMS, an open access journal Analyzing the Influence of Sales Promotion on Customer Purchasing Behavior Mahsa Familmaleki 1 *, Alireza Aghighi 2 and Kambiz Hamidi 3 1 Department of Management and Accounting, College of Humanities, Hamedan Science and Research Branch, Hamedan, Iran 2 Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Payame Noor University, Hamedan, Iran 3 Faculty Member of Management and Accounting, Islamic Azad University Hamedan Branch, Hamedan, Iran Keywords: Promotion mix; Sales promotion; Buyer decision making Introduction Modern marketing is more than just producing good products, suitable pricing and easy access to them [1]. Today, attracting new customers has become so important in modern retailing in addition to loyal to them and eforts have been paying in that perspective as known, the cost of keeping consumers present is less than the cost of gaining new customers. World of today’s world is a beneft-cost. Firms have to rethink the relationship between attitude and behavior of their consumers. All businesses need to communicate to the consumer what they have to ofer [2]. Promotion refers to the motivational methods of getting the consumer to purchase the product. Promotion is referred to as “any communication used to inform, persuade, and/or remind people about an organization’s or individual’s goods, Services, image, ideas, community involvement, or impact on society” [3]. Promotion (also referred to as Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)) mainly consists of messages and related media that are used to communicate with the market. IMC is defned as “a marketing communications strategy which requires that a company adopts strategies that coordinate diferent promotional elements and that these promotional activities are integrated with other marketing activities that communicate with customers” [4]. Te basics of promotional strategy involve delivering the communicational message from the producer to the consumer. Te object of the message is to persuade the audience to purchase the product or service. Terefore the consumer needs to be receptive to the message and to be able to interpret it in such a way the intent to purchase is established [5]. Companies must communicate with their present and potential customers, as well as internally, and therefore makes it very important in the marketing process. A modern company manages a complex marketing communication system. Te promotion mix includes the tools like Advertising, Public Relations, Sales Promotion, Direct marketing and Personal Selling [6]. Tese elements are included in the integrated marketing communications mix (Figure 1). Before companies can begin the communicational process towards the consumer, they need to defne the promotional objectives. Tese are the objectives “which determine a frm’s promotional strategy, for example, increasing sales of improving brand recognition may require a diferent promotional mix” [4]. Sales promotion consists of a variety of incentive tools, mostly short term, that are used to stimulate consumers and/or dealers to accelerate the purchasing process or to increase quantities of sales [7]. Sales promotion is certainly one of the critical elements in marketing mix and toolkit for the marketers. Statistics for packaging companies show that sales promotion comprises nearly 75% of the marketing budget [8]. Marketing research, both theoretical and empirical, focuses on how sales promotion impacts the behavior of consumers, particularly their purchasing decisions [8-10]. Shultz, et al. [11] says that sales promotion generally works on a direct behavioral basis rather than affecting awareness or attitude. One of the purposes of a sales promotion is to elicit a direct impact on the purchase behavior of the firm’s consumers. It is continuously said that most types of sales promotions affect the decision-making and purchasing stages of the buying process directly that is affective in the long-run since it leads to increased sales and profit [12]. A sales promotion stimulates customer purchases and the efficiency of distributors through marketing activities excluding advertising, public relations and so on. In other words, a sales promotion provides the incentive for consumers to purchase some specific products, and this incentive is different from the incentive provided by advertising with respect to the reasons to purchase those specific products. The purpose of a sales promotion is to attract new customers, maintain existing customers who are contemplating switching brands and give incentives to customers who are about to use competing products. Sales promotions vary depending on the situation and need, and they have an immediate effect on product purchases. Abstract The promotion mix is a term used to describe the set of tools that a business can use to communicate effectively the benefts of its products or services to its customers. The purpose of promotion is to reach the targeted consumers and persuade them to buy. Promotion has been defned as the coordination of all seller-initiated efforts to set up channels of information and persuasion to sell goods and services or promote an idea. Sales promotion is vital element of promotional mix. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of sales promotion on buyer decision making process. In other words, the general objective of this study was to fnd out the effectiveness of some elements on the buying behaviors of customers. Marketing activities related to the promotion of sales increased consumer purchases and indirectly to get more proft for the company. So, the purpose of sales promotion is to reach the targeted consumers and pervade them to buy .Sales promotion has become a vital tool for marketing and its importance has been increasing signifcantly over the years. One of the purposes of a sales promotion is to elicit a direct impact on the purchase behavior of the frm’s consumers. Firms have to rethink the relationship between attitude and behavior of their consumers. In this study, we will discuss the impact of sales promotion on consumer purchasing behavior. *Corresponding author: Mahsa Familmaleki, Department of Management and Accounting, College of Humanities, Hamedan Science and Research Branch, Hamedan, Iran, Tel: 0989183126523; E-mail: familmaleki@gmail.com Received February 02, 2015; Accepted April 07, 2015; Published April 17, 2015 Citation: Familmaleki M, Aghighi A, Hamidi K (2015) Analyzing the Infuence of Sales Promotion on Customer Purchasing Behavior. Int J Econ Manag Sci 4: 243. doi:10.4172/2162-6359.1000243 Copyright: © 2015 Familmaleki M, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. International Journal of Economics & Management Sciences I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f E c o n o m i c s & M a n a g e m e n t S c i e n c e s ISSN: 2162-6359