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Belch: Advertising and
Promotion, Sixth Edition
V. Developing the
Integrated Marketing
Communications Program
16. Sales Promotion © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2003
CAREER PROFILE
John Boyle
Marketing Analyst, Chicken of the Sea International
Choosing a major is an important decision for undergraduate
students. This decision determines the
nature of one’s college experience and, ultimately,
one’s career path. I decided to major in marketing as
an undergraduate at San Diego State University
because I felt this degree would provide me with a
number of exciting career opportunities. I also chose
marketing because I was intrigued
by the way marketers analyze consumers
to understand their purchase
behavior and the strategies
they develop to compete against
one another.
After finishing my Bachelor’s
Degree I decided to continue my
education and pursue an MBA, as I
wanted to study marketing in more
depth. While pursuing my MBA, I
had the opportunity to take courses
in areas such as advertising and
promotion, consumer behavior, marketing
research and strategic marketing,
all of which prepared me
quite well for an entry level position
in the field. My educational experience
at SDSU was gratifying, and
focusing on marketing turned out
to be an excellent decision.
I went to work for Chicken of the
Sea International (COSI) after finishing
my MBA degree. Since joining
COSI I have been working as a
Marketing Analyst and have had the
opportunity to provide input into
decisions that directly affect the
direction of the company. I work
closely with brand managers on a
“It’s very exciting
to deal with real
world marketing
problems every
day.”
daily basis and, together, we make marketing decisions
for a diverse product line. Chicken of the Sea sells a
variety of products ranging from canned tuna to
salmon as well as the new pouch pack versions of these
products.
An important part of my job as a marketing analyst
is to procure, organize, analyze, and disseminate information
which provides the foundation for strategic, as
well as tactical decisions. I work with many areas of the
business, but most closely with marketing communications
which includes our advertising, sales promotion
and online marketing functions. Sales promotion
is a particularly important element of our IMC program
because of its ability to directly influence customer
behavior. While advertising is used to build the
image of our brands over time, we use various types of
promotions to elicit a direct response and drive shortterm
sales. Sales promotions are focused on getting
consumers to take action, whether it be redeeming a
coupon for one of our products or
getting them to save product labels
and submit them in exchange for a
free movie ticket. Our sales promotion
programs are also targeted
toward the retailers as we have a
variety of programs that are
designed to encourage them to
stock and promote our products.
Measuring the effectiveness of
sales promotions is a challenging
but vital component of our promotion
program. Technological
advances in our industry have
greatly enhanced our ability to evaluate
promotions. For example, we
have access to a variety of rich
external data sources including
point-of-sale data generated by
super-market scanners, consumer
panel data, and retailer loyalty card
information. Internal data sources
such as coupon redemption databases
and factory shipments are
also valuable. Consumer clickstream
data from online grocery
retailing websites is a promising
new frontier in the area of sales promotion
evaluation.
Designing effective sales promotions
is a challenging but important task. We constantly
ask ourselves the obvious questions: What
worked, what didn’t, and why? Was the price discount
large enough, or was there a competitive promotion
being run simultaneously? Perhaps the contest prize
value should be increased, or maybe the retailer didn’t
pass the entire trade discount on to consumers.
It’s very exciting to deal with real world marketing
problems every day and to use a variety of concepts I
studied in business school to develop innovative ways
to solve them. The payoff comes from seeing the
results and knowing what I do has made a difference.