Everytime i change the television channel i see atleast two promotional ideas every minute. I read the paper and i see one full page advertisement talking about a very attractive promotion. Facebook does throw up ads that talk about breakfast at Hamptons and what nots. That makes me think about the far reaching impact of promotions and why they manage to show the short end of the stick, i.e the product. There are products whose quality we cannot see through direct inspection. Promotions enable in disguising that quality.
The latest Fuqua Research on Market Intelligence by one of my favorite professors John Lynch does indicate about the customers reach and attraction to items that do not have any quality promise so to speak. There are non-target , non-expert consumers who are the biggest consumers for such products that ride on attractive promotions. There are goods and services that cannot be audited or assessed so to speak as there are no certification or Quality Stamps that those products can brag about. Think of Wine, or some exotic draught beer and its true that many brand of wines do not have any quality stamp so to speak at the time of consumption. Also when we look at some exotic cuisines in one of those fine dining restaurants we do see their name on the menu item but the dish still holds no certification at all.
Talking of Quality Stamp, something that strikes me about some of the restaurants and Bars in NYC area, is the ZAGAT stamp that these restaurants hold. So maybe restaurants have stamp to reassure customers that the place is safe. However customers do get the short end of the stick when they order a wine in that restaurant and the wine is not of the desired quality. .
So the question still remains that do promotions hide benefits of a product or help share the quality benefits? How do we differentiate a quality promotion from a not high quality promotion? Suppose i do eat breakfast at Hampton's and fall ill after eating the terrible omelette. How will i separate the real from the fake. What happens if I get food poisoning after the breakfast. Will I still believe in Facebook promotions.
Every able marketer needs to think of the short end and the long end of the stick or the product before allocating budget to any promotions whatsoever. They are attractive replacement to advertisements but they might just not be REAL. Watch out next time you get swayed by a great buy one get one BOGO offer. (in marketing its called the BOGO Trap) Promotions might just be for a not so good quality product. Everytime a company sells a financial service for free never take that as there are no free lunches in this world of Give and Take...its all about Commerce and Bogo can be harmful.
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