ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors look at traditional promotion and its role in Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC), with special attention to incentive promotions. The primary communication objective for promotions is to stimulate immediate brand purchase intention. The use of promotion should be carefully integrated over time in relation to the target audiences' decision process. Like marketing communication, promotion too must address brand awareness and brand attitude. There are several types of promotion: consumer, retail and trade. Consumer promotion and retail promotion are aimed directly at consumers. While it is important from an IMC planning standpoint to discriminate between consumer promotion initiated by the manufacturer and the retailer, from the consumer standpoint there is no difference. Trade promotions provide incentives or merchandising activity for the trade, and make it the largest proportion of most brands' marketing budget. A growing trend in the use of coupons is more targeted couponing.
