Abstract/Summary

The term Promotional Effort is used to refer to the qualitative and quantitative aspects of a firm’s strategies aimed at broadening its market scope through the establishment of a larger and more loyal consumer basis. According to Kotler et al (2013) such activities can generally be classified into product management, pricing, promotion and distribution. Promotional activities include advertising, public relations, sales promotion, personal selling as well as database marketing, direct response marketing, sponsoring, social media and other alternative marketing activities (Clow and Baack 2014). In formal economic models, promotional effort is treated separately from pricing, in which case it refers to investments enhancing a firm’s potential market before pricing is taken into account. However, price-related strategies like price announcements, bundle pricing or low price guarantees could be considered as part of a firm’s promotional effort, rather than merely a pricing decision.