Sales Development and Merchandising: A Comprehensive Analysis of Key Concepts and Strategies

This comprehensive analysis delves into the critical concepts and strategies of sales development and merchandising, exploring their impact on maximizing sales and profits. The paper examines the role of product mix, market segmentation, buyer behavior, personal selling techniques, operational design, and various promotional activities. It also evaluates the effectiveness of internal and external merchandising materials, highlighting the influence of design and layout on customer spending. The analysis is grounded in real-world examples, particularly focusing on the case of Hilton Hotels in London, providing practical insights into the application of these concepts in the hospitality industry.

Sales Development and Merchandising

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
TASK A...........................................................................................................................................3
a. Discussion of how the product mix contributes to sales and profit (ref. 1.2) (+M1)...................3
b. An assessment on how market segmentation contributes to maximize sales (ref. 1.3)...............4
TASK B...........................................................................................................................................4
a. A discussion about the factors affecting buyer behavior (ref. 2.1) (+M2)..................................4
TASK C...........................................................................................................................................5
a. An evaluation of personal selling techniques (ref. 4.1)...............................................................5
B. A discussion about the influence of operational design on sales revenue (ref 4.2)....................7
TASK D...........................................................................................................................................8
A. An evaluation of the key components of the product (ref. 1.1)................................................8
B. An assessment of the advertising media that could be used for sales development situations
(ref. 2.2)...........................................................................................................................................9
C. An evaluation of the use of external merchandising to maximize customer volumes (ref. 2.3)
10
D. An assessment of the influence of design and layout on customer spending (ref. 3.1) (+M3)
10
E. A review and evaluation of the effectiveness of internal merchandising materials (ref 3.2)
(+D3)..............................................................................................................................................11
F. An evaluation of different promotional activities according to different scenarios (ref. 3.3)
(+D2)..............................................................................................................................................11
G. Key principles that should be included in a sales training programmer (ref. 4.3) (+D1).......12
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................14
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2

Introduction
The developmental objectives and strategies implemented in the marketing tool to reach the
objectives of the company are called marketing mix. It can also be called the 4p’s concept that
involves price, promotion, place and product. The other four vital concepts are physical
environmental, people and processes (Chacour and Ulaga 2015).
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TASK A
a. Discussion of how the product mix contributes to sales and profit (ref. 1.2) (+M1)
Product Products here are referred as intangible or tangible that can satisfy the requirements of
the customers. The services and goods may completely be innovative and new or just
the feature development of already existing products. The decisions are taken
depending on features, nature and quality of the product where both the organizations
and consumers are benefitted. In the process, product becomes the most vital thing.
Production and designing of the product in accordance with the conditions of the
market and the changing requirements of the consumers are challenges for the
marketers. If the company is well established, it frequently faces challenges in the
form of product mix decisions, product line and range and others. Although there is a
prevalence of many services and products in the market, the consumers only purchase
a few services or products because of the image of the brand and loyalty that comes
from different strategies of business such as warranties and guarantees of products,
features of products, CRM, packaging, quality, services after sales, reparability and
durability of products and others. One more vital aspect in the production of services
and products in a successful manner is achieved by knowing the preferences and tastes
of the consumers and fulfilling the wants and desires of the consumers. Based on the
product’s nature, the marketing team can implement different decisions and strategies
applicable for the various market levels (Khan, 2014).
Price The value of a product or service is determined by the price it is offered at for the
consumers as well as the producers. Price becomes an important barrier for buying a
product although there is a willingness to buy it. Different factors influence the price
determination of a product such as, production cost, competitors, Government taxes
and policies, and others. If a product is innovative and new, companies have an
opportunity to fix higher prices for it before its substitute arrives. After the product is
substituted, the company has to opt for discount and offers. During the fixation of
price, the most important influential factor becomes cost. Majority of the online
marketers set prices by following policies that include odd pricing and time based
methods. Based on the product’s nature, phase of its lifecycle and opposition
marketers pursue various pricing techniques. The policy of setting prices is not only to
create sale but payments and discounts are also to be construed. Pricing policies
should also be fair and serve as an advancement for competition. The pricing
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strategies that are fake, affect the ethnicity of the company (Nagle, et al., 2016).
Promotion The process of awareness creation by communication the features of products and its
advantages to the target consumers are called promotion. There are various ways
involved in the process such as advertising, personal selling, customer relation, sales
promotion, direct mails and others. Awareness creation of the product helps marketers
reach the goals set in a short time spam and increment of profitability. Promotional
policies such as offline and online advertisements create revenues and sales. Thus,
marketers must do the identification of the target groups. Many consumers stop
buying certain products with the fear of poor after sales services, so this aspect also
needs adequate importance. The brand image is maximized through good customer
relations and introduction of products in a more personal manner (Pansari, and
Kumar, 2017).
Place In the 4p’s concept, the place creates convenience for the consumers to buy a product
at a certain location or through a certain distribution channel. Therefore, the logistics
and management of supply chain play a vital role in the distribution of product from
producer to consumer. The producers use online marketing as a source to reach the
consumers in a more efficient way. The consumers need to be provided with clear
information about the product. Concentration on place related decisions helps the
marketers to implement strategic decisions in warehouse facilities, transportation,
maintenance of proper channels of distribution and others (Kotler, 2015).
b. An assessment on how market segmentation contributes to maximize sales (ref. 1.3)
As the identification of target groups are made, the requirements of the group of people are also
identified. If the producers cater to these needs, the consumers are satisfied and happy and they
automatically advertise the product through word of mouth and thus the sales also increase,
bringing in profit (McDonald and Wilson, 2016).
TASK B
a. A discussion about the factors affecting buyer behavior (ref. 2.1) (+M2)
Cultural factors Culture is an important cause for the behavior of a consumer. The
cultural influence of the buying behavior varies for each country.
Therefore, the analysis of cultures, regions and countries should be
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careful. There are subcultures like religion, location, nationality, races
and others. These segmentations are also to be analyzed.
Social factors Reference group has the possibility for the arrangement of an approach
or performance of the person. The result of reference groups differ
across brands and products. Members of the family powerfully
prejudice consumer behavior. If the sale of the ;product is influenced
by the females of the family then the women are targeted in the
promotional advertisements of the product.
Personal Factors Life cycle and age has a probable effect on the buying performance of
customers. It is understandable that customers change the buying of
services and goods over time. The profession of an individual has an
important effect on their purchasing behavior. If savings and income of
a consumer is soaring, then buying tendency of more expensive
products will increase, and vice versa.
Psychological factors The stage of inspiration also impacts the buying behavior of
consumers. Various perceptual procedures such as, selective attention,
distortion and retention. In case of discriminating awareness, marketers
try to draw attention of the consumer.
TASK C
a. An evaluation of personal selling techniques (ref. 4.1)
The evaluation of the personal selling techniques of the products and the packages of Hilton
hotel of London can be evaluated from the succeeding tabular structure:
THE STEPS THAT INCLUDE PERSONAL SELLING TECHNIQUES
The number of
steps
Name of the steps Description of the steps
Step 1 Prospecting This process generally focuses in dealing with
the determined firms. In this case the respective
firm offers a service product in providing
benefits to its derogative customers (Garrido-
Morgado et al., 2015).
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Step 2 Pre-approach technique This stage envelopes accumulation of the
information before conducting sales
presentation. Above all this also looks after the
needs and requirements of every customer as
per the tastes of the individual (Murphy et al.,
2016).
Step 3 The approach technique This stage works under three procedural
methods. The methods include benefits,
features and the advantages.
 Benefits:
It generally saves the cost of
replacement.
 Features:
It deals with the physical properties of
the respective firm that includes taste,
size and location of the organization.
 Advantages:
It deals within the fathom of the
performance of the internal
stakeholders of the organization.
Step 4 The presentation of the
sale
The main work analysis of this particular stage
is to establish a scale of customer requirements
in order to make them satisfied.
Step 5 The close trial The stage that deals with the establishment of
intermediately skills among the service
providers of the organization to its respective
customers.
Step 6 Handling of the
objections
This stage generally assists the individual
salesperson to prosper and set viewed mind for
generalizing sales target.
Step 7 Closing of the sale T5his stage allows the salesperson in
developing confidence with respect to the
selling process and promoting the products of
sale.
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Step 8 Following up the sale This stage helps the individual salesperson in
establishing long term relationship of business.
Table 1: The evaluation of personal selling techniques
(Source: created by the author)
B. A discussion about the influence of operational design on sales revenue (ref 4.2)
The operational design on sales revenue with respect to the Hilton hotel of London
includes the following merchandising plan:
OPERATIONAL DESIGN ON SALES REVENUE OF HILTON HOTEL
The number of plans Name of the plans Description of the plans
Plan 1: Cost effective The cost effective plan
generally measures the total
number of sales that tend to
occur before making a sales
revenue plan.
Plan 2: Coordination This planning stage usually
deals with the materials that
are used for internal
merchandising (Usui, 2017).
Plan 3: Cohesiveness This planning stage for the
hotels generally includes
managing the internal
merchandising services of the
respective organization.
Plan 4: Condition This stage works after looking
towards the proper
maintenance and the proper
service provided to the basic
users who tentatively uses the
service of the respective hotel.
Plan 5: Advertisement For attracting a large group of
customers, advertisement
plays an effective role in
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developing a merchandising
plan for sales revenue
purposes.
Table 2: The operational design on sales revenue
(Source: created by the author)
TASK D
A. An evaluation of the key components of the product (ref. 1.1)
The Hilton hotels are one of the 20 topmost hotels in the United Kingdom. Hilton hotels provide
best services to its customers in order to satisfy them and retain their customers so that they
always demand and prefer for the services of the most popular Hilton hotels. Hilton hotels also
provide package services that are considered as products of Hilton hotels. A product is a tangible
or sometimes intangible article which satisfies the needs of the customers and plays a significant
role in the development of a company.
The key components of a product are:
Market research-In order to introduce a product to attract the customers towards it the first step
to be taken to be taken is to have an analysis of market regarding the current trends, the taste and
preferences of the customers and their demands of products from the market.
Market segmentation- The Hilton hotels sub divide the market into different sections so as to
recognize and select the appropriate market for their products’ business.
Target market- Hilton hotels after segmenting the market select the appropriate market and put
efforts to start attracting them by identifying their tastes and aspirations.
Product development- After targeting the appropriate market Hilton starts putting efforts to
develop a product. The development of a product involves introducing a product, make several
discussions regarding its pricing and entering into several contracts with the distributors to
transfer it into the market to be transacted and adopting several remarkable promotional
mechanisms to provide basic information in connection to the product to be launched so that they
do not get exploited while opting for the product.
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Implementation and control- Strategies are of no value unless they are put into action. Hence,
subsequent to the strategies made to develop a product, they are implemented and further
rectifications are made to the errors occurred while the implementation of the strategies, if any.
B. An assessment of the advertising media that could be used for sales development
situations (ref. 2.2)
The Hilton Hotels are a well- built Hospitality Company in United Kingdom that invest a huge
amount of in marketing its products over various advertising media to attract the targeted
customers towards its innovative and standard quality products. The products are marketed by
various retailers of travel agencies. There are different means of advertising adopted by Hilton
Hotels. There must be an assessment of different advertising media of the company. This well-
developed hotel company advertises its products:
 through social networking media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many more;
 promote its products through televisions,
 Through different product campaigns,
 Through different travel agencies
 Over hoardings
 Advertise its products through famous and well- known brand ambassadors
 Through several merchandising aids involving discount offers, buy one get one free
offers
Through these advertising media Hilton hotels can promote their products so as to provide
universal information linked to the products to their customers and attract them towards their
products to increase their sales volume as well as ensure customer satisfaction.
C. An evaluation of the use of external merchandising to maximize customer volumes
(ref. 2.3)
Sales and merchandising are two of the most outstanding concepts that are used by all developed
and developing companies. They are comprised by marketing mix but also contain some of the
important distinguished facts. Sales refer to the typical selling of goods and services that are
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needed by the customers. Whereas merchandising refers to a procedure that is followed and
executed by the company to transfer the goods to the retail outlets in order to make available of
the product that is demanded or aspired by the customer. Hilton Hotels one of the leading
company in hospitality industry in United Kingdom. It ranked as one of the most preferred hotels
by the society. One of the chief reasons behind its triumph is its impressive quality
merchandising and exceptional concentration made towards its customer in connection to the
sales of standard quality goods and services and clarifying their consumers’ queries with an
objective to satisfy its clients with their quality products and services. Hilton hotels being
situated at the central venue of the city, provide premium class faculty to its customer at
reasonable rates, provides hi-tech rooms along with proper fitness sections such as aerobics
rooms, open air laughter club, technological gymnasium, beautiful spa rooms along with tasty
organic cuisines. They offer enormous discounts in package services and use different kinds of
marketing such as civic dealings, mail campaigns and many more.
D. An assessment of the influence of design and layout on customer spending (ref. 3.1)
(+M3)
Products if tend to be innovative can exercise a great influence over the spending capacity of
customers. Hilton always thinks forward towards producing innovative products so as to
magnetize its customer and increase their spending competence to own the products. Hilton
makes market research in order to evaluate the tastes and preferences of the customer with
respect to the current trends so as to generate their products as per the preference of the
customers. It also conducts several training programs to educate the employees working in the
hotel so as to make them generate latest and innovative ideas and adopt those innovative ideas in
their performance so as to represent pioneering and quality results. Hilton hotels use those
creative ideas in production of their goods to make available the modern products forth the
clients and convince them with their products to purchase. Clients will also purchase those for
those products which are which are convincingly innovative as per their needs and choice.
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E. A review and evaluation of the effectiveness of internal merchandising materials (ref
3.2) (+D3)
The internal marketing is one of the different types of marketing which consists of two types-
internal marketing of business systems and internal guidance. These both involve increasing
sales by taking steps in within the organization. There other kinds of marketing are as follows:
 External Marketing
 Online Marketing
 Offline Marketing
 Push or Pull Marketing
 Energy Marketing
Internal merchandising implies improvement of the operations within the Hilton Hotels. Guiding
the employees to work properly and represent better results in order to increase customer
demands with respect the products and services provided (Chu, 2017). Business systems internal
marketing involves an entrepreneur to figure out the knowledge related to the company’s
infrastructure that its customer might not know. This enables the Hilton Hotels to express their
strengths to the market (Popoola, 2017.).
F. An evaluation of different promotional activities according to different scenarios
(ref. 3.3) (+D2)
There are different methods of promoting a product in the market (Kwok et al., 2016.). Hilton
Hotels adopt different activities of promotion in order to launch their goods in the market and
develop sales and attract the customer towards its products as well as provide prime information
to make the customers familiar with the products, quantity, quality, price, validity protect them
from the false marketing facts of the retailers and getting exploited (Datta et al., 2017). Hilton
Hotels make use of various promotional activities through various techniques such as online
advertising television advertising, mail campaigns public relations and discount offers (Long,
2017).
Strengths
These activities are strong enough to attract customers and increase their sales volume along with
satisfied customers. But the promotion needs to be authentic (Shkedi, etal., 2016).
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Weakness
The above mentioned activities also comprise of some weakness along with the strengths. A lot
of cost is spent in marketing of the goods through different promotional activities (Hasan, et al.,
2015). Sometimes the desired results couldn’t be obtained as compared to the cost incurred.
Sometimes because of fake marketing the results represent negative effects instead of positive
effects (Ravi, et al., 2017.).
G. Key principles that should be included in a sales training programmer (ref. 4.3)
(+D1)
The important principles of a sales training programmer are as follows:
Outline the program objectives- The sales training programmer at first identifies the objective of
the program conducted before moving forward (Kotler, 2015).
Include explanations-The programmer expresses the justifications regarding the train people to
increase their sales volume and satisfy customers along with maximizing profits (Kim, et al.,
2018.).
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Conclusion
In conclusion, to the present assignment, the learner can outline that understanding the
importance of sales and developing appropriate sales strategy is increasingly important for any
organization. In relation to the case organization, which is Hilton Hotel, it can be said that,
framing appropriate sales strategy has been done by implementing theoretical knowledge of
different sales techniques helping the learner to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit.
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