Marketing and Society: Advertising and Sales, Module Report, Analysis

This report examines the crucial relationship between advertising and sales, asserting that advertising functions to drive sales by creating consumer demand. It emphasizes the importance of aligning advertising and sales strategies, particularly during a product's growth stage. The report advocates for the 'Percentage of Sales' method for advertising appropriation due to its ability to track ROI. The report then compares traditional specialty stores with off-price retailers, highlighting their similarities in niche markets and customer interaction, while also noting their differences in merchandise offerings and positioning strategies. The report concludes by underscoring the necessity of a clear strategic approach for reaching target audiences.

Running Head: MARKETING AND SOCIETY
Advertisement and Sales
Student’s name
Name of the Institute

MARKETING AND SOCIETY
1. In general, do you think advertising is a function of sales – or are sales a function of
advertising? Given your answer, which approach to determining an advertising
appropriation do you think is the best?
Answer –
i) Advertising is a function of sales as advertising to tend to do promotion and spread
awareness about any product or services. It creates the need among the customers,
which facilitate them, to drive for satisfying the unwanted need that has been created
with the help of advertising and this way it facilitates sales. It is very crucial for the
products in the growing stage. It is important that the advertisement strategy should
align well with the sales strategy of the organization so that organization can achieve
its goals and objectives. Moreover, sales are a wider function that touches various
other functions in the organizations like marketing, advertisement etc. It would be
correct to say that three key functions of marketing, sales and advertisement overlaps
with some sort of similarities among them. When product reached at its maturity
stage then also advertisement plays a vital role to improve the sales numbers of the
product.
ii) Percentage of Sales method is the best advertising appropriation because with this
method, it becomes easy to track advertisement ROI by dedicating fixed pc of sales
revenue to advertising expenses. Factors that influence this method are market share,
budget and repetition of an ad.
2. In what ways are traditional specialty stores and off-price retailers similar? How do
they differ?

MARKETING AND SOCIETY
Answer –
i) Traditional specialty stores refer to those stores where narrow product range is
available but product line can be wide, for example jewelry shop, sporting goods
store etc. and Off-Price retailers refer to those retailers that sell good at low cost or at
high discounted price as they buy goods which have been returned by retailers,
second hand goods, cancelled orders and off seasoned products.
Similarity is as they both have niche market, low degree of product range, bargaining
power of buyer is low and high degree of customer interaction.
ii) Despite of similarities traditional specialty stores and off-price retailers are way
different. Usually traditional specialty stores offer standard merchandise, which is not
a part of off price retailers. Off price retailers can enter in to any kind of business,
from electronics to food but traditional specialty stores can enter into narrow business
segment. The key thing is that organizations should have a defined strategy in place
to reach its target audience. The key difference is also the positioning strategy of
these stores. The off-price retailer has a clear positioning strategy of cost leadership
as they focus to provide the best price options to consumers.