AD212 American Business and Management

Chapter 15: Wholesaling, Retailing, and Distribution

Chapter 16: Developing Integrated Marketing Communications

Advances in computers and information systems have helped to eliminate many mid-level operations (and managers) in business organizations. Why have they not also eliminated many wholesalers? (Another way of asking this question is what important services do wholesalers provide that cannot be easily accomplished in other ways.)

How do retailers compete for your business? (Short question. Long answer.)

If your company makes a good product (or supplies a good service) at a reasonable price, why do you need to expend resources on promotion? Won't the customers come anyway? As a corollary: what is the purpose of promotion?

The book says (p.463) that of combined dollars spent on sales promotion and advertising (1999), 50% went to trade promotions, 24% to consumer promot-ions, and 26% to advertising. How do you account for these numbers? What is trade promotion? Shouldn't advertising be higher?

Design a promotion mix for the following: New England region Pizza Hut restaurants, The Maine state lottery, General Electric steam turbines (for power station use), Budweiser Beer