Does Sales Promotion Influence Buyer Behaviour? A Study of PZ Cussons Limited

Sales promotion is a collection of incentive tools designed to stimulate sales of particular products or services in the short-term. The objectives of the study were to identify the Se m’anhyia duck bar soap sales promotion mechanisms adopted and to determine how the sales promotion mechanisms affected the behaviour of young consumers. Apart from adult buyers, young consumers who are Senior High School (SHS) students in Ghana, often buy personal care products especially soap personally for their use at school. Thus, the study focused on SHS students in the Ho Municipality of the Volta Region, Ghana. Data were collected with a questionnaire administered to a sample of 152 students who represented young consumers in the Ho Municipality of the Volta Region, Ghana. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data. It was found that, PZ Cussons’ Se m’anhyia duck bar soap sales promotion mechanisms adopted included token of prizes such as T-shirts, shopping baskets, pieces of GTP wax cloth and the ultimate prize was a two-bedroom self-contained house. The study shows that the sales promotion has influenced many young consumers to purchase the product. Thus, it is important that the company regularly organizes sales promotion to improve its sales. A major contribution of the study is that it has established that a lot of young consumers, who are mainly boarding students in some part of Ghana, make purchase decisions regarding purchase of laundry soaps for their use at school. The study shows that boarding students constitute a very important market segment of the personal care product market in Ghana. Hence, personal care product marketers in Ghana should consider young consumers as part of their target markets and offer sales promotion packages that will be attractive to young consumers.