Campaign

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Sales promotion

‘Senior Citizens Discount’ is a sales promotion to offer old customers to enjoy the sales within a particular period from 19th October to 23rd November 2015. The uses of this sales promotion are to retain old elderly customers and reach new elderly customers via Senior Citizen’s Day. By sales promotion and levels of involvement (Egan, 2007), fares would be an established product and market and is a low decision involvement level as airplane is a common transportation for Hong Kong and Macau residents. Therefore, this campaign can be used to attract for trial for new customers and reward increase usages for retention.

Direct marketing

Direct marketing is used in ‘Senior Citizens Discount’ to connect directly with existing customers. The use of this direct marketing is complementary, which help advertising, sales promotion and personal selling to sale and promote the product. Direct mail is used to inform wholesalers and existing customers about the promotional campaign.

Personal selling

In the campaign, personal selling is used in B2B market. Cathay Pacific’s staffs or marketing teams used face-to-face interaction to sell the products to the wholesales, like travel agencies. Therefore, the promotion campaign does not only promote in Cathay Pacific Ticketing Office, but it also promote in travel agencies’ store and websites.

Evaluation of effectiveness

Marketing research is used to evaluation of effectiveness of those communication tools and whether the communication objects are achieved. The effectiveness of communication tools of sales promotion and advertising is going to be evaluated in this part.

Sales promotion

The communication tool of sales promotion is selected to evaluate the effectiveness. In sales promotion of the promotional campaign, the result of the customer acquisition can be predicted and the effectiveness of sales promotion can be evaluated the by using marketing research.

Creation of research design of methods

The research design of the method would be conclusive causal research as the research is a variable’s relationship to another and evaluates the performance of promotional campaign. The customer acquisition rate in 2015 is compared with the customer acquisition rate in 2014 in this research by using sales promotion in this campaign.

Collection of secondary data

Secondary data about the research can be found in internal data. As Cathay Pacific has a customer database for existing customers, the customer retention rate can be found within the promotional period by using customer database if those existing customers buy the discounted fares on Cathay Pacific ticketing office and official website. In this way, the customer acquisition rate can be counted in 2014 and 2015.

Collection of primary data

The quantitative research is used to analysis the primary data as the research is for statistically consistent and general outcome. Questionnaire should be set to collect primary data by telephone. The reasons for choosing telephone interview are lower cost, easier to control and accuracy in targeting and collecting data. The customer telephone numbers are gotten in the trade for confirming tickets so the interview can be occurred after tickets confirming.

Questionnaire mainly focuses on the participation of the promotional campaign due to sales promotion. Also, the questionnaire also aims to sift the interviewees. Respond format would be closed questions for 2 to 5 choices because of easy to analysis the data. The questionnaire would be occurred in conversation with Chinese, Mandarin and English as the interviewee are elderly, who may not know the wording. The pilot test must be used for clarity before undertaking the questionnaire. The number of potential respondents is 10. The administration would be same with the full survey.

Sampling must be used in quantitative research for reducing cost and representative general result. About identifying the population of interest, the target population would be all elderly who participate in the promotional campaign in 2015. Since the census is costly and difficult for company to collect data, sample of population is more suitable in the study. The sampling frame should be defined as all 65 to 75 years old elderly who participate in the promotional campaign in 2015 and buy the fare in travel agencies. About choosing the sampling method, the type of sampling is used in simple random sampling of probability sampling. About setting the sample size, it is determined by statistical precision and cost limitations about 1000 interviewees.

Analysis of data

After getting those primary and secondary data, those data should be analyzed. As quantitative research is used in collecting primary data, coding, data entry and tabulation and statistical analysis should be used to find the outcome. After getting the result, if the customer acquisition rate increases to 15 % at the end of the year 2015 for targeted 65 to 75 years old customers by sales promotion, it means sales promotion can achieve the direct communication objective and the tools is effectiveness. However, if the customer acquisition rate increases below 15 % at the end of the year 2015 for targeted 65 to 75 years old customers by sales promotion, the tool of sales promotion is not effectiveness. The factor that leads the tool is not effectiveness is that the discount is not attractive for elderly.

Short summary

After getting the evaluated result, the effectiveness of sales promotion for ‘Senior Citizens Discount’ can be known. As this promotional campaign mainly used discount for attract new customers, the customer acquisition rate is mostly affected by sales promotion.

Collection of secondary data

Collection of primary data

Creation of research design of methods

Analysis of data

Short summary