Chapter 18: Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

Companies can use sales promotions to attract new customers and help keep ones. Hershey’s realizes on sales promotions especially during holidays in which a lot of candy and chocolate is expected to be sold such as Halloween, Valentines Day and Easter to be the preferred choice over competitors such as Mars and Nestle. These deals are usually buy any two bags for $5 as shown in the picture below or 4 for $7.

They also take part in point of purchase display promotion to encourage the impulse buyer. Also they sometimes take part in sweepstakes such as the current S’mores fall tailgating contest, in which the ultimate prize is a new Chevy SUV. On their website they even have tab named promotions. With the aide of these promotions they hope that customers will choose them time and time again if they ever decide to purchase chocolate.

Due to the fact that there only a handful of stores named Hershey’s they don’t focus so much on personal selling as they do on promotions since most of their sales comes from connivance stores and pharmacy’s. However in the few stores that they do have such as the one in Times Square they are usually giving out samples of either brand new products or a customer favorite such as Kisses. By doing so they are interacting with the customer and drawing them into the store. They are a few sales associates who will gladly help you find that  special souvenir although most are not very aggressive due to the fact that most of the items will sell themselves. They are however knowledgeable in the different types of chocolate they carry.