Point-Of-Purchase Advertising - Essay Example

Every time I pay for something at a convenience store or shopping mall, my eyes always stray to the magazine rack. The colorful front covers never fail to catch my attention. What is featured on those covers is also eye-catching. While I wait for my turn with the cashier, I find myself reading the tidbits about celebrities or appreciating the blurbs on interior decorating. On some days I would find myself getting a copy of one or two magazines from the display to add them to my purchases. The same thing happens to me when it comes to food.

Whenever I go grocery shopping, I always come home with something I did not plan on buying. There was one time I only wanted to buy toiletries but arrived home with three cans of Campbell’s Mushroom Soup because the store was having a Buy One, Take One promo on the product. On other days, I would get a spaghetti pack since the store would have noodles and canned tomato sauce packaged as one item. The last product would be cosmetics. As a female, I would always be on the lookout for bargains and sales.

Although I am not the type to go to the mall specifically to buy any kind of make-up, when I see a basket with lip colors for a discounted price a piece, I normally grab some, thinking I could send them out later as gifts. This happens most often during the Christmas season when a number of cosmetic items are on sale. Another reason I tend to buy an eye-shadow kit, for example, is when the sales person offers to try the colors on me and I end up looking really nice. For food, cosmetics and magazine, I often find myself buying the products because of several reasons.

For the magazines, I patronize because I find certain stories on the cover interesting. I am also a big fan of some celebrities so when they are featured by a magazine and I like the story about them, I buy the literature. I find the point-of-purchase marketing for this product helpful. If the magazines were not displayed near the checkout counter, I would not have seen the magazines. If so, I would not have gotten the information I was interested in. For the food products, I think their POP marketing was also effective but not as effective as that for the magazines.

I did not find these annoying. However, I think that some of these did not even reach their target markets on some days. For example, as I was heading towards the dairy section one time, I happened to notice some promotional products on the display in another section. Since I did not need anything in that section, I did not stop to check out the items being advertised. In this sense, I think the POP was wasted. I have the same sentiments for the POP marketing used in cosmetics. I think these products are more of a luxury for most consumers than a necessity.

On the other hand, customers will be still be encouraged to buy lipstick or compact powder after POP marketing like trial make-up, discounts and freebies because it is a chance to have a very expensive product to beautify themselves with. As a marketing executive for any of the three products, I would continue to spend some of my advertising budget on point-of-purchase advertising. These kinds of promotions “have been found to have a significant influence on consumer shopping behavior… Point-Of-Purchase Advertising International (POPAI) reports that as much [as] 75 percent of buying decisions are made in-store.

” (Nicolas, 2007) I would probably change some aspects of the POP based on the location of the product in a grocery store, for example. Not all products can enjoy the spot near the cashier where people spend time in line and can still make an impulse decision on the items in their line of vision. Some products are even in an aisle that may only see