EFFECT OF PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES ON SALES PERFORMANCE OF SELECTED HOTELS IN AKURE, ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Innovation and existing products are valueless to the society unless they are pushed out by the producers to the ultimate consumers. They are ofvalue only when knowledge of the product or service is disseminated to those who can use them or consume them. Promotion strategy is the direct way an organisation tries to reach its publics. Promotion strategy has remained the only way firms gain competitive edge in the market. This study aimed at investigating the effect of promotional strategies on the sales performance of selected hotels in Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. A descriptive Ex post facto research design was adopted for the study. The study also employed a multi-stage sampling procedure. At the first stage, a total number of forty (40) hotels were purposively selected based on having operated for a minimum of five years, during which they would have been able to observe the effect of promotional strategies on the sales performance of their hotels thereby be in good stead to report same accordingly. At the second stage, stratifiedsampling technique was used to select respondents from the population split into three strata namely: the managers/owners, accounts officers and the marketing officers of the selected hotels, thereby having three respondents per hotel and a total of 120 respondents as the sample size of the study. Data was collected primarily through the use of questionnaire. Data collected was analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics though the use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The result of the first objective shows that Personal Selling is the most adopted promotional strategy by the selected hotels with a mean value of 3.87, followed by advertising (3.84), public relations (3.73) and sales promotions (3.28) as the least adopted strategy. The result of the second objective shows R 2 value of 0.343 which indicates how much variation in the sales performance that can be explained by the promotional strategies and price; this implies that a 34.3% change in the sales performance can be explained by the promotional strategies and price reduction in the selected hotels. An F-statistic of 11.878 with probability 0.000 indicates that the overall model is significant at 5% level. The co-efficients of the variables shows that Advertising has a significant positive effect on sales performance at 5% level (sig. =.000), Sales promotion has a positive but insignificant effect on sales performance at 5% level (sig. = .473), Personal Selling has a negative but insignificant effect on sales performance at 5% level (sig. =.419), Public Relations has a positive but insignificant effect on sales performance at 5% level (sig. = .125), thereby leading to the rejection of the null hypothesis. The third objective shows that “High costs of adopting the strategies”, “Leanresources” and “The resulting increase in sales from the adoption of promotional strategies is short-lived” are the prominent challenges faced by the hotels with mean values of 4.29, 3.85 and 3.47 in that order. The study concluded that personal selling is the most adopted promotional strategy by the hotels although ineffective because it does not have an effect on the sales performance of the hotels; while advertising has a significant effect on the sales performance of hotels being the second most adopted strategy by the hotels. It was recommended that the management of hotels should activate other promotional strategies such as sales promotions and public relations in order to avoid over- reliance on advertising.