ABSTRACT

 Promotion is one of the four major elements of a company's marketing mix. The aim of establishing any business as generally believed is to make profit, and profit cannot be made without sales. Obviously, one common goal of promotion is to increase sales volume. It tries to change the location of the demand pattern. Management must therefore, know how to manipulate and coordinate the promotion tools of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion and publicity to achieve high sales volume by formulating and planning strategy to achieve the firm's objectives. Promotional activities occupy a paramount place in the marketing function. Without their use, company sales may decline. Customers need to be informed of the products and services before they make up their minds to buy, thus making promotional activities very necessary if company's profit maximization objective is to be achieved. A lot of problems have been noted affecting promotion among which are poor presentation of the promotional message and also the cost of promotional tools to embark upon scare management and they neglect the need for promotional strategies. Proper management of promotion tools has also been difficult in many firms including NBC Plc. Thus mismanagement has been noted as the major impediment to the realization of most organization's goals. The study provided an insight to promotional strategies and their effects on sale of soft drinks. It was discovered that promotional strategies have significant impact on consumer purchasing decisions, significant effect on sales, and that sales volume depends on promotional strategies used. The findings will be of great imôrtance to academic worlds, organizations and for further studies. The objective is to find out the problems involved in the promotional strategies and to suggest and recommend ways of alleviating them. The various promotional tools were taken a critical look at. Without any bias or sentiment, the most important medium through which high sales volume and profit maximization could be achieved is through efficient use of promotional strategies.