Managerial perspectives on trade and consumer promotions

Understanding the perceptions of managers and the behavioral rules they employ in allocating marketing resources is important in applied research. Using survey data obtained from brand managers, this paper explores the factors managers consider important in allocating trade and consumer promotions. Importance scores on several dimensions are factor analyzed to extract the underlying factors. Indices are computed using these raw scores. The extent of mediation by several brand and category variables on managerial perceptions are then examined by correlating managers' indices and the structural variables. The impact of the structural variables and the importance scores are related to promotion to sales ratios in a regression model. While the structural variables have strong and predictable impact, the importance scores are somewhat weak in their explanatory power. These results are used to shed some light on the budgeting process of allocating marketing dollars among advertising trade and consumer promotions.