The Art of Gaining and Retaining Customers

As classical mass advertising is losing effectiveness to generate revenues, marketing managers attach importance to alternative methods to gain and retain customers. In particular, sales promotion activities are popular to give prospect customers an incentive to buy, whereas the relationship approach aims at establishing a long-lasting bond between provider and customer. In order to find out whether these tendencies provoke the desired actions, a survey among German consumers was conducted, investigating their attitude towards determined marketing tools and each tool's impact on the purchase decision-making process. The existing deal-proneness towards the promotion tools samples, coupons, premiums, loyalty cards and sweepstakes and their ability to provoke purchase and re-purchase was examined. Further, this research states possibilities to connect short-term activities with the long-ranging relationship approach and is therefore of high value for marketing manager and consultants, company management, lectures and students of business and media and communication studies; as well as for everyone who is curious to know which promotion tool is the German's favourite one.