A consumer buying a car for the first time forms beliefs, then attitudes, and then makes a thoughtful choice among brands that differ significantly. Assael classifies this as:

Dissonance-reducing buying behaviour

Variety-seeking buying behaviour

In the SERVQUAL model, the five determinants of service quality are:

Reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, responsiveness

Product, price, place, promotion, people

Awareness, interest, desire, action, satisfaction

Availability, affordability, acceptability, awareness, access

Marketing II: Promotion, Distribution, Consumer Behaviour, Services, Trends and Logistics

The second half of Unit 8 covers the two remaining Ps — promotion and place — and then the behavioural and applied topics: how a consumer decides, what makes services different to market, the named trends the syllabus lists, and logistics. The paper draws matching questions from this half more than sequence questions: promotion tool to its character, channel strategy to its intensity, buying-behaviour type to its involvement level, service characteristic to its consequence, and trend to its definition. Each of those pairings is set out here as the table it is examined from.

1. Promotion decisions: role, methods and the promotion mix

Promotion is the communication element of the marketing mix: it informs, persuades and reminds the target market about the offer and moves the buyer through the response hierarchy that the AIDA model names as attention, interest, desire and action. The classical promotion tools are advertising, personal selling, publicity and sales promotion; Kotler's modern communications mix widens the list to eight — advertising, sales promotion, events and experiences, public relations and publicity, online and social-media marketing, mobile marketing, direct and database marketing, and personal selling. Integrated marketing communications is the discipline of making all of them speak with one voice.

The four classical promotion methods
Method	Defining character	Strength	Limit
Advertising	Paid, non-personal presentation by an identified sponsor	Reach, repetition, expressiveness, low cost per exposure	One-way, impersonal, high total cost
Personal selling	Face-to-face interaction with prospective buyers	Two-way, tailored, builds relationships, closes sales	Highest cost per contact
Publicity / public relations	Non-paid, non-personal news coverage or goodwill programmes	High credibility, reaches those who avoid advertising	Not controlled by the firm; can be negative
Sales promotion	Short-term incentives to encourage trial or purchase	Attention, immediate response, measurable	Short-lived; can cheapen the brand

Sales promotion tools split by audience. Consumer promotion uses samples, coupons, cash refunds, price packs, premiums, prizes, patronage rewards, free trials, warranties, tie-in promotions and point-of-purchase displays. Trade promotion uses price-offs, allowances and free goods to win shelf space from retailers. Business and sales-force promotion uses trade shows, sales contests and specialty advertising. The promotion mix is chosen on the type of product market (consumer markets lean on advertising and sales promotion, business markets on personal selling), the buyer-readiness stage (advertising and publicity build awareness, personal selling closes), the product life-cycle stage, and whether the firm uses a push strategy — selling to intermediaries who sell on — or a pull strategy — advertising to the final consumer so that demand pulls the product through the channel.

🧠 Advertising budget methods

Four methods recur: affordable (what the firm can spare), percentage-of-sales (a fixed share of current or forecast sales — the commonest, and circular because it treats sales as the cause of advertising rather than its result), competitive-parity (match rivals' share of voice) and objective-and-task (define objectives, list tasks, cost them — the only method that builds the budget from what must be achieved). The paper asks which is logically the soundest: objective-and-task.

2. Distribution decisions: channels and channel management

Channel design proceeds from the customer's service-output needs — lot size, waiting time, spatial convenience, variety, service backup — to channel objectives and then to the alternatives, which are described by the type of intermediary, their number and their terms. The number of intermediaries is the intensity decision: exclusive distribution limits the outlets severely and is used for prestige goods and cars; selective distribution uses more than a few but fewer than all willing outlets, typical of appliances and branded apparel; intensive distribution places the product in as many outlets as possible, as convenience goods require. Channel members are evaluated against economic, control and adaptive criteria.

Channel systems the paper names
System	What it is	Example
Conventional channel	Independent producer, wholesalers and retailers, each maximising its own profit	Most traditional grocery trade
Vertical marketing system — corporate	Successive stages of production and distribution under single ownership	A manufacturer owning its retail stores
Vertical marketing system — administered	Coordination through the size and power of one member	A dominant brand dictating shelf terms to retailers
Vertical marketing system — contractual	Independent firms integrated by contract: wholesaler-sponsored chains, retailer cooperatives, franchises	Fast-food franchising
Horizontal marketing system	Two or more unrelated firms at the same level pool resources	A bank branch inside a supermarket
Multichannel / omnichannel	One firm reaches one or more segments through two or more channels, integrated so the customer moves between them seamlessly	Store, website and app sharing one inventory

Channel management is the continuing work after design: selecting members, training and motivating them through channel power — coercive, reward, legitimate, expert and referent — evaluating them, and modifying the arrangement as the product moves through its life cycle. Channel conflict is horizontal when it is between members at the same level, vertical when between levels, and multichannel when the producer's own channels compete for the same customer; its causes are goal incompatibility, unclear roles and rights, differences in perception, and intermediaries' dependence on the manufacturer. Grey markets and disintermediation by online sellers are the modern forms of the problem.

3. Consumer behaviour: the buying process and its influences

Problem (need) recognition — an internal or external stimulus reveals a gap between the actual and desired state.
Information search — heightened attention, then active search through personal, commercial, public and experiential sources; the total set narrows to the awareness, consideration and choice sets.
Evaluation of alternatives — attributes are weighed, often on an expectancy-value model.
Purchase decision — brand, dealer, quantity, timing and payment method; intervening factors are the attitudes of others and unanticipated situational factors, and perceived risk can delay or stop it.
Post-purchase behaviour — satisfaction or dissonance, post-purchase actions and product use or disposal; cognitive dissonance after a major purchase is why firms send reassuring communication.

The influences on buying decisions are grouped as cultural (culture, subculture, social class), social (reference groups, family, roles and status — with opinion leaders and membership, aspirational and dissociative groups), personal (age and life-cycle stage, occupation and economic circumstances, personality and self-concept, lifestyle and values) and psychological (motivation, perception, learning, memory and attitudes). The three motivation theories the paper cites are Freud's unconscious motives, Maslow's hierarchy — physiological, safety, social, esteem, self-actualisation — and Herzberg's dissatisfiers and satisfiers. Perception works through selective attention, selective distortion and selective retention.

Assael's four types of buying behaviour
Type	Involvement	Differences between brands	Example
Complex buying behaviour	High	Significant	A car or a computer — belief, attitude, then choice
Dissonance-reducing	High	Few	Carpeting — buys fast, then seeks reassurance
Habitual	Low	Few	Salt — brand familiarity, not conviction
Variety-seeking	Low	Significant	Biscuits — switching for variety, not dissatisfaction

⚠️ Buying roles are not buying stages

The five buying roles — initiator, influencer, decider, buyer and user — describe who takes part, and are asked separately from the five stages of the process. A question that gives 'a child asks for a cereal, the mother chooses the brand, the father pays, the child eats it' is testing roles. A gatekeeper is the sixth role in organisational buying centres, which also add approvers.

4. Service marketing, trends in marketing and logistics management

A service is any act or performance one party offers another that is essentially intangible and does not result in ownership. Four characteristics set its marketing apart. Intangibility — it cannot be seen or tasted before purchase, so the marketer must 'manage the evidence' and tangibilise the intangible. Inseparability — it is produced and consumed at the same time, in the presence of the provider, so the provider is part of the product. Variability (heterogeneity) — quality depends on who provides it, when and where, so firms invest in hiring, standardisation and monitoring. Perishability — it cannot be stored, so demand and supply must be matched through differential pricing, reservations, part-time staff and shared capacity. Services are marketed through the seven Ps and through three kinds of marketing: external (firm to customer), internal (firm to employees) and interactive (employee to customer).

ℹ️ The gaps model and SERVQUAL

Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry identified five gaps that cause failed service delivery — between consumer expectation and management perception, management perception and service-quality specification, specification and delivery, delivery and external communication, and, summing them, between perceived and expected service. Their SERVQUAL scale measures quality on five determinants remembered as RATER: reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness. Reliability is consistently found the most important.

Trends the syllabus names, and what each means
Trend	Meaning	The distinction the paper tests
Social marketing	Using marketing techniques to change behaviour for the benefit of individuals and society — vaccination, road safety, anti-tobacco	Not the same as social-media marketing, and not the same as the societal marketing concept
Online (digital) marketing	Websites, search, display, e-mail, social media, mobile; measured by clicks, conversions and cost per acquisition	Permission and interactivity distinguish it from mass advertising
Green marketing	Marketing products that are presumed environmentally safe — design, packaging, process and claims	'Greenwashing' is the false or exaggerated version
Direct marketing	Direct-to-consumer channels without intermediaries — mail, catalogue, telemarketing, TV shopping, e-mail; measurable response	Built on a customer database; seeks a measurable response or transaction
Rural marketing	Marketing to rural India's dispersed, seasonal-income, lower-literacy markets — small packs, local language, haats and melas, van campaigns	The four As — availability, affordability, acceptability, awareness
Customer relationship management	Managing detailed information about individual customers and all touch points to maximise loyalty and lifetime value	Retention over acquisition; customer lifetime value; the customer-loyalty ladder

Marketing logistics — the physical distribution end of the supply chain — plans, implements and controls the flow of materials and final goods from origin to point of use to meet customer requirements at a profit. Its four major decisions are order processing, warehousing (number, location and type of warehouses, including distribution centres), inventory (when to order — the reorder point — and how much — the economic order quantity that balances ordering and carrying cost, with just-in-time as the limiting case) and transportation (rail, water, road, pipeline and air, chosen on speed, frequency, dependability, capability, availability and cost). Supply chain management is the wider concept that runs from raw materials through production to the consumer; third-party logistics providers carry out the function under contract; and the total-cost approach chooses the system that minimises total logistics cost for a given service level, not the cheapest transport alone.

Key takeaways

Advertising is paid and non-personal, personal selling is face-to-face, publicity is unpaid, sales promotion is a short-term incentive; push sells to intermediaries, pull advertises to the consumer; the soundest budget method is objective-and-task.
Exclusive, selective and intensive distribution are the intensity choices; vertical marketing systems are corporate, administered or contractual; channel conflict is horizontal, vertical or multichannel.
The buying process runs need recognition, information search, evaluation, purchase decision, post-purchase behaviour; influences are cultural, social, personal and psychological; Assael's four types cross involvement with brand differences.
Services are intangible, inseparable, variable and perishable; SERVQUAL measures reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness; the gaps model has five gaps.
Social marketing changes behaviour for society's benefit and is not social-media marketing; rural marketing rests on the four As; logistics decides order processing, warehousing, inventory and transport on total cost, not cheapest freight.

Practice questions (9)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

Which promotion method is defined as paid, non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor?
1. Advertising
2. Publicity
3. Personal selling
4. Sales promotion
Show answer
Answer: A — Advertising
Paid and non-personal with an identified sponsor is advertising. Publicity is unpaid, personal selling is face-to-face, and sales promotion is a short-term incentive.
A manufacturer advertises heavily to final consumers so that they ask retailers for the brand, who in turn order from wholesalers. This is a:
1. Pull strategy
2. Push strategy
3. Trade promotion
4. Selective distribution
Show answer
Answer: A — Pull strategy
Consumer demand pulls the product through the channel — a pull strategy. A push strategy directs selling effort at intermediaries, and trade promotion is one of its tools.
Which advertising budget method is generally regarded as the most logical because it builds the budget from what the campaign must accomplish?
1. Objective-and-task method
2. Percentage-of-sales method
3. Affordable method
4. Competitive-parity method
Show answer
Answer: A — Objective-and-task method
Objective-and-task defines objectives, lists the tasks to reach them and costs the tasks. Percentage-of-sales is the commonest but treats sales as the cause of advertising rather than its result.
Distributing a product through a severely limited number of dealers, typical for luxury cars and prestige brands, is called:
1. Exclusive distribution
2. Intensive distribution
3. Selective distribution
4. Horizontal distribution
Show answer
Answer: A — Exclusive distribution
Exclusive distribution restricts outlets to preserve image and control. Intensive puts the product everywhere, as convenience goods need; selective uses a moderate number of chosen outlets.
A vertical marketing system in which independent firms at different levels are integrated through franchise agreements is:
1. Contractual VMS
2. Corporate VMS
3. Administered VMS
4. Conventional channel
Show answer
Answer: A — Contractual VMS
Franchising, wholesaler-sponsored voluntary chains and retailer cooperatives are contractual systems. Corporate systems combine stages under one ownership; administered systems coordinate through one dominant member's power.
A consumer buying a car for the first time forms beliefs, then attitudes, and then makes a thoughtful choice among brands that differ significantly. Assael classifies this as:
1. Complex buying behaviour
2. Dissonance-reducing buying behaviour
3. Habitual buying behaviour
4. Variety-seeking buying behaviour
Show answer
Answer: A — Complex buying behaviour
High involvement plus significant brand differences is complex buying behaviour. Dissonance-reducing is high involvement with few differences; habitual and variety-seeking are low-involvement, with few and significant differences respectively.
The characteristic of services that means an unsold airline seat on today's flight cannot be stored for tomorrow is:
1. Perishability
2. Intangibility
3. Inseparability
4. Variability
Show answer
Answer: A — Perishability
Perishability is the impossibility of inventorying a service, which is why airlines and hotels use differential pricing and reservations to match demand to capacity. Intangibility is the inability to see it before purchase, inseparability its simultaneous production and consumption, variability its dependence on who delivers it.
In the SERVQUAL model, the five determinants of service quality are:
1. Reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, responsiveness
2. Product, price, place, promotion, people
3. Awareness, interest, desire, action, satisfaction
4. Availability, affordability, acceptability, awareness, access
Show answer
Answer: A — Reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, responsiveness
Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry's five determinants are remembered as RATER. The second option is the marketing mix, the third mixes AIDA with an extra term, and the fourth is the four As of rural marketing with a fifth added.
A government campaign that uses marketing techniques to persuade people to wear helmets is an example of:
1. Social marketing
2. Social-media marketing
3. Green marketing
4. Direct marketing
Show answer
Answer: A — Social marketing
Social marketing applies marketing to change behaviour for the good of individuals and society. It is not social-media marketing, which is a channel, nor green marketing, which concerns environmentally safe products, nor direct marketing, which seeks a measurable transaction without intermediaries.