Promotional competitions as a marketing tool in food retailing

Although the food retail market has continued to grow steadily during the 1990s, the number of retail outlets forced out of business has also increased. In order to remain competitive, the food retailer needs to make full use of all the “tools” within the marketing management toolkit. Sales promotion, although a popular marketing tool, has never enjoyed the academic scrutiny afforded to the more glamorous field of advertising. Research that has been done has tended to concentrate on price‐based promotions. These have been the most popular among food retailers, as in many other markets, but there is growing awareness that non‐price‐based promotions can add value for the consumer while meeting a range of marketing communications objectives. This article looks at the use of consumer competitions, one of the most popular non‐price promotional tools, with a survey of 1,232 competitions which were jointly or wholly sponsored by food retailers.