Concept of ‘induced sale’ as marketing management strategy

Marketing is both the activities and strategies to sell goods, products and services. What is induced sale in marketing management? Induced sale occurs when a buyer is persuaded or coaxed to buy goods, products or services by a third party who normally feigns ignorance of, or connection to, the seller. It is a form of sale in which the buyer acts on the action or instruction of a third party to buy a good or a service. It is not a sale exercise due to the impact of marketing mix: product, price, place and promotion, but due to coercion. When a ‘co-marketer’ in a market is giving open ‘false’ or exaggerated testimony about a product as attestation of the quality of the product, it is ‘induced sale’. For example, when ‘co-sellers’, acting as passengers in buses in Lagos State, encourage passengers to buy a product, their action is called “induced marketing”.

Often, people will come on air to testify that they have patronised a good, product or service and that the good, product or service is of good quality, whereas they are part of the marketing team. Since, according to the American Marketing Association, “Marketing is the activities, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large”, induced marketing is not an illegal exercise. It is not unusual for potential buyers to seek recommendations from third parties for assurance before they buy a product. When one relies on hearsays and testimonies of unknown persons, it may end in a bad procurement. It happens every day in the cities where marketers sell aggressively.

Induced marketing starts with the seller identifying the needs of the people in an area. In slum areas, for example, the priority needs will be how to eradicate rats, bed bugs, cockroaches and mosquitoes. Squalid communities are also where you can easily sell products with a short shelf life. Poor people like bargain prices and do not store products for long. To induce buyers, a seller will enter a bus from the front while his “co-seller” will enter from the back. The seller will stand in front of the passengers, at the back of the driver. The co-seller will sit at the last or second to the last seat in the bus. As the seller starts to introduce his or her product to the passengers, the co-seller will ask for five pieces of the products, pay for the pieces collected and will be murmuring to whoever cares to listen that he or she has been looking for the product since almost two or three weeks. He or she will tell other passengers that the product is more valuable than its price.

People will fall for the ploy and start to ask for the product as they also have similar challenges with the first buyer. The seller and his or her co-seller will come down at the nearest bus stop to the point where they have sold to interested buyers and join another bus, the same way they joined the first bus. It is common to see in auto markets or online auto marketing sites a sign with “sold” placed on one or two vehicles whereas they have not been sold. This is to assure prospective buyers that despite the condition of the country’s economy, people are still buying vehicles. People are competitive in nature. When travelling from a city to another city, Nigerian passengers will want to enter a bus or car that is almost full. Most drivers usually use a “dummy” passenger to act as “magnet”. The dummy passenger is not travelling anywhere.

Induced sale is a good market penetration strategy. Market penetration is a measure of how much a product or service is being used by a customer compared to the total estimated market for that product or service. Market penetration can also be used in developing strategies employed to increase the market share of a particular product of service. In a market of 40 million people, if a product could only sell 2 million, then market penetration is 2 million divided by 40 million, multiplied by 100 over 1. This is five percent. It means 5 out of 100 or 1 out of 20 people are using the product or service. In some big supermarkets, some products are first displayed on shelves and later withdrawn. Regular visitors to the supermarket will misinterpret this practice to be a good sale, and rush to buy theirs.

Induced marketing is an innovative method of selling goods, products and services. Though common market penetration strategies include reducing prices of goods, products or services to win customers; acquiring major competitors; introducing new products that will be competitive in the market; and or targeting new markets to spread sales, it is a common practice in the marketing world to induce sales through third parties. Some cinemas will advertise on Monday that a film will be shown in a 200 sitter’s hall on Friday. By Tuesday they will advertise again that 100 seats have been sold. Since man gives great consideration to what others around him are doing, people will start to rush to buy their tickets before the tickets get exhausted. This practice is also a popular strategy for holiday-packagers!

As social animals, human beings hate rejection by other people; they therefore, do what others are doing even where it means they have to inconvenience themselves. People always do what their peers are doing at any particular time. Human beings do not live in a vacuum, they always want not to be seen as social misfits, and will do everything possible to do what others are doing or what they think others are doing. A manufacturer will sell by giving out his unsold products to users free of charge or paying some known buyers to come to its sales department to buy its products. When a manufacturer exhibits its products in a supermarket and sends some sponsored buyers to buy its products in the market to induce the sales of these products to the public, it is induced sales. And it is a good marketing programme.