Promotions are the way to the hearts of deal-seeking Malaysian consumers. According to the 2019 Nielsen Shopper Trends Report, four in five Malaysians say that they take advantage of special offers and go through a lot of effort to buy their groceries at the lowest prices. And in 2018, 22% of all the country’s fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sales came from products that were sold at a discounted price*. Yet despite shoppers’ interest, brands and retailers often struggle to make a profit on their promotions.

It is against this backdrop that we launched the first ever Price and Promotion Management Workshop in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. With this training, we helped our retailer and manufacturer clients understand how to better implement more successful promotions based on their market trends and shopper objectives.

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Malaysia was the perfect market for the global launch of this workshop, given consumers’ overwhelming desire for discounted goods. And with just under a quarter of FMCG sales coming from products sold at discount, having an impactful price and promotion strategy is key to winning the Malaysian shopper’s share of wallet.

In the workshop, Allan Amador, Nielsen’s Category Management Leader for Asia Pacific, took the participants through the key principles of effective promotion management and demonstrated how to work with them as part of the broader category management framework.

“Promotions are easier said than done. It is much more nuanced than simply putting up a SALE sign and slashing prices,” explained Allan. “The main purpose of promotions is to create value for your customers. Having clear sales and shopper behavior changing objectives and understanding the elasticity of the products are all vital to savvily invest your money in price reductions.”

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He also taught them how to analyze the factors that impact promotional effectiveness by applying the best promotional mix of assisting and influencing shoppers at the point of sales.

Neuroscience, too, plays a key role in understanding how consumers respond to promotions, as 99% of our behavior is subconscious. Dr Satoshi Tsujimoto and Kimberly Jin from the Consumer Neuroscience team explained how consumers sometimes act irrationally when it comes to promotions and also demonstrated different methods and stimuli to enhance promotions.

Following the success of this workshop in Malaysia, we plan to organize Promotional Management Workshops throughout South East Asia in 2020.

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