Tourism Management, VoL 17, No. 6, pp.

433-442, 1996
~ Pergamon Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Lid
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Promotional competitions: a
winning tool for tourism marketing

Ken Peattie
Cardiff Business School, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF1 3EU, Wales

Sue Peattie
University of Glamorgan Business School. Wales

In the last 20 years sales promotion has become such an important component of marketing
practice that it is now demanding greater attention from marketing academics. Promotional
techniques are now being studied individually and their appropriateness for different markets
and marketing tasks is being discussed. Tourism and travel markets are one of the few service
sectors to make widespread use of a variety of promotional techniques. Price-based promotions
have been the most popular in tourism and travel, 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
52 competitions run by tourism and travel services providers. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier
Science Ltd

Kcywords: tourism marketing, sales promotion, competitions

The growing importance of sales promotion in
almost every sector was a key development in
marketing during the 1980s, and one that shows little
sign of abating in the 1990s. Although obtaining
exact figures is made difficult by the widely varying
definitions of 'sales promotion' that are used, 1by the
end of the 1980s global expenditure on sales promo-
tion had begun to exceed that for 'above-the-line'
advertising, according to WWP group figures. 2 Sales
promotion growth has been running at 9% in recent
years compared with 6% for advertising, and promo-
tions typically account for 65% of companies'
marketing communications budgets) Despite the
long-established importance of sales promotion to
marketing practice, academic research into the field
has been very limited in comparison with areas such
as advertising and sales force m a n a g e m e n t .
Academic research considering sales promotion has
tended to bundle the different forms of promotion
together, or to assume that one form of promotion
(usually coupons or discount pricing) is representa-
tive of the rest. With the increasing importance of
sales promotion it is appropriate to begin to discuss
sales promotion tools individually, and also to ex-
amine their use in different types of industry. This
article aims to explore the potential of one sales
promotion tool which represents a growing phe-
nomenon in a range of markets including tourism
and travel, the promotional competition. It is part of
an ongoing project examining the use of competi-
tions as a sales promotion tool, through studies of
competitions themselves, their sponsors and the
consumers who respond to them. The project began
with a three-year national survey involving 2646
competitions. Within this total sample, there were
188 competitions run by service providers, of which
52 were associated with tourism- and travel-related
services.
T h e g r o w t h in sales p r o m o t i o n
Sales promotions are often defined as marketing
communications activities which are not advertising,
selling or public relations; or even more simply as
'special offers'. Such definitions are very simplistic
and do little to communicate the versatility, variety

433
Promotional competitions: K Peattie and S Peattie

and complexity of sales promotion in practice; 1 surprising, since many of the most popular forms of
however, such simple and straightforward defini- sales promotion rely on having a tangible product,
tions are sufficient for the purposes of this article. and are not appropriate for many services. It is, for
The change in emphasis away from other elements example, difficult to offer 25% extra of something
of the marketing communications mix (particularly that is intangible. Customers do not enter a hairdres-
advertising) and towards sales promotion has been sing salon expecting two haircuts for the price of
commented on by a number of authors 4-8 who have one, or expect 25% extra free when they borrow
proposed a variety of causal factors. The boom in money from their banks. Despite this, there are
sales promotion can be seen as a response to: some service industries in which a variety of sales
promotions are used extensively and successfully,
• Pressure on marketing budgets: because rising
and tourism and travel is one such sector.
advertising prices and concern about advertising
'clutter' are eroding the perceived cost effective- Developing sales promotions for tourism
ness of mass media advertising. The effectiveness
Different types of promotions will tend to suit
of advertising for service products can also be
particular products or services, or different market-
hampered by their intangibility.9
ing tasks, more than others. Promotions fall into one
• Time pressure: in the face of shortening planning
of two basic types: value increasing and value
time horizons, sales promotions, and the rapid
adding, t Value-increasing promotions manipulate
sales uplift that they are perceived to offer, may
the quantity/price equation (and sometimes the
become more attractive than the patient nurtur-
quality/price relationship) to increase the perceived
ing of brand image through advertising.
value of a product offering. Value-increasing promo-
• Changing customer needs: cohesive markets were
tions, particularly coupons and price cutting, are the
perceived as fragmenting during the 1980s, and
dominant form, and the type on which the majority
are now seen as 'dissolving' in a tide of in-
of academic research into promotions has been
dividualism, m Sales promotions such as competi-
based. Tourism and travel services do offer more
tions can provide more tailored and targeted
opportunities for increasing the 'quantity' of the
communication than the mass media. In a survey
service that is on offer than some of the 'purer' and
of American business conducted by Incentive
more strictly intangible service sectors. Offers of
Business in 1987, small-scale competitions were
three nights' hotel accommodation for the price of
the fastest growing promotional category.
two, or 'buy one, get one half-price' offers on tickets
• Competitor action: sales promotions have always
are not uncommon. However, it is the other avenue
been popular as a 'rapid response' tactic to retali-
for value increasing, the cutting of prices, that has
ate against competitor initiatives. Lal Lt points to a
been the mainstay of promotion in tourism and
'snowball' effect in which promotions become
travel for the last few years. It is an approach which
almost obligatory in some markets, as companies has drawn some criticism, as Greene r3 comments:
are forced to match competitor initiatives, or risk
'the hotel and airline sector have tended too often to
losing market share.
use price reductions as the first tactic for obtaining
• A new received wisdom: in the past sales promo-
more business when other choices could be more
tions have often been treated as a second-rate
profitably employed'. It also carries with it the
means of marketing communication, 'bolted on'
danger that overemphasizing cut prices will un-
to second-class or flagging brands in an attempt to
favourably reposition a tourism and travel services
boost their fortunes in the short term. Crozier t2
provider, because consumers often use price as a
explains that 'the lazy assumption that above [the
surrogate measure of quality.~4
line] must be better than below has been all too
The second group of sales promotions which are
easy to make, leading to an undue emphasis on
often overlooked, is the value-adding (sometimes
advertising in the promotional mix, sometimes to
referred to as 'packaged up') promotions. These
the virtual exclusion of any other means'. As
leave the price and core product/service offering
market leaders such as Heinz, Procter & Gamble
untouched, and offer the customer 'something extra'
and McDonalds have made sales promotions cen-
in the form of a free gift, a 'piggy-back' com-
tral to their marketing strategy, and as sales
plementary product or a competition. Purchasers of
promotions agencies have become increasingly
travel services are accustomed to 'freebies', ranging
professional and closely aligned to advertising
from complimentary drinks on arrival to little bags
agencies, so sales promotions have gained in
of toiletries in their bathroom. They are so accus-
'respectability'.
tomed to these that the promotional impact is prob-
ably negligible. Such extra benefits risk becoming (at
Sales promotion in services markets the risk of making a pun) a promotional hygiene
Service markets have not typically been major users factor, causing dissatisfaction if they are missing but
of sales promotion in comparison with packaged making little impression whey they are present. Such
goods or consumer durables. This is perhaps not promotional extras also tend to be brought into play

434

after the purchase has been made, and although they
may contribute to the creation of a satisfied custom-
er, they do little to influence potential buyers in the
crucial purchase process stages of gathering informa-
tion and evaluating potential offerings. It is during
this stage that a competition can be a very effective
promotional tool to employ to try and attract the
prospective traveller.
Promotional competitions for tourism and travel
The suitability of competitions for tourism and travel
is highlighted by the fact that it is possibly the only
area of services marketing in which competitions are
explicitly acknowledged within the academic liter-
ature as being an appropriate promotional tool. 15
They also represent a tool which has grown in
importance. In 1986, for example, British Airways'
"Go For It America' competition in the USA and its
Concord competition in the UK were two of the
largest, multi-million pound promotions used within
the industry. Not only are competitions used by a
variety of service providers in tourism and travel,
their products are also extremely popular as prizes
for other companies' competitions, providing oppor-
tunities for some very effective marketing com-
munications at someone else's expense.
There are several aspects of competitions that
make them particularly useful for promoting tourism
and travel services:
• Differentiation opportunities: Kotler identified
creating competitive differentiation as a key chal-
lenge in service markets since innovations can be
copied rapidly by competitors. ~6 Competitions
offer a useful source of differentiation. Although
they can also be replicated, 'me-too' competitions
risk failure if early competitions have prompted
purchases by the current supply of available
competition-minded consumers.
• Link-up opportunities: to advertising campaigns
or public relations efforts.
• Adding a tangible dimension to products: services
cannot readily be displayed, '~ but holiday pro-
ducts, being picturesque, lend themselves to com-
petition posters and leaflets which can create
opportunities for interesting, tangible and visible
point-of-sale materials.
• Quality cue appeal: the intangibility of services
prompts customers to look for surrogate 'cues' to
judge service quality. A competition for a travel
services provider offering a trip aboard the Orient
Express as a prize is providing a very clear quality
cue.
• Demand smoothing: The perishability of services
means that demand fluctuations are the 'most
troublesome' services marketing problem.~7 In a
seasonal market such as tourism, the problem is
acute, such that 'marketing managers are con-
stantly preoccupied with the necessity to manipu-
Promotional competitions: K Peattie and S Peattie
late demand in response to unforeseen events as
well as the normal daily, weekly or seasonal
fluctuations. Sales promotion and merchandising
methods are especially suitable for such short-run
demand adjustments, and are vital aspects of
marketing,~ for most travel and tourism" pro-
viders. - Competitions can encourage purchases
during usually slack periods, or can support an
attempt to bring forward seasonal purchases of
products such as travellers" cheques.
• Consumer interaction: interactive marketing is
vital for services, (~6 p 482) but difficult to create
through advertising, which is generally a uni-
directional means of communication, absorbed
relatively passively by the potential consumer. One
study found that under 25% of television viewers
could recall an advertisement seen on the TV
the previous day, and that under 10% could name
a brand they saw advertised on TV 30 seconds
later when phoned by a market researcher, ts
Competitions, by contrast, can create real inter-
action and involvement between the customer,
the service and the service provider. This may
involve the customer analysing the service to
answer questions, rank benefits or devise a slogan,
sending away for information, or meeting the
service provider (thereby creating new service
encounter opportunities).
• Cost certainty: barring accidents, competitions
involve predictable costs and are more cost effect-
ive in maintaining perceived quality levels than
'give-away" promotions. This is because giving
customers attractive "freebies' that project a qual-
ity image can be prohibitively expensive.
• Price~quality stability: a competition adds value by
making use or awareness of a service a 'ticket" to
enter the competition, without any need to alter
the price or nature of the core service itself. This
avoids any danger of sparking a price war,
accidentally impairing perceived service quality
or lowering the customer's reference price.
• Versatility: competitions are associated with pro-
ducing short-term sales boosts, but they can con-
tribute towards a range of communication and
other marketing objectives. ~'~
Influencing travellers through promotional
competitions
Promotions have been shown to affect consumers
directly in a variety of ways including the retiming of
purchases; 2° brand switching; 2~ increased volume of
purchasing; 2z'z~ product-type substitutions; ~4"25 and
retail outlet substitutions. 26,z7
In lhe tourism markets, competitions create
opportunities for purchase retiming, and to move
customers towards particular destinations, operators
or travel agents. Since holidays are only consumed
one at a time, volume-increasing competitions are
unlikely to be used except as a method to encourage
435
Promotional competitions: K Peattie and S Peattie
short-stay visitors to prolong their stay (for example
very 'business orientated' cities such as Brussels and
Milan have tried to encourage business travellers to
stay on for weekends).
Product type substitutions may exist in terms of
people making choices between a holiday and a new
car for example, but such substitutions will be much
less common than in the supermarket where con-
sumers will be deliberating over different types of
food and drink as well as over specific brands.
Ignoring confirmed non-users, we can define four
types of consumer in relation to a tourism and travel
service for whom a competition has the potential to
influence their purchase decision:
• P o t e n t i a l users: those who do not use the service,
but who could be persuaded to do so through
manipulation of the marketing mix. These are
often the main target of promotions. 2s
• C o m p e t i t o r loyals: McAllister and Totten 29 and
G r o v e r and Srinivasan 3° show that successful
promotions can attract substantial numbers of a
competitor's otherwise loyal customers.
• B r a n d switchers: Grover and Srinivasan 3° also
found distinct 'switcher' market segments whose
consumers hop between competing brands.
• L o y a l c u s t o m e r s : within own-loyal and competitor-
loyal segments, we can distinguish between long-
term, brand loyal consumers and those who tend
to be 'last purchase loyal', 31 who tend to be repeat
purchasers until encouraged to realign their loyal-
ties.
Competitions have the potential to assist in moving
consumers between these categories, particularly
because they are so popular with consumers. Survey
data from H a r r i s ~ M a r k e t i n g W e e k 3e show that some
70% of British consumers regularly participate in
product- or service-related competitions. We can
intuitively divide up consumers into three types of
'competitive consumer' segments according to their
attitude to competitions:
• n o n - c o m p e t i t o r s - who would consider competi-
tions a waste of time, stamps or telephone units;
• p a s s i v e c o m p e t i t o r s - who would enter competi-
tions but would not change their normal purchas-
ing behaviour just to enter a competition;
• active c o m p e t i t o r s - who would change their
purchase behaviour (such as timing or brand
choice) to enter an attractive competition.
Consumers are not rigidly defined by these classi-
fications, which instead indicate a tendency that a
person has, or a position in relation to a specific
competition. A confirmed non-competitor might,
for example, break a lifetime's habit to enter a
competition offering the holiday of their dreams as a
prize. Cross-referencing consumer competitiveness
against brand involvement produces a picture of the
436
opportunities that using a sales promotion competi-
tion presents (Figure 1).
The implication of this model is that there are two
key groups that a competition can be targeted at.
New customers can be developed from among the
potential users and some can be poached from
competitors, and (providing that some are retained)
this will provide long-term benefits of an increased
customer base and an expanded market. Research
suggests that this is possible because consumers who
try a promoted brand and are satisfied with it have
an increased probability of a repeat purchase. This is
particularly true of previous non-users. 33'34 The
potential of competitions to create such changes in
consumer behaviour is shown by the results of a
Neilsen Promotion Services survey in Canada. This
showed that 55% of competition entrants will use a
brand specifically to enter a competition, and 95%
of those will select the brand again following the
competition.
Sales promotion competitions for tourism
and travel services: a survey
The authors' own involvement in entering prom-
otional competitions as a hobby led them to appreci-
ate what a widespread, growing, versatile and creat-
ive marketing tool they are. It was a natural pro-
gression to use our experience of competitions, and
the access to information on the competitions them-
selves that participation in the world of serious
'comping' brings, to develop a better understanding
of the role of competitions in marketing. Over a
three-year period the authors gathered details on
2646 different UK sales promotion competitions by
using a nationwide network of fellow 'compers' as
information gatherers. Details from special packs,
entry forms and competition rules were all studied to
build up a picture of these competitions, the in-
formation was encoded and then analysed using
Minitab. The sample consisted only of competitions
available on a national or regional basis (local ones
were not included) and which were associated with a
product or service, as opposed to being all or part of
the product or service itself (so the numerous com-
petitions which are regular features of magazines
were not included). Among these were 188 competi-
tions sponsored by various service providers, 52 of
whom provided some form of tourism and travel
services, which provides an opportunity to examine
the way in which competitions are used within the
industry.
It must be emphasized that the research was both
opportunistic and exploratory. It involved studying
something that the authors found before them,
rather than any form of carefully designed research
methodology. This does not make the results any
less interesting. The data vacuum that surrounds
promotional competitions makes it impossible to
 Promotional competitions: K Peattw and S Peattie

P R O M O T I N G TO THE C O M P E T I T I V E C O N S U M E R
INVOLVEMENT
WITH SERVICE

HIGH

LOYAL
CUSTOMERS

BRAND
SWITCHES

COMPETITOR
LOYAL

POTENTIAL
USER

LOW
PASSIVE ACTIVE HIGH
COMPETITOR COMPETITOR
I N V O L V E M E N T WITH C O M P E T I T I O N S

Figure 1

comment on the representativeness of the total
sample or any of its subsets. What can be stated with
confidence is that the thousands of 'compers' who
contributed to the collection of information are a
dedicated group of people who will have missed few
widely available competitions during the three-year
sample period. It is possible that some low-value
competitions, or competitions involving very short
"windows of opportunity', were screened out by
those contributing to the network if they believed
that the details were not worth exchanging. It is also
possible that a few 'compers' who discover a re-
latively obscure but lucrative competition might
elect not to contribute it to the network. However,
despite these possibilities, the authors are confident
that the results do represent a very accurate picture
of the use of promotional competitions in the UK,
both in general and in relation to specific markets.
Extent and nature o f competition use
Table 1 puts the sample of competitions run by
tourism and travel service providers in the context of
the services subset. Services as a whole account for
fractionally more than 7% of all competitions in the
total survey, which leaves them rather under-
represented when one considers the importance of
services within the total economy. Tourism and
travel services represent 28% of the services subset.
Figure 2 shows how the Tourism and Travel subset
can be broken down by sponsor type into particular

Table I Services survey results summary

Proportion of Average total Average Market

No. of services comps prize value prize number integration (see
Sponsor competitions (%) (median £ O 0 0 s ) (median) text for details~

Tourism and travel 52 28 5 l0 Low

Financial 49 26 8.4 l0 Medium
Food and drink 33 18 16 3 Medium
I.eisure 23 12 6.75 21 Low
Communications 12 6 3.8 8 Low
Professional 6 3 (I.35 4 Low
Photographic and misc. retail 13 7 4.5 53 Medium
All services 188 100 5 10 Low
(7.11% of all
comps)

437
Promotional competitions: K Peattie and S Peattie

Travel Agents • the pleasures of gambling (or perhaps more

Tour Operators
[ ] Transport Services
[ ] Accomodation Services
1~ Foreign Exchange
Foreign
Transport Accomodation Exchange
Services 8% 10%
Travel Agency
Tour Operation
41%
Figure 2 Competition breakdown by service provided
types of service, with transport and tour operators
forming the largest groups. It is worth noting that
this split is by service offered rather than the nature
of the provider. Therefore some of the competitions
linked to foreign exchange are sponsored by travel
agents rather than by financial service providers, but
they are not counted under travel agency services.
Promoting with prizes
The prizes involved are clearly an important compo-
nent of competitions, although they are by no means
the only element that determines how attractive a
competition is to customers. Survey data from
America revealed that 60% of competitors entered
'just for the fun of it' and 61% of entrants into
competitions were found to be 'unsure of what the
prizes offered were'. 34 Seiby and Beranek 35 saw the
attraction of a competition as a function of five
factors:
• the cost of entering;
• the monetary value of the prizes (or perhaps more
accurately the utility of the prizes);
• the number of prizes and the perceived probabil-
ity of winning;
accurately of competing);
• the desire to occupy leisure time.
They concluded that all five factors are important,
but that the importance of the last two has been
obscured by an overemphasis on rational-economic
decision-making approaches based around the first
three.
In economic terms, the incentive provided by a
competition relates to two key dimensions of the
prizes involved: their value and their number. These
52 competitions offered over 4000 prizes worth an
estimated £1.6 million (this is an estimated market
value - as some of the competitions involved a
company awarding one of its holidays as a prize, the
cost to sponsors of the prizes may well be less). Since
the attractiveness of a competition is partly related
to the expected utility and the perceived probability
of winning, sponsors can choose to rely on high prize
value or high prize numbers (or both) to make the
maximum impact. Table 2 shows that among differ-
ent tourism services sponsors, the average values for
the number and total value of prizes which typify
their competitions vary by a factor of four and eight
respectively (the averages used throughout are me-
dian figures, used because arithmetic means can be
badly skewed by one or two competitions offering
exceptional numbers or value of prizes such as
British Airways' 'World's Greatest Offer' involving
£6 million worth of free flights). The approach
adopted by competition sponsors can be plotted on a
'prize philosophy matrix', which divides sponsors up
around the median values for the number of prizes
offered and their value, to produce four categories
of competition:
• jackpots (few prizes/high value);
• misers (few prizes/low value);
• everyone a winner (many prizes/low value);
• bonanzas (many prizes/high value);
Services providers overall tend towards a 'Jackpot'
philosophy, offering a relatively small number of
prizes, but with a relatively high value. Figure 3
presents such a matrix for the overall services subset.
Tourism services appears to be exactly 'average'

Table 2 Tourism and travel survey results summary

Proportion of Average total Total Average Total Market

No. of competitions prize value prize value prize no prize integration (see
Sponsor competitions (%) (median £000s) (£000s) (median) number text for details)

Travel agency 3 6 5.0 12.0 5 106 High

Tour operation 22 42 4.5 1151.8 6 851 Low
Transport 18 35 7.61 368.62 25 2999 Low
Accommodation 4 8 1.8 8 7 34 Medium
Foreign exchange 5 10 6.5 41.6 3 87 Medium
Total tourism and travel 52 101 5.0 1582.(12 111 4(177 Low
(after
rounding)

438
 l'romotional competitions: K Peattie amt S Peattie
SERVICES PRIZE PHILOSOPHY MATRIX

HI
Everyone a winner Bonanzas

PHOTO & MISC.

LEISURE

FOOD

TOURISM FINANCIAL
PRIZE MEDIAN
& TRAVEL
NUMBER (10)
COMMUNICATIONS *

PROFESSIONAL
Misers Jackpots

LO MEDIAN H1
(5)

PRIZE VALUE

Figure 3

within services in terms of the number and value of
the prizes offered, and therefore do not appear to
tend towards any particular prize philosophy. Figure
4, which presents a prize philosophy matrix for
tourism and travel, shows that there are some con-
siderable differences among sponsors. Within the
tourism and travel sample, it was only the transport
service providers' generosity with prizes that kept
the classification within services out of the 'Miser'
classification. Despite this, it is only accommodation
providers who are significantly below average in
terms of the value of prizes offered in relation to
other services or the total sample.
"Fravelproducts as prizes
Tourism and travel services share an unusual distinc-
tion along with industries such as cars and music, in
that their products are very often offered as prizes in
other companies' competitions. There is an inherent
logic that a prize is positioned as something of value,
and that having another company holding up your
product as a prize means that it is bound to be
promoted along with the sponsor's product. In en-
tering the competition the sponsor's customers are
likely to be made aware of the travel prize, to find
out information about it, and are quite likely be
made to desire it. This takes these consumers quite a
long way into the purchase decision-making process,
which makes an eventual purchase more likely
should they not win the competition (providing that
they do not psychologically 'demarket" the prize to
themselves to compensate for any disappointment).

TOURISM AND TRAVEL SERVICES PRIZE PHILOSOPHY MATRIX

HI
Everyone a winner Bonanzas

Transport ,

PRIZE MEDIAN
NUMBER (10)
Accomodation
* Tour Operation
I
. Travel Agency

Foreign Exchange *
Misers Jackpots

LO MEDIAN HI
(5)
PRIZE VALUE

Figure 4

439
Promotional competitions: K Peattie and S Peattie
The total sample of 2646 competitions was analy-
sed to investigate the extent to which tourism and
travel prizes were used as prizes within competi-
tions. A 10% systematic random sample was used to
sample 264 competitions. Out of this number, 125
(47%) offered tourism- and travel-related prizes.
Most of these were straightforward holidays such as
a trip on the Orient Express, two weeks in the
Caribbean, a week in Spain or a weekend in Lon-
don. Others were more specialized and themed
holidays such as a tennis holiday in the Algarve or a
m u r d e r mystery weekend. O t h e r tourism- and
travel-related prizes included tickets to attractions,
such as Alton Towers, and trips away to special
events, such as Wimbledon, the R A C Rally or a
Grand Prix.
Compared with the total sample, the subset of 125
offering tourism- and travel-related products as
prizes were more 'miserly' in terms of the number of
prizes offered (an average of 10 as opposed to 20)
and the estimated average value of prizes (£3000 as
opposed to £3400). The popularity of tourism and
travel prizes suggests that they provide opportunities
to achieve a greater customer response than more
straightforward economic incentives such as money
or even valuable goods. In conversation with those
involved in sales promotion management, the au-
thors have encountered a perception that tourism
and travel products are seen as highly cost-effective
prizes which also offer room for creativity and
imagination. Domestic appliances or lumps of cash
may be attractive to consumers, but they are re-
latively dull to build a promotional competition
around, while using cars as prizes ensures that a
competition is expensive to mount. Holidays and
outings are valued by, and attractive to, consumers,
as much as anything for the fact that they are
perceived as something luxurious and even frivolous
(and a cash alternative can always be offered for the
rational economically minded). The extra impact
that holidays as incentives have over more rational
economic appeals was underlined by C Visich, Vice
President of Southland Corporation who com-
mented that 'From a marketing point of view, the
value of a 50 cent off coupon is known in advance.
But if I offer a trip to Hawaii, the incentive is much
more exciting.' 36
Tourism and travel prizes are particularly effective
as incentives when a variety is offered. This has the
added benefit of allowing different segments of a
market to be attracted in a way that single goods or
cash prizes might find difficult. Oil of Ulay's
'Women of the World' competition, for example,
used a variety of holiday prizes ranging from trek-
king in the Himalayas to art tours of London to
allow it to target 'its entire consumer base, women
aged 18-65 and older' with a single promotion. 37
From the sponsors' point of view, offering travel as a
prize, as opposed to a give-away, has the added
440
benefit of avoiding the cost uncertainty and danger
of over-redempton that afflicted Hoover's ill-fated
free flights offer.
The effectiveness of sales promotion competitions
Measuring the effectiveness of competitions is not
simple, and is almost impossible to do by simply
studying the competitions themselves. One obvious
answer, and a very conventional measure of sales
promotion effectiveness, is to analyse sales patterns
before and after the promotion. Unfortunately, this
is not really appropriate for the many competitions
that are not directly linked to purchasing, and it
ignores potential benefits of increased awareness or
increased satisfaction among existing users. In the
case of tourism services, 48% of the competitions
surveyed did not require a purchase, so there is
obviously more to these promotional competitions
than a straightforward desire to boost sales in the
short term. Competitions may be used to encourage
potential customers to order a brochure or visit a
retail outlet, which increases the chance of an even-
tual sale. Entry numbers is another conventional
measure for competition effectiveness, but this has
declined in popularity owing to the increasing num-
ber of 'hobbyist competitors' and the use of multiple
entries, with one competition found to contain over
1000 entries from a single individual. 38 Some com-
panies have tried to measure the success of competi-
tions in terms of changed consumer awareness, but
this can be difficult and costly to measure effective-
ly. 39 Le Tigre sportswear in the USA researched the
effectiveness of its 'Rock and Roar Fantasy' com-
petition (offering travel prizes) and found that
although there was no sales increase, it improved the
image of the brand among the target group of
18-24-year-old men.
One measure the authors did devise to try and
judge competition effectiveness, and one that takes
into account more than simply the economic dimen-
sions of prizes, was the 'marketing integration' of the
competitions. Competitions vary in terms of whether
either the prize or the mechanics of the competition
relates back to the product or service being prom-
oted. We developed a very crude method of classify-
ing a competition according to its marketing integra-
tion as follows:
• low - no link between product and competition or
prize;
• medium - a link between competition or prize
and product;
• high - product, prize and competition all related.
Table 1 includes the marketing integration scores (as
a modal average) associated with different service
providers. Services overall score relatively poorly
compared with goods, perhaps owing to the intang-
ibility of services and a tendency to focus the mech-
anics of the competition (such as questions asked or

[ ] Low
Medium
[] High
High
35~
25% 40%
Figure 5 Marketing integration for tourism and travel
competitions
slogans required) on the tangible prize, rather than
the service itself. Table 2 and Figure 5 show that
tourism and travel services competitions were
dominated by low and medium levels of integration
(although Tourism and Travel did have the highest
proportion in the 'high' category among service
providers). This is disappointing given the wide-
spread use of tourism products as prizes (offered by
73%) and also the many opportunities to 'theme'
competitions that holiday destinations offer. One
good example of a themed competition was run by
the Sally ferry company for its French service, which
inw)lved questions on a French theme and offered a
French car as first prize and French holidays for the
runners up.
Conclusions
Although competitions have been mentioned expli-
citly in the academic literature relating to tourism
and travel marketing, the coverage has barely
moved beyond a mention. The tourism market con-
tinues to be fiercely price competitive, to the extent
where keeping prices low is more a question of
survival than of generating competitive advantage.
Tourism marketers are seeking cost-effective ways
of differentiating their services, building rela-
tionships with customers and getting their message
across m an increasingly crowded and 'noisy' mar-
kel. Competitions are a versatile and cost-effective
means of marketing communication that offer
opportunities for tourism and travel marketers both
as sponsors and as the providers of prizes for other
sponsors. They are not, however, any form of
panacea for marketing problems and, like any form
of sales promotion, are only effective if not overused
Promotional competitions: K Peattie and S Peattie
or abused. The sales tactic used by a handful of
rogue companies of awarding dubious 'free holiday
prizes' in which 'winners' end up paying out for
insurance and accommodation at inflated prices has
the potential to interfere with the perceived value of
the vast majority of very genuine holiday competi-
tions.
The stereotyped view of sales promotions is that
they represent a short-term, tactical tool which can
be used to boost sales. Companies which approach
promotional competitions seeing them in such a
limited way are only likely to accrue tactical and
temporary benefits. Worse still, they may run into
difficulties for one of two reasons that have been
identified as afflicting a range of sales promotions. 5
Either they do not receive the sort of thorough
planning that is reserved for advertising campaigns,
or the planning and evaluation are delegated too far
down the marketing organization. Both of these
shortcomings reveal a tendency among companies
not to take sales promotions seriously enough when
developing and implementing their marketing
strategy, A good, and award winning, example of a
competition that was taken seriously and developed
as part of an integrated promotional campaign came
from Conti-Flug Airlines. The 1992 campaign to
promote their new London to Berlin service in-
volved a direct-mail discount coupon aimed at
potential business travellers. This mailing featured a
competition to encourage a response and was laid
out to link into the company's new brochure format.
The promotion was then advertised to the travel
trade through two trade journals and to the target
audience through the Evening Standard newspaper.
This campaign and many others show that, where a
competition forms part of a strategically planned and
integrated approach to marketing communications
so that it complements and reinforces the company's
brand image and advertising, it offers considerable
opportunities for companies to raise their profile in
the market.
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