Sales promotions, although ill defined and under theorised. have long been a part of the marketing communications mix and used by brands in a variety of ways in many different contexts. Much of the research that examines sales promotions has done so from a rational economic or behaviourist perspective. Whilst acknowledging the contribution of such ontologies, it is argued that there has been limited examination of sales promotions from a managerial perspective. What has been produced tends to be largely prescriptive and written for practitioners. In this thesis the ontology of critical realism has been used to develop a conceptual framework that treats sales promotions as individual entities taking place within organisational and market structures. This conceptual framework has been used to analyse empirical data collected from thirteen smaller U.K. brands drawn from a diverse set of product categories and industries. Four in-depth case studies are presented with rich, fine-grained insights into the behaviours of those involved in such activities and the subsequent outcomes; in particular the contemporary practices of managerial actors involved in the conception. commissioning and implementation of sales promotions activities. The results of a further 9 case studies are also presented in summary form. In each case the conceptual framework proves largely effective in interpreting the likely causes of the form that the sales promotion took and its subsequent outcomes. It is claimed that the research made the following contributions to the study of sales promotions: 1) a re-examination of the definitional discourse that informs sales promotion and the development of a new definition: 2) the early and successful use of the combination of a critical realist oncology and case study 3) that the forms and outcomes of sales promotions can be better understood as being dependent on causal explanations of involving organisational and business contexts and 4) the development of a model that integrates diverse contextual (actors from both within and outside of the organisation in order to inform the managerial practice of deploying and managing sales promotions. The products of the study argue for a deeper and more sophisticated treatment of the way that sales promotions are researched, operate and are managed. The findings also suggest that both the method and the results have wider implications for the study of sales promotions, marketing communications in general and marketing practice.

This research explores the relationship betwen marketing efforts and company performance. Marketing actions will create customer impact and market impact, which will eventually have impact on the financial position of a company. The results of this research identify the use of marketing performance measurements and the relative importance of the intabgible assets in the UK biotechnology companier. 10 performance measurements are recommended to the UK biotechnology companies for the assessment of their marketing performance. These performance measurements cover the areas that are likely to have significant impact on the financial performance of biotechnology companies. Moreover, a model was developed to explain the establishment and implementation of a marketing performance measurement system. Questionnaire, interview and case studies were the methodologies used in this research. questionnaires were mailed to all the 566 manufactures and suppliers ofbiotechnology products listed in the UK Biotechnology Handbook 2000. 142 companies completed and returned the questionnaire. Excluding the companies that were not appropriate for the research, had changed address or closed down, the response rate of the questionnaire was 37.7%. 15 interviews over 12 biotechnology companies were carried out in order to achieve the objectives of the research. The findings of the research can be summarized as follows. The UK biotechnology companies take account of a wide range of performance measurements, both financial and non-financial, to assess their marketing performance. However, biotechnology companies focus on 11 key performance measurements which are financial focused. Profit, new contracts secured, cash reserve, funding of R & D, met goal, profitability of new products, customer perceived quality, number of new customers, brand loyalty and market share are recommended as key performance measurements. Moreover a model was developed to clarify the interactions between the components of a marketing performance measurement system.

Considering the importance of international activities for the small and medium-sized firms in the modern economy, the present research project tries to identify the degree in internationalisation and the main international marketing strategies used by the small and medium-sized biotechnology enterprises (SMBEs). The biotechnology sector cannot be considered as a homogenous industry, but rather as a series of different industrial applications centred around the specific use of biological organisms in producing and improving existent products and processes. Biotechnology is also a high technology sector, with complex and unpredictable changes in innovation financing and commercialisation. The specific characteristics of biotechnology products and markets increase the importance of international activities for the SMBEs. This research project investigates three main issues related to the process of globalisation: 1. What is the degree of globalisation of the UK SMBEs? 2. What are the international marketing strategies used by the UK SMBEs? 3. What are the role of the manager and the board of directors in the internationalisation process of the UK SMBEs? A number of research hypothesis related with these objectives were formulated. Using a large European base in order to identify the degree of SMBE's globalisation, the study concentrates later on UK firms alone. The reason for this choice is the high level of development of the UK biotechnology sector. In order to build a comprehensive model of the international marketing strategies used by the UK SMBEs, the degree of globalisation of the European SMBEs, the organisational and functional profile of these firms, as well as the main global regions in which they initiated and developed international operations has been initially investigated in the fist place. In the second stage, the main international marketing strategies used by the UK SMBEs have been identified. 7 Case studies of globalised and fully internationalised UK SMBEs, identified in the first stage, have been developed and are presented in the Part III of the thesis. The main elements that influence the design, implementation and control of international strategies were identified and analysed in order to build a complete picture of the strategic operational processes in biotechnology. The role of the management in the internationalisation process and the use of Internet technology to expand business activities were investigated and discussed in relation to their capacity in increasing the international competitiveness of biotech companies. The positive results obtained in this study as well as the interest and support shown by the industry, provide a good basis for the further development of research into biotechnology business. The novelty of biotechnology products and applications and the high dynamism of the market environment create the need for a permanent flow of information among industrialists, government representatives and academic. This can only help to increase the understanding of this sector, and to improve the competitiveness of UK Biotechnology worldwide.

This research investigates three approaches to new product sales forecasting: statistical, judgmental and the integration of these two approaches. The aim of the research is to find a simple, easy-to-use, low cost and accurate tool which can be used by managers to forecast the sales of new products. A review of the literature suggested that the Bass diffusion model was an appropriate statistical method for new product sales forecasting. For the judgmental approach, after considering different methods and constraints, such as bias, complexity, lack of accuracy, high cost and time involvement, the Delphi method was identified from the literature as a method, which has the potential to mitigate bias and produces accurate predictions at a low cost in a relatively short time. However, the literature also revealed that neither of the methods: statistical or judgmental, can be guaranteed to give the best forecasts independently, and a combination of them is the often best approach to obtaining the most accurate predictions. The study aims to compare these three approaches by applying them to actual sales data. To forecast the sales of new products, the Bass diffusion model was fitted to the sales history of similar (analogous) products that had been launched in the past and the resulting model was used to produce forecasts for the new products at the time of their launch. These forecasts were compared with forecasts produced through the Delphi method and also through a combination of statistical and judgmental methods. All results were also compared to the benchmark levels of accuracy, based on previous research and forecasts based on various combinations of the analogous products’ historic sales data. Although no statistically significant difference was found in the accuracy of forecasts, produced by the three approaches, the results were more accurate than those obtained using parameters suggested by previous researchers. The limitations of the research are discussed at the end of the thesis, together with suggestions for future research.

Sales management control and sales force performance has received substantial attention by researchers in the past decades. Researchers have been investigating the construct of sales control, its antecedents and its consequences on both the individual sales person and on sales force performance. This research project analyses how and why the sales control systems are implemented the way they are. The basis for this approach is drawn from the organisational or management control literature which treats behaviour and outcome approaches as dimensions rather than categories. Organisational control also treats the control system as a process which consists of a set of stages or sub processes being objective setting, planning, monitoring, feedback and correcting. With the growing importance of relationship selling and key account management it can no longer be assumed that all the sales people will operate at the same hierarchical level within an organisation nor that they will be subject to one and the same control system. Therefore an in depth analysis of how sales force control processes are implemented for different types of sales functions, ranging from customer acquisition, small to medium account management to strategic and global account management, is needed. The research project included 17 preliminary interviews across different organisations, from which one organisation was selected on the basis that it contains a large international sales force of about 2.500 people consisting of a very wide range of sales functions. The analysis of this organisation included 100 plus interviews of 66 sales managers and sales people across all types of sales functions over a two year period. The findings show that the inability to measure certain inputs and outputs does not deter a sales organisation to adopt their sales control strategy within a functional sales team. When some measures are not available or are unreliable, sales managers find other ways to measure them being it through some locally developed tools or through more qualitative approaches. The method used to obtain certain measures does impact the level of the sophistication of the actual control process or strategy. When there is a need to control sales people who operate as a team of employees from different departments the sales managers can no longer individually develop some local tools to measure inputs and outputs. The findings show that team based selling requires accurate data but also globally agreed rules and procedures in order to operate successfully. This enables us to conclude that the inability to measure certain inputs and outputs is a determining variable for the implementation of client sales teams. With regard to sales force control strategies the research uncovered that within the category of the hybrid sales control approach there are four types of sales control sub approaches. The choice of which control to use is dependent on the size of the customers or opportunities the sales people work with and the selling approach which is either hunting or farming. This shows that while farming can be relabelled as key account management, hunting remains a major sales activity requiring not only different selling approaches it also requires different types of sales control processes than for farming. All of these findings indicate that several types of sales control systems can operate across one single organisation and that the main determining variables are the sales approach and the type of accounts the sales person is managing. This challenges current beliefs or assumptions that all sales people operate at the same hierarchical level within an organisation and that they all operate under one single sales control approach. Future research on sales force control will need to take these findings into account when designing their approach to study control systems within organisations.