Clique Pens: The Writing Implements Division of U.S.

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Q. How should Ferguson manage the pull/push conflict between the marketing department (Chen)
and the sales department (McMillan)?

 Customers should be able to compare pricing if the pens or pencils are sold individually.
 Spending more on consumer promotions such as coupons is also a good idea because customers
who buy pens and pencils from retail stores are typically low involvement customers, which
means that these customers do not put much thought into buying a pen or pencil, and
moreover, the differentiating factor when it comes to pens and pencils is very low, so
advertisement would not incentivize a person to choose one pen over the other.
 Spending more on consumer promotions such as coupons is also a bad idea because they
already do so, and we found that the coupon redemption rate is only approximately 1.3 percent
lower than the rest of the consumer products.
 I propose that Ferguson offer greater trade discounts and allowances to shops in order to get
additional POS displays and cash register space, because consumers frequently buy pens and
pencils on impulse.

Submitted by: Akula Padma Priya, secB, PGP12101