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Sweepstakes and contests are some of the most frequently used promotional tools. Consumers participating in sweepstakes or contests have an opportunity to win prizes through a random draw. The authors examine how commonly used sweepstakes formats that vary in the number of winners and the allocation of the total reward money among the winners affect consumer valuations of the promotion. Given a fixed amount of reward money, the authors examine alternative reward formats based on the promotional objectives, consumer risk aversion, and degree of subadditivity. They test the analytical results using an experimental approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A consumer contest is a sales promotion technique that requires participants to apply certain skills as they compete for prizes or awards. This article is the first to employ a game-theoretical approach to investigate consumer contest design issues, including prize structure, segmentation, and handicapping. First, the authors find that both skill distribution and the number of contestants play an important role in determining the optimal prize structure in consumer contests. Specifically, if the skill distribution has the increasing hazard-rate property, it is optimal for a marketer to use a winner-take-all design. In large contests, for the winner-take-all approach to be optimal, it suffices to have the increasing hazard-rate property only at the high end of the skill distribution. Second, increasing contest size is beneficial to the marketer. Third, a less dispersive skill distribution leads to higher consumption by consumers at all skill levels and thus is beneficial to the marketer. The marketer may achieve less dispersive skill distributions by (1) segmenting or screening contestants according to their skill levels and (2) adopting a performance evaluation scheme that handicaps high-skilled contestants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Games such as sweepstakes and contests have become increasingly popular parts of promotional and advertising campaigns. Despite their wide use, very little academic theory or research exists about how consumers perceive and respond to promotional games. This paper presents a conceptual model of why consumers decide to participate in games and how the process of play and game outcomes influences attitudes, self-perceptions and behavior. The model provides a theory-based perspective for the design of promotional games that considers both the opportunities and ethical dilemmas that game sponsors face. Managerial implications are provided and hypotheses are suggested for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sales promotion activity continues to grow in terms of the number, scale and variety of promotional techniques being used by companies in their marketing communication campaigns. Research among marketing academics has yet to catch up with this reality and sales promotion continues to suffer from relative neglect compared to advertising; from a tendency for all promotional tools to be tarred with a rational economic brush, and from being labelled as a set of "tactical" tools that lack the strategic brand-building possibilities offered by advertising. This article builds upon earlier research examining the communication potential of competitions, to test empirically whether the potential marketing communications benefits claimed for competitions are actually recognised and pursued by marketing practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here is a new look at contests, and contestants. Generally, a count of contest entries is used as a gauge of success. This article shows why a count of entries is a poor measure of number of people involved, and an even poorer measure of prospects attracted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the rationale underlying periodic price promotions, or sales, for perishable food products by supermarket retailers. Whereas previous studies explain sales in a single-product context as arising from informational, storage cost, or demand heterogeneity, this study focuses on the central role of retailers as multi-product sellers of complementary goods. By offering a larger number of discounted products within a particular category, retailers are able to attract a sufficient number of customers to offset the effect of lower margins on sale items by selling more high-margin items. The implications that emerge from the resulting mixed-strategy equilibrium are tested in a product-level, retail-scanner data set of fresh fruit sales. Hypotheses regarding the rationale and effectiveness of sales are tested by estimating econometric models that describe (1) the number of sales items per store, (2) the depth of a given sale, and (3) promotion effectiveness on store-level demand. The results of this econometric analysis support the hypothesis that the breadth and depth of price promotions are complementary marketing tools, thus explaining how EDLP and HI-LO store formats can exist in the same monopolistically competitive market equilibrium. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a case filed by Austrian newspaper publisher Vereinigte Familiapress Zeitungsverlags-und vertriebs GmbH against German rival Heinrich Bauer Verlag, which sought to restrain the latter from selling publications which offer Austrian readers the opportunity to take part to prize competitions. The Austrian Unfair Competition Law prohibits publishers from offering free gifts linked to the sale of goods. The European Court of Justice ruled in favor of the defendant, arguing that the law hindered free movement of goods.

This article focuses on contests and lottery laws related to businesses in the U.S. Contests and lottery methods are commonly used by businesses as a means of stimulating the sale of goods. Regardless of the absence of a statutory definition, there are therefore three elements which go to constitute a scheme a lottery. For one thing, there must be a distribution of property by chance, that is, a prize. Second, the prize must be awarded by chance. Finally, people must have paid consideration for the chance of winning the prize. Unless all three factors are present, the lottery laws, reportedly, are inapplicable. Superficial differences between organized lotteries and advertising contests do not affect the question of legality, for those differences concern only the method of operation and the motive of the business promoter. But these variations in form and substance are legally irrelevant, as they do not have anything to do with the all-important factors of consideration, chance and prize.

Selection of "matched" areas for test marketing is an important undertaking if reliable comparisons among markets are to be made. This usually has been done on a rather arbitrary basis, largely because of the large number of market characteristics on which markets can be viewed as similar or different. The authors suggest a numerical procedure--cluster analysis--for matching prospective test markets on the basis of a large variety of characteristics which could affect test marketing results. In this way, markets can be pre-selected so as to reduce undesired variability among test areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the British non-governmental agency Advertising Standard Authority's (ASA) investigation in a complaint case filed against the sports car members club Supercar Lifestyle Ltd. The company is reported to have run a misleading prize promotion wherein it asked the prize claimants to pay an insurance premium to receive the prize without any prior information. It further informs that ASA upheld that the prize was not genuine in addition to the advertisement being misleading.

The article announces a contest from the makers of the Flipper Hygienic Toothbrush holders, which offers readers the chance to win a free sample of the toothbrush holder through visiting their Facebook page located at www.facebook.com/flipperfun.

What are the purposes of prizes and recognitions? Are they lagging indicators of past achievements or leading indicators of things to come? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article relates a study which investigates the impact of the different types of promotions on increasing attendance in professional baseball in the U.S. It explores the different categories of promotions such as price, non-price, and combination of price and non-price. It was found out that there is a higher attendance at games with promotions than games without promotions and when non-price promotions are used rather than price promotions.

This article describes a prize contest in which dentists and dental personnel are invited to design their own uniforms. The contest is sponsored by Kent Express and Hejco. Hejco will produce the first prize winner's design for a maximum team size of 15. Special days that include a helicopter tour of London, England and international Americas Cup class sailing will be awarded to the first, second, and third prize winners.

A crossword puzzle for a prize contest is presented.

The article presents information on a study of sales promotion competitions. Sales promotions are becoming an increasingly important part of the marketer's toolkit and competitions are a particularly versatile and popular promotional tool. This research project, conducted by researchers Ken Peattie from Cardiff Business School and Sue Peattie from the University of Glamorgan Business School, aims to explore the extent, nature and effectiveness of competitions as a sales promotion tool. The project has been tackled in three stages. Stage one involved a survey of 2,646 competitions, the findings of which have been published in the Journal of Marketing Management, International Journal of Service Industry Management and International Journal of Bank Marketing Stage two involves a second survey of competitions to track trends in their use, and a follow-up survey of competition sponsors. Stage two has been funded by a grant from the University of Glamorgan, and the results of stage two will be published during 1995. Stage three, looking at consumer response to competitions will take place during 1995/1996.