Abstract:
Seasonal marketing strategies as cause to increase number of retail sales and sales quantity of the retail sector. Consumers are expected to purchase large quantity of retail products during the seasonal time. Retailers practice different seasonal offer marketing strategies to improve their sales with the support of marketing mixes. Even though there are several alternatives seasonal offers strategies available in the retail industry nonsystematic promotions are done by the retailers. Lack of practical oriented researches to guide the retailers, made a gap for this research. Many researchers studied the specific product or promotional strategies as empirical works. This research focused to investigate the marketing strategies espoused by the retailers and the customers’ responses on these strategies. A framework on marketing strategies for seasonal offer was developed based on the extensive review of literature with coding method. This study compared the strategies in the literatures and the strategies adopted by the retailers adopted by the retailers in Manner district. The samples of 25 retailers and 50 customers that were chosen to partake in this qualitative study based on purposive sampling method. Findings show, that all the strategies identified form the literatures were not espoused by the retailers, diverse retailers adopt different strategies. For the diverse outlets, customers are attracted by few seasonal based marketing strategies. This study suggested that context specific marketing strategies for seasonal offers are preferred by the customers. Further this study recommended to the retailers, that specially strategies can be improved and they can implement the strategies which are stated in the literatures but not adopted by them in Mannar, where the customers prefer to purchase during the seasons.
