What is Product Merchandising? - Kaboodle Gifts

Product merchandising is a segment of marketing and sales that drives interest to an additional product that a company is selling. that company might be fast food chain restaurants,campgrounds, movie companies just to name a few. Let's break these examples that I have mentioned down a bit to further see the relationship between the product merchandise and the product that it supports.

Fast Food Chain Restaurants :

The biggest of the fast food chain restaurants is McDonalds. They are the Mac Daddy! ( Who said I can't be witty?!) McDonalds is in the business of selling burgers, fries, salads etc. That is what they sell now but it wasn't always that way in the earlier years. The specific time persiod I'm talking about is the 1970's. Remember those early Happy Meals? Yeah you know what I'm talking about, the burger, fries and a drink all in a box. Along with all the fun food to eat you also got a prize in the package. Usually it was a little play toy in the form of one of the mascots like the Hamburglar, Ronald McDonald, or Mayor Mc Cheese. These characters represented McDonald's brand and is what made their name recognizable. When little Timmy saw a commercial with these characters he related them to McDonald's, then in turn, got him hungry and lastly ended up making a trip with mom to McDonalds to get a happy meal and a prize in the package. Was this a successfull campain? Well... Ray Crock's widow was receiving 37 million dollars per month in residual income before her death....you tell me.

Campgrounds:

Campgrounds, specifically private membership campgrounds use product merchandising to bring you to thier campground and take a tour of it, hoping that you will buy into their campground and become a paying member. Some examples of this use of product merchandising might be eighteen holes of golf, free weekend use of a water front condo, a pair of binoculars, or a booklet of coupons to eat at five star restaurants. What happens is that your name is purchased from a targeted mailing list. Then you are invited usually via a post card in the mail to take a tour of the campground and all of its amenities, and for doing that you are offered a free gift for taking the time from your schedule to take their tour. You never get the gift without taking the tour, that's usually in the small print. Once you have completed your required tour the game begins, the sales person is a seasoned veteran and goes hard for the sale. Not taking a "no" for an answer the sales person usually wins out.

Movie Companies:

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Star Wars, you guessed right. Then again if you had to guess then you need to rent the whole set of movies all six of them. Star Wars is the brain child of George Lucas. He started out as an independant film producer that didn't like dealing with the big movie companies, he didn't like having the control over his movie taken away by a suit somewhere in an office. That's the short version. All of those little figurines of Princess Leah, Hans Solo, and Luke Skywalker sold millions of dollars after the movie came out. The movie did so well that it held the record for gross ticket sales for decades until the movie Titanic came out and beat it. George Lucas couldn't afford to pay his actors a wage so he offered them a percentage of the merchandising rights to the movie instead. Do you think he made a good decision? Better yet, do you think the three actors made the right decision? Well... the product merchandise sold so well that it made each of the three actors millionairs basically overnight.

These three examples of product merchandising have described how you use one product ot promote another. In essance you could also call it upselling.

Scott Nash

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