Sales Promotion Strategies for the Russian Ceramic Market

Abstract

This paper is about Ceramicas Aparici, one of the first ceramic companies from Alcora, that is facing difficult times on one of its strongest markets, Russia. Spain and Italy have been for many years Russia‘s main ceramic tiles suppliers, but the crisis and the growing production of Russian ceramics have dampened Spanish imports and, as a result, Ceramicas Aparici‘s export activity has decreased. The main purpose of this paper is to offer some low cost proposals in order to improve Aparici‘s revenue on the Russian market using marketing sales promotion. In this paper we will analyse the worldwide situation of the ceramic sector and also our internal situation in order to apply the appropriate promotion strategies. Some aspects will be taken into account, such as target audience, main strengths and weaknesses of Ceramicas Aparici and its competitors‘ (e.g. Porcelanosa and Rex), brand positioning and the fact that there is a low budget that can be used for it. Aparici is already implementing many marketing strategies, so from all the proposals offered by marketing theory, only some of them have been chosen. Moreover, some of the proposals are too expensive to be put into practice and some of them are just not appropriate for ceramic sector or for Aparici‘s target.