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Sales orientation

The sales orientation era ran from the mid 1950's to the early 1970's, and is therefore after the production orientation era but before the marketing orientation era. During WWII world industry geared up for accelerated wartime production. When the war was over this stimulated industrial machine turned to producing consumer products. By the mid 50's supply was starting to out-pace demand in many industries. Businesses had to concentrate on ways of selling their products. Numerous sales techniques such as closing, probing, and qualifing were all developed during this period and the sales department had an exalted position in a company's organizational structure. Other promotional techniques like advertising, and sales promotions were starting to be taken seriously. Packaging and labeling were used for promotional purposes more than protective purposes. Pricing was usually based on comparisons with competitors (called competitor indexing).

see also: marketing, production orientation, marketing orientation, personal marketing orientation

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