Final answer:
Marketers can target sales promotion efforts to consumers, distributors, and salespeople. Advertising plays a critical role in differentiating products and influencing demand. Understanding the target audience is key to successful marketing and sales promotion efforts. The correct option 4)
Step-by-step explanation:
Marketers can indeed target sales promotion efforts to various groups, including consumers, distributors, and salespeople. Each of these groups plays a significant role in the market ecosystem. Consumers are the end-users who ultimately purchase and use the products or services. Distributors serve as intermediaries who distribute the products from producers to consumers, and salespeople are the driving force behind pushing the products towards consumers through direct selling techniques, persuasion, or customer service.
Advertising helps differentiate products from one firm to another within a competitive market. Effective advertising can make a firm's perceived demand curve become more inelastic, making consumers less sensitive to price changes, or it can cause demand for the product to increase, shifting the firm's perceived demand curve to the right. Consequently, a successful advertising campaign might result in increased sales volume and the ability to charge higher prices for a firm.
Therefore, understanding the target audience is crucial for making advertising messages resonate with the intended market segment, whether communicated through television, digital platforms, or other channels. Effective targeting includes considering the diversity of the audience and finding the right partner organizations that can help extend the reach and influence of marketing campaigns.