The e-retailing form of m arket was something unheard to the Indian customer in `2007`. Flipkart which has created a niche for itself in terms of market share, goodwill and populartiy in the online market to threat because of its smooth operations. It started with an intital captial of `4rs` lakh it now aims for annual turnover of around `4500rs` crore.
Which other element of promotion mix is being used extensively By the company ? Explain its merits to the company.

Explanation

Advertising is an impersonal form of communication, which is paid for by the marketers to promote some goods or services. The common modes of advertising are newspapers, magazines, television, radio and internet.
The important distinguishing features of advertising are :
(i)`Paid form of communication It is a paid form, as the advertiser has to pay the advertising media used, for the space or time used to communicate the message to the user.
`(ii)` Impersonality Advertising persents the information regarding a product, service or idea in a non-personal form, as no face-to-face contact is involved between the seller and the customers.
`(iii)` Identified sponsor Sponsor may be an individual or a firm, who pays for the advertisement. The name or identity of the advertiser is mentioned in the advertisement.
Advertising provides the following merits :
`(i)` Mass reach Advertising can reach a large number of people over a vast geographical area. e.g. An advertisement on TV or radio can reach lakhs of people in a day.
`(ii)` Enhancing customer satisfaction and confidence Advertising helps in introducing new products in the market. It also helps in promotion sales of existing products by arousing interest and awarness among the prospective buyers, thereby increasing its sales and profits of the organisation.
`(iii)` Expresivness With recent developments in art, computer designing, graphics, etc, advertising can create special effects and make the message look very attractive.
`(iv)` Economy Because of a wide reach, a huge expenditure on advertising spreads over a large number of people, causing the per unit cost to decline significantly.