From China's point of view, as early as the late primitive society, there was barter. With the emergence of the third division of labor in human society-merchants, sales promotion has become a specialized business, and people who specialize in commodity exchange are what we now call professional salesmen. The earliest person who specialized in exchange in China was in the Xia Dynasty. In the Shang dynasty, exchange developed into a specialized industry, and a market specializing in buying and selling appeared in the city. In order to sell goods, businessmen shouted loudly to attract business. Qu Yuan, a great poet, once wrote in Tian Wen: "What does a teacher know when he hits an agitator knife?" This is a legend recorded by Qu Yuan. Jiang Taigong's teacher hopes to sell meat in Chao Ge. In this article, "drum knife" means slaughter, and "loud voice" means selling. It seems that Jiang Taigong can be regarded as the originator of sales promotion in China. By the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, commodity production and commodity exchange have become an important part of economic life, and commodity promotion activities are more extensive, including retail and mobile marketing, such as mobile marketing for small vendors who walk the streets.
During this period, famous businessmen in China history, such as Zi Gong, Fan Li, Ji Ran, Bai Gui, etc. Their successful experience has strongly promoted the development of business theory or promotion theory in China. In the Northern Song Dynasty, commodity production and commodity exchange developed further, and promotional activities were even more grand. The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan, a famous painter in the Northern Song Dynasty, vividly depicts this spectacular scene. In foreign countries, sales promotion also has a long history. Egyptian merchants along the Nile, Persian merchants along the Silk Road, Greek shippers along the Mediterranean, and merchants from Rome, Arabia, Spain, Portugal, Britain and France who went on expeditions with the army all made outstanding contributions to the evolution of sales promotion. Especially in modern times and modern times, the promotion development in western countries has made greater progress, and a large number of outstanding promotion masters such as Hammer, gourad, Kōnosuke Matsushita and Shengu Masataro have emerged. In a sense, the history of capitalist commodity economy is also a history of sales promotion. The United States stepped onto the world economic hegemony by selling arms in two world wars, and Japan achieved rapid development by vigorously expanding foreign markets after the war. According to the data, one out of every five people in Japan is engaged in sales promotion today. It is this large number of salesmen who push Japanese products to markets all over the world. It can be said that without so many salesmen, there would be no economic prosperity in Japan today. Similarly, the rise of the "four little dragons" in Asia has also contributed to the success of promotion to a great extent.
Because promotion plays an increasingly important role in promoting economic development, it has been paid more and more attention by countries since this century. Promotion has developed from a technology to a science, and a large number of promotional books have been published. There are promotion training centers in the United States, Japan and Western Europe, and there are also international promotion training centers in Geneva. Even China's Taiwan Province Province and Hongkong have set up promotional training centers. These training centers have trained a large number of sales promotion talents and effectively promoted the development of sales promotion theory and practice.
It can be seen that although sales promotion is a very old concept, it is a very young knowledge, and it is still full of youthful vitality today.
—— Quoted from the Marketing Encyclopedia of Yanbian People's Publishing House.