Q.Distinguish between advertising and personal selling as tools of promotion.

Advertising and personal selling both aim to promote a product, but they reach customers in very different ways, with different strengths and weaknesses.

Advertising is a paid, non-personal form of communication about a product, carried through mass media such as television, print, radio, or digital platforms, and aimed at a large audience simultaneously. It is efficient at building wide brand awareness quickly and cheaply per person reached, but it is one-way communication — the same standardised message reaches everyone, and cannot be adjusted on the spot to answer an individual customer's specific doubts or objections.

Personal selling is direct, face-to-face (or one-to-one) communication between a salesperson and a prospective buyer. It allows the message to be tailored precisely to that individual customer — answering specific questions, overcoming particular objections, and building a personal relationship of trust — but it reaches far fewer people per unit of cost and effort compared with mass advertising, since each customer must be engaged individually.

Assuming one tool is simply "better" than the other — the exam-relevant point is that they serve different purposes (broad awareness versus individually tailored persuasion), whi …