Marketing Promotional Budget Decisions Remember, one of the most difficult marketing decision facing companies is how much to spend on promotion. Thus, it is not surprising that industries and companies vary considerably in how much they spend on promotion. Promotional expenditures might amount to 30 to 50% of sales in the cosmetics industry and from less than 5% in the industrial sector. There are four common methods that companies use to decide their promotion budgets. They are the affordable method, the percentage-of-sales method, the competitive-parity method and the objective-and-task method. Find a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article (published within the last 5 years) on a topic of promotion budgets. Cite and summarize the article