THE IMPACT OF TELEVISION COMMERCIALS ON PURCHASING HABIT OF STUDENTS
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
In the olden days, the concept of advertising might not have been as an important tool for the marketing of product. Our ancestor simply engaged in trade and barter, or went hunting for the things they need. But today, we are constantly confronted with countless of goods and services, desire and all sorts of aggressive persuasive means to buy them. Money as a medium of exchange has been involved,. So, in this present age of plenty supply which nearly exceed the demand for products and services. Therefore, advertising doesn’t make any meaning to different people. Many regard it to informing while some say, it is half truth, especially in developing nations like ours where people do not seem to understand the purpose and effective role which advertising play in marketing process. Advertising is only one of the many elements in a successful marketing effort. Other elements include packaging, pricing, point of purchase, promotion, personal selling and publicity. Successful marketing therefore is a total effort and all activities must be properly integrated and related to each other to the point of view of the consumer and their needs.
Essentially, advertising is a communication force and role that can be appreciated by relating this to the classical seven stages identified by R.J Lavidge and G.A. Stanner which move up series steps:
1. Unawareness
2. Awareness
3. Knowledge
4. Liking
5. Preference (first choice)
6. Conviction (desire to buy)
7. Purchase
However, goods advertising must be capable of moving the prospect of awareness level to that of actual purchase. Advertising message must contain some answered questions as set in advertising objective, example includes:
1. How is the brand in comparison with competition brands?
2. What creation do you expect as a direct result of television advertising e.g. creation of awareness, trait purchase, and brand loyalty?
3. How do you want people to perceive your product?
4. Who should be your target audience?
Advertising messages are disseminated to the consumer through mass media i.e. television, radio, cinema, posters, billboard, newspapers and magazine. Among these mass media, television happen to be the one mostly used, for this purpose therefore, television provides one of the most spectacular ways in which an advertisers could reach the greatest number of people at a time. NTA network news claims over 30 million viewers, what makes television so attractive to advertising is that audience can be reached through television via the diversity to programmes, virtually everybody has a few favourite programmes he watches fairly regularly so television provides voices and vision. Hence, it is an initiate medium, since television advertising has become a part of regular television broadcast, viewer’s perception of these advertising messages may influence their buying behaviour of certain products.However, as Krugman has noted that, what is lacking in the required evaluation of TV advertising in any significant body of research specifically relating advertising to attitude, and these in turn to purchasing behaviour or sales. In order words,it is basically salesmanship on air or in prints. How then do consumers perceive the thousand and one advertising they see daily? Knowledge of what perception entails in necessary for the purpose of this study.
PERCEPTION: Perception is one of the psychological process by which we get to know and deal with information and things. It is a complex process by which people select, organize and interpret sensory stimuli into meaningful picture of the world. Perception has an important influence on consumer’s behaviour because it relates to the mental process by which individuals select organize and interpret information to create a meaningful picture of an objective situation which decisions are made. Cognition is the term given to the mental process that enable mankind gives meaning to the environment and experience cognitively perception is the process by which the organism takes in information from the environment through the sensory organs and by differentiating and fitting the information to individual needs and experiences, which gives meaning to stimuli perceived.
People can emerge with different perceptions of the same stimulus object because of three perceptual processes.
1. Selective exposures
2. Selective perception
3. Selective retention
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Over the years, the principal role of advertising has been as that of creating awareness for an advertised product. Advertising scholars go further and extended the role to include that of persuasion and an invitation to action. But critics of advertising believe that advertising is an economic waste on the ground that consumers know what they want and they do not want to subside. The purpose of this study therefore are to:
1. Find out the influences of tv commercials on the buying behaviour of the students of University of Lagos.
2. To search for the impact and contributions that TV commercials can make to improve standard of living i.e. getting to be aware of feet needs and how to satisfy these needs.
3. To determine whether these TV commercial make the students loyal to a brand or switch to another brand whose advert is more pleasing or attractive to them e.g. the use of toilet soaps.
1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
Business organizations are persuaded by print and electronic media to come for space in their media. Today, one sees different advertisement in the print and electronic media where entrepreneurs of various business announce the products or services rendered by their company with the ultimate aim to convince consumer’s to purchase them. A measure of how the students perceive advertising could be obtained through these entrepreneurs generating sales or turnovers. It is also assumed that this study will reveal that investment in TV commercials are not wasted but a necessity and part of production cost.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This study will attempt to find answers to the following questions:
1. In what way are TV commercials creating awareness for student needs?
2. How the needs get satisfied?
3. How do the students perceive TV commercials?
4. What kind of information do student want to receive in TV commercials?
5. What are the effect of TV commercials?
1.5 OBJECTIVESOF THE STUDY
The objectives of this study are to:
1. Know if TV commercial actually motivate consumers to purchase.
2. Know if the shortcomings of television (as a medium) affect its ability to influence consumers purchasing habits.
1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of this study is limited to the students of University of Lagos as consumers. This is because, the society is too big to be researched as it might take a very long time doing the research and we might not be able to complete it at the end.
1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
It could be argued that the more defined analysis is required for a more reliable and valid conclusion to be drawn about such issue as people’s attitude and impression of TV commercial is. The time for the research is too short, as such does not permit long, time observation.