CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

For mass media organizations to make money and to survive in the long run, they must have constant sources or streams of revenue. Revenues come from sales, and the various categories of sales of a service or manufacturing firm are known as revenue streams. While measuring and reporting revenue is the domain of accounting and finance departments in organizations, determining new sources or streams of revenue is the responsibility of top management, strategic planners, and marketing forecasters.

The secondary function of Bond FM is that it creates employment opportunities. Economic situation in Nigeria today and its attendant problems especially on the purchasing power of her citizens has greatly affected radio usage.

In line with the above is the incessant arrests and sometimes close down of some media organizations in the country resulting from their beautifully designed programmes targeted at attracting viewers but found provoking by the government. The above mentioned problems in no small measure affected the smooth running of the mass media organization in Nigeria.

Therefore, towards ensuring continuity in the business, it behooves the management of the mass media organization to evolve survival strategies via diversification of activities.

A remarkable revenue survival strategy often adopted, especially in terms of returns on the business and the creation of awareness is advertising.

1. Trust worthiness of the mass media organization one hand that of the sponsor on the other side.
2. Prestige of the sponsor of the advertisement.

iii. The quality of product being advertised etc.

The above mentioned variables or factors individually cannot influence advertising effectively but rather concerted interactions of efforts of these variables. Thus positive result can only be achieved by careful implementation of these variables systematically by the mass media.

Consumers are usually exposed to hundreds and maybe even thousands of commercial messages every day. They may appear in the form of billboards, like campaign, or in the form of newspaper ads, Radio advertisement, coupons, sales letters, publicity, event sponsorships, tele-marketing calls, or even e-mails. These are just a few of the many communication tools that companies and organizations use to initiate and maintain contact with their customers, clients, and prospects. one may simply refer to them as advertising. But, in fact, the correct term for these various tools is marketing communications. And advertising is just one type of marketing communications.

Today, definitions of advertising abound. Journalists, for example, might perceive it as a communication, public relations, or persuasion process; business people see it as a marketing process; economists and sociologists tend to focus on its economic, societal, or ethical significance. And some consumers might view it simply as an act to persuade them to satisfy their buying behavior. Each of these perspectives has some merit and demerit. Arens (2004) observes that Advertising is the structured and composed non personal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about products (goods, services, and ideas) by identified sponsors through various media. APCON on the other hand described advertising as a communication in the media paid for by an identifiable sponsor and directed at a target audience with the aim of transferring information about a product, service, idea or cause.‟

Majority of marketers use mass media for their marketing communications. The choice of media is dependent upon the nature of the message and the intended target audience (Etzel, Bruce J., William and Ajay, 2008). Radio advertising is the best-selling and economical media ever invented. It has a potential advertising impact unmatched by any other media (Saxena, 2005). The advantage of radio over the other medium is that it is perceived as a combination of audio and video features; it provides products with instant validity and prominence and offers the greatest possibility for creative advertising (Kavitha, 2006). Over a longer period of time, the Radio set has become a permanent fixture in all upper and middle class households, and it is not uncommon even in the poorer society of urban areas and rural households (Shah & D’Souza, 2008). Reactions to radio advertisements seem to be stronger than the reaction to print advertisements (Corlis, 1999). The advertisers find it more effective to use radio rather than print media to reach consumers, partly due to low literacy rate (Ciochetto, 2004). TV advertising not only change emotions but give substantial message exerting a far reaching influence on the daily lives of people (Kotwal, N., Gupta, N. and Devi, A., 2008).

Lager products are without doubt among the products that have been given intensive and wide advertisement coverage. The products were able to arouse attention using promotional strategies.

Consumers’ behaviour is affected by both internal (individual) and external (environmental) factors or influences. The internal influences include the consumer motivation and involvement, attitudes, personality and self-concept, learning and memory, information processing on the other hand, external factors includes cultural influences, sub-cultural influences, social class influences, social group influences, family influences, personal influences, (khan, 2006). The way these influencing factors integrated within the consumer determines how that consumer will behave towards the product(s) which focal point is on the effect of peak milk radio advertisement.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The research tried to look into the challenges on how Bond Fm, Lagos state use advertisement from their customers to generate  revenue base for the country but also the advertising strategies is not influencing their viewers/customers. This research work shall examine whether there are enough revenues from it to sustain the organization or to modify the strategies if not sustainable.

It is a known fact that radio advertisements use persuasive techniques to appeal to consumers‟ sense of buying. It is also evident that radio advertisements have a lot of influence on human behaviour. This influence may be either positive or negative. The kind of influence depends on the kind and quality of advertisement. Since radio commercials have the potential to influence human behaviour either to make them buy a product or admire it. It becomes relevant to establish the effect of such influence with reference to peak milk radio advertisement in Edo state.

Furthermore, there is no gainsaying that radio advertising has strong persuasive stimuli in helping to determine what we actually think about; it controls our values, attitudes and belief system, especially when weighed on constant exposure, prominence and cumulative media specific effect (Gambo, 2003: 690) If this is the case, what therefore is the effect of peak milk radio advertisement on consumer’s buying behaviour in Edo State?

1.3     OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objectives of this study are

1. To ascertain the attitude of consumers in Edo State towards Bond FM peak milk advertisement.
2. To determine the extent to which Bond FM peak milk advertisement influence consumers to make buying decision.
3. To examine the level of influence of Bond FM peak milk advertisement on consumer buying behaviours.

1.4     RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The research questions of this study are;

1. What is the attitude of consumers in Edo State towards Bond FM peak milk advertisement?
2. To What extent does Bond FM peak milk advertisement influence consumers to make buying decision?
3. What influence does Bond FM peak milk advertisement have on consumer buying behaviours?

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

There cannot be a better time to work on survival strategy for mass media than now with growing revenue consciousness among our government. The research attempted to advertising agencies other customers; the mass media organization that want to identify those strategies that will help them in manipulating the radio viewers behaviour, the mass media organization that is interested in enhancing its positioning in radio house and to serve as a reference strategy to other broadcast media organization for purposes of research documentation.

The result of the study would be of immense benefit to advertisers of peak milk as it would provide a guide on planning, production and placement of radio advertisements for the product.

Essentially, this study makes a significant contribution to the existing literature on the attitude of consumers towards radio advertisement. The study would also be of great use to mass communication and marketing students who intend to take up similar studies.