CHAPTER ONE

                                     INTRODUCTION

1.1      BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The recent and vast industrial expansion, resulted in massive production which led to competition and aggressive selling. These developments forced manufacturing companies to source out for marketers and buyers for their products. Advertising was therefore recognized by business enterprises as a profitable method of building demand for their products.

Today, Nigerian consumers are becoming very difficult to satisfy especially in the area of exposure to advertising messages. This is largely due to their expectation of good value for the money spent. Pike (2008) asserts that marketers are now faced with escalating media costs, often in tandem with declining advertising budget, thus leading them to increased interest in below-the-line promotional opportunities. According to Kotler (2009), marketing is totally about customers, hence the core mission of marketers is to provide the solution to customers’ needs and wants by identifying and meeting them. There are four main factors on which marketing have been built up; these are four elements of the marketing mix: place, product, price and promotion. Advertising, as a component of the promotional mix further enhance creation of customers’ awareness towards organizational products and then the need to patronize such products if it meets the needs, expectation and satisfaction of the consumers (Belch & Belch, 2003).

According to Morden (1991), who is of the opinion that advertising is used to establish a basic awareness of the product or service in the mind of the potential customer and to build up knowledge about it. Kotler (2002) sees advertising as one of the four major tools companies use to direct persuasive communications to target buyers and public noting that it consists of non-personal forms of communication conducted through paid media under clear sponsorship. According to Kotler (2002), the purpose of advertising is to enhance prospects’ responses to the organization and its offering.

The contribution of sales marketing in the form of advertising in promoting product and service awareness among consumers cannot be overstressed. Advertisement provides a platform for firms to create awareness about their products or services and how consumers can make the best out of such products. Olusegun (2006) opined that all advertisement must be honest and follow ethical standards and must not be perceived by the target consumer as lie; otherwise it can batter the image of a company and hinder it from building successful brands. Thus, for advertising to be effective, it must have an appeal, attract attention, command interest, inspire conviction and must provoke interest (Frank, 2005). In the same vein, Okeji (2008) posited that a good advert message should not be boring but rather reflect the lifecycle of the product. He concluded that advertising must be exposed in the right medium as this will enable organization to reach the right people with the right message. Against this backdrop of controversy, it became very pertinent to investigate the extent to which the advertising costs of manufacturing firms in Nigeria affect their sales revenue and profits.

There are various forms of advertising like informative advertising, persuasive advertising, comparison advertising, and reminder advertising. Informative advertising is used to inform consumers about a new product, service or future or build primary demand. It describes available products and services, corrects false impressions and builds the image of the company, (Kotler, 2010).Advertising can be done through print media which includes newspapers ,magazines ,brochures ,Audio media for example Radio, and visual media which includes billboards, and television (Kotler and Armstrong 2010).Consequently, this study was conducted with the intent of establishing the extent to which the advertising of company’s products affect their sales revenue and net profits.

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