THE IMPACT OF TELEVISION COMMERCIALS ON PURCHASING HABIT OF STUDENTS

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION / 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.

1.1 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 OBJECTIVES
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
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.