CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
OF THE STUDY
Advertising has grown
increasingly popular as an object of academic inquiry, a field of professional
practice and an index of modern business. It has come to assume the center
of modern marketing and it is one of the major forms of promotion in product
and service marketing. Billboard advertising has assumed a wider and
prominent position in product promotion in recent times in Nigeria. Despite
electronic media, billboard advertising got product promotion on the increase.
This new discovery in
product promotion has not only given rise to advertising agencies that
specialized only in billboard advertising, and also a strong association of
billboard advertising in Nigeria which is recognized by advertisers as a
subsidiary of the advertising practitioner Council of Nigeria APCON. But
as has been articulated by Adeyemi (1969), the constitutional provision on
freedom of expression can be said to amount only to an ordered freedom of which
cannot be used as a license to spread communication that debased public
morality. However, many of these ethical principles have in the course of
time grown to become statutory regulation codified laws. Decree 55 of 1988
among other provisions provides that APCON show regular and control the
practice of advertising in all its aspects and ramifications. It is in
exercise of this immense and wide power conferred on it, that APCON developed a
code of ethics to guide and regulate the practice of advertising in Nigeria. The
evidence increase in billboard advertising under sources the effectiveness of
billboard in project promotion. Billboards ensure frequent and repeated
exposure to the advertisement. Billboards are usually located at points
with higher vehicular and human traffic.
Consequently, users of such
points are regularly exposed to the advertisement in the board. Secondly,
billboard, also offer a high degree of locational flexibility. In other
words, the boards can be placed where the advertisers actually intended them to
be. In addition, they tend it has lower cost per thousand that most of
the other media. They are usually more cost efficient, especially for the
advertiser with a small budget. Billboard offers the advantage of very
good color reproduction and at the same time it is an effective reminder medium
offer servicing as a catalyst for buyer who buy is impulse. The greatest
problems encountered by advertisers and their agencies with regard to billboard
are site monitoring. Monitoring is usually difficult and so when posters
get torn or washed out, it takes a while to discover and repost. This is
because the sites are usually scattered around very far geographical locations.
The posters used on the
boards are usually tedious to print and post especially when the number of
sites to be covered are too many. In other to be covered are too
many. In other words, boards make intense creative demands on the
agency. Because they are usually seen in a fleeting second, they have to
be powerfully executed so as to intrude on the passers-by consciousness.
In this case they tend to function better as reminder media and therefore
cannot serve well as the primary and sole medium for an advertising
campaign. Aside its cost efficient contributes to environmental aesthetic
and enduring feature of landscape of towns, in the country. Although the
voice of the street vendor in Nigeria grows fainter with each passing year, it
is still possible to hear the mournful call and tinkling bell of the old
clothes and junk man, the call of the itinerant fruit peddler with his
pushcart, or the street corner vendor of hot chestnuts. But it wasn’t
until the Middle Ages, with the world shaking advent of the printing press and
moveable type, the advertising began to take the firm most familiar to us
today.
Winstan Fletch, (1979),
identifies the following determinant of the strength of a billboard
advertising, such as, the number of posters put in any given area the size of
the poster, the specific sitting of the poster and the length of the
campaign. Because of the problem of more boards in a given area, the
greater the problem of dotter, many authorities regulate the sitting of boards
as to prevent their indiscriminate location poster come in standard sizes
referred to as sheets. The dimensions of a single sheet are usually
expressed in inches for easy handling and processing. A single limit of
sheet is usually 20 inches wide by 30 inches deep. The most commonly
available poster formats are 16 sheets, 32 sheets and 48 sheets. In addition,
there is the painted board or bulletin boards, which are hand-painted (instead
of printed posters) and typical sizes are 14 feet by 48 feet. Posters
sited at busy locations or junctions with high human and vehicular traffic are
often more effective than those at less endowed locations. Furthermore,
the longer the duration of a campaign the more impact it tend to have.
While advertisers buy space in Newspapers and magazines, for outdoor they rent
sites. Renting a site centers on an advertiser the right of having his
poster displayed on the site. To do this, advertiser or his agency will
retain an outdoor advertising company. The advertising companies will
have to usually built and acquire a particular site it wants or chooses from
the ones the billboard company supplies. It pays the outdoor agency for
the production of the posters as well as rental fee for the sites. Its
media and client service monitor the posting to ensure that all the sites are
constantly and clearly posted throughout the duration of the campaign.
For all the media
enumerated, management of the advertising operation is very delicate task,
since in most cases, advertising represents a significant source of corporate
profitability. For billboard companies particularly, the key task will
entail keeping a tab on advertising agencies and solicitation so that they can
use the billboard firm for their campaign. Other task include monitoring
of sites to ensure that posters are in good order and properly posted,
invoicing agencies for sites created and posted, ensuring prompt payments and
prompt payment of rental charges to the state government via local
authorities. In executing this research, the researcher will try to
identify why billboard advertising seems to be more popular than other means of
advertising in terms of product promotion in Ado-Odo Otta. Also this
study will try to find out the acceptability of billboard advertising in the
society. Among other things, this study also hopes to establish the
contribution of billboards to product promotion and consumption.
1.2 STATEMENT
OF RESEARCH PROBLEMS
There has been an
appreciable growth in product and services promotion activities by marketers in
Nigeria, especially through advertising. Recently, below, the line
advertising especially billboard has gained tremendous popularity. Going
round the major roads and street in Ado-Odo Ado-Odo Otta particularly strategic
location will reveal the degree of usage ad number of colorful billboard of
various sizes carrying advertisement promotion products of various
manufactures.
They are located in
strategic traffic points. Also rural areas are not spread of this
billboard galore. Why his sudden increase in the use of billboard?
Could it be that billboard has acquired new potency for product
promotion? This and many were ignited the researcher, to look into the
effect of billboard in product promotion with special emphasis in Ado-Odo
Ado-Odo Otta as a case study.
1.3 OBJECTIVE
OF THE STUDY
This study has among other
objective the following.
1
To
examine the significant of billboard advertisement as it affects product promotion in the market place
2
To determine the
effectiveness of billboard advertising in product promotion.
3
To determine the extent to which 7up company in
utilize billboards for promotion.
1.4 RESEARCH
QUESTIONS.
For this study, the following questions are raised.
1
What
is the significant of billboard advertisement as it affects product promotion in the market place
2
What is the effectiveness
of billboard advertising in product promotion?
3
How does billboard
advertisement appeals to prospective product consumers.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE STUDY
This study brings to our
knowledge the degree of influence other product promotion activities and
advertising exerts on billboard advertising.
The study will also serve
as a guide to manufacturers and advertisers in their day-to-day management of
product promotion via the billboard advertising. On the other hand, this
study will serve as literature/good feasibility study for prospective investors
in billboard advertising sub-sectors.
1.6 DEFINITION
OF TERMS
Promotion: This is the publishing and advertising of product tangible or
intangible.
Operational: This refers to the average number of
product advertisement that are placed on billboard in various strategic places
in Ado-Odo Otta.
1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The challenge
of finance for the general research work will be a challenge during the course
of study. Correspondents also might not be able to complete or willing to
submit the questionnaires given to them.
However, it
is believed that these constraints will be worked on by making the best use of
the available materials and spending more than the necessary time in the
research work. Therefore, it is strongly believed that despite these
constraint, its effect on this research report will be minimal, thus, making
the objective and significance of the study achievable.