The Role Of Advertising In Motivating Consumer Brand Preference For Beverages

Abstract

This research project was designed to investigate the extent to which advertising influence consumers purchase decision on the Bournvita brand. To solve the research problem both primary and secondary data were collected the research instrument used in collecting the data were questionnaire and oral interview. The respondent comprised of the staff and consumers of Bournvita product.

In organizing and presenting data collected table and percentages were used. The various hypothesis were tested using the Chi-square.

Data analysis and interpretation gave the following findings.

Consumers choice of beverage brand can be attributed to advertising
The quality of a product affects consumers in the choice if their beverage brands.
Price is a major factor that influences consumers of beverage products to prefer one brand of beverage to another.

Based on finding the researcher recommends that:

The beverage producers should under taker research of raw materials and efficient channel of distribution so as to always offer their products of reasonable qualify and price to consumers.
Making intensive and adequate use of promotional mix especially advertising, to make their marketing activities more efficient and effective.
Producers of beverage product should identify the factors that are responsible as their brand choice and adopt total products concepts in marketing of their products, father than engaging in costly advertising.

The conclusion is that advertising is an important promotional tool for effective marketing of any mass produced consumer produces in a competitive market environment.

Chapter One

Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

Marketing is the management process aimed at identifying, anticipating, analysis and satisfying human needs and wants through exchanges as efficiently and effectively as possible (Adirika, 1990:3)

Its concept is a philosophy of business which state that the customer want satisfaction of the economic and social justification for a firm is existence. However, no matter how a produced completely meets the requirements of the consumers, its existence has to be made know t the consumers, Hence, the need for advertising which serves as an awareness Greaten.

Equally, the multiplication of beverage (Bournvita) producing company implies that for a firm in the industry to survive, grow or improve its markets share, its must year its market share, it must year its energies towards some form of product high quality development, fair pricing, effective promotional, activities, and wide distribution network. Besides competitors, the growth of this industry creates other problems which include that by presenting a variety of choice tot he customers, the management of the company face the problem of identifying which of these varieties that exert greatest influence on consumer preference on one brand of beverage product over the other. This has led to the policy of most companies marketing department investing so heavily on advertizing as the surest means of reaching their target markets. Nigerian businessmen always depreciate the role of advertising in business because of their pursuit for quick money and profits, they often erroneously regard advertising expenditure as money wasted. This is unfortunate indeed, adverting it perhaps the most effectively way of communicating with customers and the general public. Through advertizing, a company communicates the information a consumer needs to evaluate a product or the ability of the company to offer a product or service.

Advertizing can be inform of newspaper and magazine, direct mail trade exhibitions, television, radio, catalogue, product demonstration etc.

Following the increase in the competitive nature of the market environment in Nigerian today, marry companies are found in the line of beverage product production. One of such companies who also lover a leading name in beverage market is Cadbury Nigeria Plc who builds its fame on vitality and delicious goodness of its food beverages. The extra flavour of its confectionery and the appetizing taste of its products.

The company’s operations in Nigeria were initially continued tot he selling of imported chocolate products in the major urban areas. This was before 1965 when Cadbury Nigeria Plc operated as the registered Nigerian sale office for Cadbury fry expert limited. However, the introduction of the Coco beverage, Pronto, and later the well know malt beverage BOURNVITA between 1956 and 1969 enable the company penetrate the indigenous market. The increase in turnover instified first, the local packaging of these products and subsequently the full manufacture of BOURNVITA in the company manufacture and market their products through network of wholesale distributors located in various parts of the commit.

They equally make a to of expenses as a result of carrying out promotional strategies for their product. One of such promotional mix which they make use of is advertizing which demands from the management a huge amount of money yearly. Advertizing is a group of activities involved in presenting to people message regarding a product, service or idea in a non-personal form by a identified sponsor. Its main takes is to communicate effectively so as to establish awareness if create a favourite attitude to and stimulate demand for a product or service among potential consumers. It should therefore be informative, instructive, persuasive and relevant to consumer’s needs. It should appeal to the emotional instincts in some discerning ways from similar products of the same or other companies. In the marketing of beverages, branding enhancing product identification, which in turn facilitates marketing action and demand stimulation. It helps for effective advertizing and market control. The search for this study involves investigating consumer brand recantation, brand preference, brand acceptance, and brand insistence of the brand of selected beverage, Bournvita.

Finally, the role of advertising in motivating consumers, play a major role in beverage industries. Some consumers are being moved by the nature of advertisement of a particular product irrespective of the price attached to it.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

In any competitive marking environment such as ours, a marketing manager is often faced with the problems of how to determine the nature of demand for his products in a given market segment, how to determine the factors responsible for the variations in the demand pattern.

Management of Bournvita producing company in Nigeria is faced with the problem of not only identifying suitable strategies to bet their competitors but also how to determine the strength of the contributions of various components of the promotional mix variables of the purpose of stimulating demand of their product brand. This has equally led to different company’s budgetary allocation to and policy emphasis on different components of promotional mix. The pertinent question that come to mind include.

Why doe s food proportion of Bournvita consumers benefit adequately from advertising message Bournvita brand ?
Why is the large sum of money invested in advertising Bournvita product justified ?
Why does advertizing of Bournvita aroze a behaviour that would otherwise not be displayed by the consumers, thus disposing him towards advertised produced.

Specifically, it has become necessary to determine:

Why the consumption of Bournvita is being seriously influenced by its advertizing as against other factors (availability of the products its quality, price and positioning strategy of the product).
The strength of advertizing relative to these other factors in influencing the consumer to one brand of beverage over the other.

Answer to these and some other related questions constitute the central task of this research work.

1.3 Objective of the Study

Advertizing as a promotional; mix among other things at influencing, consumer of selecting a particular product or service instead of competing brand of similar product during their purchase decisions.

This study therefore, seeks to examine the market acceptance of Bournvita in Enugu metropolis with a view to establishing the extent to which consumer’s preference of Bournvita over other brand of beverage can be attributed to advertising. Therefore, the objectives of this study are:

To determine whether advertisement appeal or theme is the reason why consumers prefer Bournvita to other brand of beverages.
To identify the cause and kind of differences in consumer preference the Bournvita product under study.
To determine the extend to which consumption of the Bournvita product is being influenced by the advertizing.
To determine the strength of advertizing relative to the other factors in motivating consumer awareness of Bournvita under study.
To suggest ways of improving advertizing campaign strategy for beverage product marketing to be more effective.

1.4 Hypothesis Formulation

The following hypotheses will be tested.

Ho: Most consumers are not aware of Bournvita product through advertizing.
Hi: Most consumers are aware o Bournvita product through advertizing.
Ho: Consumer brand preference for Bournvita product is not influenced by exposure to advertizing message.
Hi: Consumer brand preference for Bournvita product is influenced by exposure to advertising message.
Ho: There is no signification relationship between the advertizing of Bournvita and sales volume of the organisation.
Hi: There is signification relationship between the advertizing of Bournvita and sales volume of the organisation.

1.5 Significance of the Study

It is intended that the result of this study will help the Cadbury Nigeria Plc in the following ways:

To be in a position to make their product to meet the needs of their customers.
To help the consumers ascertain the quality of then product and the benefits derive in consuming the product.
It will facilitate the work of other people mostly researchers who many in one way or the other engage in a similar research in future.
The reader with also benefit form this work became it will help them in building their own study when carrying out the academic research.
It will expose the opportunities and threats facing the competitors and the need to affect changes so that the company can grow positively.

1.6 Scope of the Study

The study is a case study of Cadbury Nigeria Plc. Due to the size and spread of the company, the study is limited only to consumers of Bournvita in Enugu metropolis.

1.7 Definition of Terms

Advertising:

It is a non-personal form of communication or presentation of goods, ideas or se4rvuces conducted through paid media under clear sponsorship (Kotler P. 2nd Edition, 1987)

Consumer Products:

They are those products used by the final consumers that are not industrial products (Ozo 2002, P.120)

Brand Preference:

Is a situation where the consumer selects a particular product that will satisfy his needs and wants. (Journal o Consumer Research. 1982, P. 185).

Consumer Behaviour:

Is whatever the consumer does in the process of satisfying his/her needs. (Ozo 2002, P. 10)

Chapter Five

Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations

5.1 Summary

This research work is on the role of advertising in motivating consumer brand preference for beverages. Chapter one introduces the background information about the research work and the statement of research problem gives the various problems that necessitated the research work. The objectives of the study were enumerated showing the objectives to be achieved at the end of the study. In the significance of the study, we would know how important the study will be to management of companies, government and students of higher learning or any interested persons or agencies. The horizon of the study was explained in the scope and limitations of the study. Finally, under chapter scheme, all the chapters were summarized in a nutshell for easy understanding.

Chapter two is on literature review and it deals with the existing literature on the effects of advertisement on consumer buying behaviour. It includes the definition of advertisement where advertising is defined as any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services by an identified sponsor.

Nwokoye (2000) explained that advertising has become a major form of selling, if not only supports form of selling but also serve as the only selling tool used to inform target audience about producer product. He said in the ancient times, the most common form of advertisement was by the word of mouth, however commercial messages were found in the runs of Pompeli. In setting advertising objectives, it should be based on past decisions about the target market, positioning and marketing mix. The following are the classification of advertising objectives namely: informative, persuasive, reminder and reinforcement advertising. When setting advertising budget Nwokoye (2000) gave five (5) specific factors to be considered i.e. stage in the product life cycle, market share and consumer base, competition and clutter, advertising frequency and product substitutability.

Gary (1992) observed that when developing advertising strategies four (4) steps are followed to develop a creative strategy: message generation, message evaluation and selection, message execution and social responsibility review. According to Irwing (1997) the major steps in media selection are: decoding on reach, frequency and impact, choosing among major media types, selecting specific media vehicles and deerding on media timing.

Kotler (2004) said the advertising programme should evaluate both the communication effects and the sales effects of advertising regularly. The sales effect of advertising are often harder to measure than communication effects and sales are affected by many factors besides advertising such as products features, price and availability.

Kotler and Keller (2012) said one of the common views in understanding consumer behaviour is it has become a factor that has a direct impact on the overall performance of businesses. Thompson (1990) identified four (4) theories of consumer behaviour namely: rational actor’s theory, new institutional economics, process theory and the bullwhip effect.

Five stages model of consumer decision making has been studied by a number of other researchers, but Blackwell (2006) identified the five (5) stages of consumer decision making process as: problem/need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision made and post- purchase evaluation. Furthermore, a number of researchers have been carried out by scholars on the factors affecting the consumer buying behaviour. Wiedermann (2007) classified them into internal and external factor, while Wiver (2009) divided them into social, personal and psychological factors.

Chapter three which is on research methodology includes the introduction to the chapter. In the research design, we would know that it’s a survey research which purpose is to examine the effect of advertisement on consumer buying behaviour with a study of Honeywell Mill Nigeria Plc. Under sources of data collection, the researcher collected both primary and secondary data. For the population and sample, the population of the study covers all the workers of Cadbury Nigeria Plc, where a selected sample of 100 employees working in the marketing department were taken
from the entire population. For the data collection methods, the researcher used both the questionnaire schedule and personal interview in collecting information from the respondents.

In the method of data analysis, the researcher presented data in tabular presentation based on percentages in analyzing responses. In testing of hypotheses, the statistical technique employed is the chi-square (X2) method, which is used to test the relationship between the variables concerned.

Chapter four involves data presentation and analysis, it is where data collected were tabulated using percentages to analyse each table. The research hypotheses raised in the opening chapter were tested and all two (2) hypothesis formulated were accepted as true.

Chapter five is on summary, findings and conclusions and recommendations of the whole research work. For the summary, all the chapters were summarized chapter by chapter, while the findings and conclusions consist of the findings observed by the researcher during the study. The recommendations were based on the findings observed before useful suggestions will be given as recommendations to management of blue chips companies, government and students of higher learning or any interested persons.

5.2 Conclusions

With respect to the analysis and the findings of this study, the following conclusions emerged;

Generally, businesses say that advertising provides a public service because it gives them information about their products and in its broadest sense; it is the vital conduct for information between producers and consumers. Of course, we all know that advertising does more than merely inform, its job is to sell. It is not objective or neutral and successful adverts skillfully engagethe mind of the consumer and motivate them to buy the product advertised.

Furthermore, communication does not only enhance mutual understanding and social integration of communities. It foster harmonious relationship that contributes immensely to the overall-social economic, political and well as the cultural development of the human society.

Finally, advertisement campaign worldwide influence the behaviours and attitude formation of consumers not only in Nigeria but also worldwide. The consumers of products have their motivational sources which are advertisement and it’s motivating them to materialize the purchase of durables. The consumers are induced significantly by advertisements when the target is on quality and price. Purchase attitude and behaviour is influenced by variety of advertisements which cover product evaluation and brand recognition.

5.3 Recommendations

Based on the findings and conclusion, the following recommendations are made:

The management of the organisation should evolve a strategy that would fully embrace advertisement as a promotional mix in the marketing of their products.
The efficiency in carryout advertisement in the company depends on the experience and mental alertness of the personnel involved in the advertising campaign for the organisation.
The organisation should intensively monitored customers satisfaction through client complaints and suggestions, because their customers are very vital to the growth and survival of the company.
The company should conduct quarterly marketing research, so as to gather information as regard the ways to meet projected sales and profit level set by them.
There is need for a constant meeting between the management and its customers, so as to establish a good relationship in order to find answers to most of the customers complains.
The management of the organisation should try its possible best to use the promotional mix i.e. advertising, sales promotion, personal selling to pursue its objectives in the target market.
The staff employed in the sales and marketing department should be given adequate training on consumer behaviour, which will help to boost their effectiveness when dealing with customers.

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